Popular reviews

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  Review by BRAT ★★★ 2

  cronenberg, mid-1970s: folks, i got a terrifying movie premise for ya: the human body. but with an extra hole :o 
  executives: ugh fine david but just this once, okay?
  cronenberg: yes ... “once” .........

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  Review by demi adejuyigbe 3

  one thing i love about cronenberg is that he's really good at setting up a trusted voice/solution in his films and then having them fall prey to whatever virus/monster we're following. one thing i do not love about cronenberg is that he has nobody to tell him to toss the post-it from his idea wall with the words "ravenous elbow pussy" on it

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  Review by Sean Baker 4

  Must have been a subconscious selection because I wasn't intending to watch a film about a spreading virus right now. But I plucked the Scream Factory Blu-ray release off my shelf and revisited this classic.

  Marilyn Chambers is great. Wish she did more mainstream.

  Scream Factory release is solid as usual.

  - NEW 2K Scan From The Negative At Director David Cronenberg’s Preferred Aspect Ratio (1.66:1)
  - NEW Audio Interview With Author Jill C. Nelson (Golden Goddesses: 25 Legendary Women Of Classic Erotic Cinema, 1968-1985) And Marilyn Chambers' Personal Appearances Manager Ken Leicht
  - NEW Young And Rabid – An Interview With Actress Susan Roman
  - Audio Commentary With Writer/Director David Cronenberg
  - Audio Commentary With William Beard, Author Of…

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  Review by CinemaVoid 🏴‍☠️ ★★★½ 4

  Well, it seems that the 2020 pandemic was one vampiric armpit pussy away from becoming Cronenberg’s dream vacation. That was close. 😰​

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  Review by Richard Chandler ★★★½ 14

  "I'm hideous, doctor—I'm crazy, and I'm a monster!"

  The earliest by nearly half a decade of the eleven films I've now seen from Canadian body-horror pioneer David Cronenberg is Rabid, a sometimes schlocky though nevertheless disquieting tale of a zombie pandemic brought about by a hubristic surgical procedure. Cronenberg was engaged by Cinépix to develop another screenplay following his contentious and highly lucrative 1975 effort Shivers. Their faith was rewarded when Rabid's profits doubled its half-million dollar budget.

  In an emergency skin-graft procedure following a severe motorcycle accident, loose cannon cosmetic surgeon Dan Keloid (Howard Ryshpan) utilizes a pilot technique to erase the genetic specificity of the thigh tissue being transplanted—rendering it "morphogenetically neutral" in the hopes that it will…

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  Review by Disgustipated ★★★★ 9

  I actually watched Rabid some time ago but I was reading a chapter about Shivers and Rabid yesterday in Ernest Mathijs' book about Cronenberg and it inspired me.

  So much commentary about Cronenberg is centred on the notion of Body Horror. Mathijs certainly does not neglect it. But he also expounded on a framework that placed Shivers and Rabid in the context of a new revolutionary type of horror film that fundamentally shifted the genre into a new realm of realism and relevance.

  He sketched out a few points and I felt bothered to paraphrase (more or less) for my own interest and thought I may as well share.

  1) People were really starting to dig these new genre films,…

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  Review by thearkofkaark ★★½

  Director David Cronenberg would go on to make many films far superior to Rabid, but as an early example of one of his body horrors it's worth a look.

  Cronenberg cast porn star Marilyn Chambers in the lead role after the studio rejected his first choice of Sissy Spacek (which seems crazy in hindsight given she was on the cusp of her Carrie stardom, a poster for which can be seen at one point in this film), and she gives one of the best performances here. In truth she isn't given much competition, as the majority of the acting on display comes across as amateurish.

  To be fair, the cast don't have much to work with, as the characters are…

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  Review by Michael501 📺 ★★★★ 1

  💀HOOPTOBER 7.0 💀
  💀BODY HORROR #1💀                 
  💀Film 2/36💀                   

  Porn star Marilyn Chambers heads the cast of the early Cronenberg horror effort Rabid. The plot concerns a plastic surgeon (Howard Ryshpan) who grafts a huge lesion onto Marilyn’s arm. Like a mosquito stinger, this new member sucks the blood out of Marilyn’s victims. Pretty soon, everyone in Montreal has been turned into a rabid bloodsucking zombie.
  
  When I read through Cinemonster’s Hooptober 7.0 list and noticed Body Horror as a subject I was made up, it would give me a perfect excuse to catch up on some early Cronenberg I missed out on. First…

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  Review by belial_carboni ★★★½ 2

  After watching a Cronenberg film it's difficult not to watch another. I just loved burying myself in those late 70s Canadian vibes. The familiar scenery, cold climate, Christmas decorations and morbid visuals are just what I crave this time of year.

  Rabid takes what Cronenberg accomplished in Shivers and offers a more structured and polished offering. While not as risky or progressive as Shivers Rabid still delivers a mean spirited and terrifying experience. Infectious arm pit parasites, murderous rabies outbreaks and widespread violence and carnage make this a bleak affair. Especially that ending! Dayum.

  This has never been a top five Cronenberg film for me but I love it just the same. Cronenberg made some of the most viscerally charged films in his early days and there's really nothing else that comes close. A unique style that could never be duplicated.

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★½

  A sex-negative apocalypse that's cautionary instead of potentially transformative seems totally uncharacteristic for Cronenberg, and that he robs Marilyn Chambers of much agency other than as a selfish-gene carrier only makes this feel more disorganized. Still, the clinical depiction of the precipice of a body-horror doomsday remains extremely confident, and it seems like every other scene (a newly minted monster confronts an ex-lover, sex as a catalyst for violent change, corporate technological/scientific hubris) contains the kernel of a later Cronenberg film.

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  Review by Lou (rhymes with wow!) ★★★½ 6

  I mean.. I would totally let Marilyn Chambers sting me with her phallic shaped armpit stinger!

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  Review by No-Personality ★★★★ 2

  Horror of 1977 / Horror of the 70's

  A Canadian countryside-into-city zombie-rabies epidemic, and everywhere looks the same: twi-lit, tumbleweed-tanned, coma-slipped from perpetual misty rain. (I'll bet they don't know it's Christmastime at all.) Seahaven Island this is not.

  Aside from the music, which feels stitched together from library tracks, I'd say it's weathered the storm of time quite well. (Its laggy pacing works to the general benefit of most of its better scenes since it's still only 90 minutes long.)