Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16018 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-01-06
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 91 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
One of David Cronenberg's most successful early films, Rabid features porn star Marilyn Chambers as a woman who becomes infected with a virus after an operation. As result she grows a kind of phallus with which she penetrates her victims as she sucks their blood and thus the disease spreads rapidly. The film displays all Cronenberg's usual horrified fascination with the human body and its sexual function. Looking back, it can be read as a kind of parable about AIDS, but it works perfectly well as an effective low-budget shocker.

On the DVD: the widescreen image on the DVD is acceptable quality, as is the sound. The fairly routine extras consist of excerpts from a TV interview with Cronenberg, lasting about 10 minutes; a collection of stills from the film; some written notes by horror expert Kim Newman that give useful background, though in part reproduce what is said in the interview; full filmographies for Cronenberg and the three principal performers, including a long list of Chambers' porn credits. --Ed Buscombe

Special Features
16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
DVD 5
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital English
Dolby Digital
Video Introduction By David Cronenberg
Production Notes By Kim Newman
Image Gallery

Synopsis
David Cronenberg's horror film stars adult film icon Marilyn Chambers as a motorcycle bad-girl who gets into an accident and undergoes an operation. A gaping sore develops under her arm and soon she's guzzling all the blood she can get her hands on. Her unsuspecting victims become infected with a rabies-like disease and are transformed into bloodsucking ghouls.

Customer Reviews

Excellent box set
shivers:
On a remote island near Montreal there is a large apartment block made for modern living, completely self sufficient with its own dentists and doctors.
One of these doctors seems to go a bit mad, attacking a patient with a scalpel which he then turns on himself. He was actually trying to destroy a leech-like parasite he had created that turns people into sex-crazed lunatics. Similar to Romeros crazies, together with the pessimistic ending, this is Cronenbergs first feature film.
Its evidently low budget, the same scene can go from dim to well lit and the sound is sometimes bad but it all adds to rather than diminishes the films overall effect. Some excellent gore effects and genuinely stomach churning scenes that make you wanna puke (like a parasite jumping out of one mans stomach and down another mans throat). This is a very dark film, not just in look but in tone, and as with many Cronenberg movies, theres no salvation at the end. A great downbeat film then! Inspired by Cronenbergs love for the New York underground film movement of the 60s, Cronenberg even refused to have this film funded by Hollywood after Roger Corman became interested in the script. What a guy, fight the power!
If you like dark, low buget, gory horror where the good guys dont always win, youll love this.

Rabid is another dark, low budget shocker. A couple are involved in a motorbike accident, the woman is taken to a near-by plastic surgery hospital and given skin grafts. She becomes infected with some sort of virus which causes her to need blood. She attacks people, using a phallic-like object that is under her arm, to suck their blood (the fx here are stomach churning!). they in turn become infected by some sort of rabies virus and attack anyone and everyone. Another downbeat film with a downbeat ending from Cronenberg, isnt this guy great?!
If you like these, check out his masterpiece Videodrome, as well as Scanners and Naked Lunch

Both films have an introduction by Cronenberg, production notes and stills galleries. Well worth the money.

Shivers, again
"Rabid" is the story of a woman who, inhabited by an alien entity, feeds vampire-like from her victims using a proboscis located under her armpit. In doing so she infects her victims with a rabies-like alien virus which turns them into rabid creatures who then go on to attack and bite others, thus spreading the infection.

I've seen this film before, and it's Cronenberg's 1975 film "Shivers". Where "Shivers" was set in a swanky hotel-like housing development, "Rabid" is set in a hospital, but basically it follows a very similar storyboard, that of the parasite/virus realeased in a contained environment which eventually drives everyone into a state of zombie-like mania.

(One anecdotal observation: in the opening scene where the girl is rushed in to the emergency room, a member of the public goes to the desk and asks "What was all that about?" to which the E.R. administrator replies "Somebody said something about an accident." - Probably the stupidest conversation that could occur in an Emergency Room).

The acting varies from the completely lame (e.g. the girl's baby-faced boyfriend) to the better (the innocently seductive vampire herself).

It's probably quite an engaging sci-fi/vampire horror and if I'd never seen "Shivers", I'd probably have enjoyed it much more. As it's repetitious it didn't really do it for me.

cronenberg at his weirdest
i have seen most of cronenberg's films but this one rates as his weirdest. marilyn chambers plays a woman who after a skin graft develops a blood sucking tentacle in her armpit(i kid you not). the first half hour is pretty slow but the rest is like some deranged vampire flick. miss chambers runs around the city infecting people with this tentacle until almost everybody is crazy. the apocalyptic atmosphere of this film might put many people off but i loved it. in some ways it is similar to romero's zombie films. if you are in the mood for something out of the ordinary it is highly recomended.