Rating: B
Dir: David Cronenberg
Star: Marilyn Chambers, Frank Moore, Susan Roman, Howard Ryshpan
This is another one whose status is arguable. “Not really a vampire movie,” muttered Chris when it ended. But for the purposes of this series, if it attacks people and needs to drink their blood to survive, it’s a vampire. In any case, I’m afraid S.S. Definition pretty much sailed with the giant killer bloodsucking moth movie, didn’t it? After that, an adult actress playing a plastic surgery disaster with a phallic vampiric appendage in her armpit is hardly a stretch. Though this is also epidemic porn, because those on whom she feeds become infected with rabies-like symptoms, attacking those around them in uncontrollable rage. The short incubation period quickly escalated into a public health crisis and martial law. All terribly un-Canadian.
That’s getting ahead of ourselves though. Cronenberg had achieved quite the success with Shivers, along with quite a bit of controversy. The fact this twisted grindhouse tale had been partially financed by taxpayer money, through the Canadian Film Development Corporation, led to questions being asked in parliament. But it became one of the highest grossing Canadian films to that point, so the CFDC – somewhat reluctantly – were back on board for his follow-up. [Cronenberg later claimed his two horror movies were the only CFDC movies to make a profit] It was originally to be titled Mosquito, and the director wanted the then unknown Sissy Spacek to star, but producers rejected her as too freckled and Texan. She then became a star with the release of Carrie. Likely not by accident, a poster of it can be seen, as Rose (Chambers) walks through downtown Montreal.
The casting of Chambers also seems designed to court controversy, considering her fame was entirely based on her porn career. In particular she had starred in Behind the Green Door, which likely trails only Deep Throat in terms of its crossover into mainstream awareness. Having Canadian taxpayers fund her salary feels like a carefully crafted “Fuck you” to the likes of critic Robert Fulford, who had called Shivers, “crammed with blood, violence and depraved sex” and “the most repulsive movie I’ve ever seen.” Producer Ivan Reitman felt Chambers’s presence would improve the film’s marketability, while Cronenberg simply liked her presence on screen. Neither man is incorrect. But it’s important to remember how radical a step this was in the late seventies, when the border between adult and “proper” cinema was almost impermeable.
I wonder if it was an influence in Jean Rollin, who the following year would cast another adult star, Brigitte Lahaie, in his own unconventional vampire movie, Fascination. Yet despite the two actresses similar backgrounds, the contrast in approach to their performances could hardly be greater, both women playing to their strengths, reflecting their XXX content (uh… allegedly). Lahaie’s vampire is a feral animal, with no morality to speak of, while Chambers is the innocent victim, who can’t even believe she has become a monster. The connection between vampirism and sex has been obvious since the beginning: it’s perhaps a surprise more film-makers haven’t opted to go this route in their casting.
That aside, it still remains a deeply Crononbergian movie, being basically a moral fable about the dangers that arise when science decides to intervene in the human body. From The Brood through to Videodrome, it never ends well. In this case, the one meddling in things with which mankind, etc. is Dr. Dan Keloid (Ryshpan) of the Keloid Clinic for Plastic Surgery. A road accident nearby brings the badly-burned Rose to the facility, where Dr. Keloid carries out a new technique in skin grafts on her. Somehow – and I’ll admit this is a bit of a leap – this causes Rose to develop an under-arm orifice, from which a feeding tube emerges. It plunges into its target, typically during an embrace, and takes their blood, while infecting them with the rabies-like disease discussed above.
Rose herself remains immune, though human blood becomes the only source of nourishment she can handle. Attempts at taking in cow, either on the hoof on in a more processed form, both end in upchuckage. Her victims typically don’t remember the attack, until their infection suddenly kicks in. For Dr. Keloid, that happens in the middle of another surgical procedure, causing him to snip a nurse’s finger off and suck enthusiastically at the stump. Yet what perhaps separates this from future Cronenberg movies is the larger social dynamic. The body horror here is not just a personal thing, it’s a spreading epidemic, triggering an equally savage reaction from the government. A WHO spokesman says, “Shooting down victims of the disease is as good a way of handling them as we’ve got,” and there are kill squads roaming the streets of Montreal, firing on sight and dumping bodies into garbage trucks for disposal (above). Between them and the intercut media sequences, there’s a definite Night of the Living Dead influence here.
It is also the final Cronenberg film with a female protagonist for more than two decades, the next being Allegra Geller in eXistenZ. The film clearly has a lot of sympathy for Rose, who didn’t ask for the surgery, or even consent to it, being unconscious at the time. Unlike Seth Brundle in The Fly, there’s no sense of hubris coming before her fall, or like Max Renn in Videodrome, this being payback – karmic or other – for arrogance. She was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and pays a terrible price for it. Her only sin is denial, an understandable refusal to accept the reality of what’s happening to her, and it’s this which consigns Rose to her ultimate fate, succumbing as the result of her own experiment, hoping to prove she’s not the “Patient Zero” her boyfriend (Moore) claims. Not many of the central characters in Cronenberg films make it to the end unscathed, but Rose’s fate has to be among the saddest.
Finally: there’s a remake. Meh. And Google Reviews, never change. Here’s someone’s “opinion”, I kid you not, of Rabid:
This review is part of our October 2023 feature, 31 Days of Vampires.