Shivers (1975 film)

Shivers
A black and white image tinted green, of a woman in a bathtub looking terrified United States Theatrical release poster that features an alternate title
Directed by	David Cronenberg
Produced by	Ivan Reitman
Written by	David Cronenberg
Starring	Paul Hampton Lynn Lowry Barbara Steele
Cinematography	Robert Saad
Edited by	Patrick Dodd
Production company	CFDC
Distributed by	Cinépix Film Properties
Release dates	September 26, 1975 (1975-09-26) (San Antonio, Texas) October 10, 1975 (1975-10-10) (Montreal)
Running time	87 minutes
Country	Canada
Language	English
Budget	CAD $179,000
Box office	$1 million (Canada)

Shivers, also known as The Parasite Murders and They Came from Within, and, for the French-Canadian distribution, Frissons (IPA /friːˈsoʊn/ free-sohn; French for "chills" or "shivers"), is a 1975 Canadian science fiction body horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg and starring Paul Hampton, Lynn Lowry, and Barbara Steele. The original shooting title was Orgy of the Blood Parasites.

Plot

At Starliner Towers, a luxury apartment complex outside of Montreal, Dr. Emil Hobbes murders a young woman named Annabelle. He slices open her stomach, pours acid into the wound and then commits suicide. Nick Tudor, who has been suffering from stomach convulsions, finds their bodies but leaves without calling the police. The two bodies are found by resident doctor Roger St. Luc, who calls the police. Hobbes' medical partner, Rollo Linsky, tells St. Luc that he and Hobbes had been working on a project to create "a parasite that can take over the function of a human organ".

After suffering more convulsions, Nick leaves work early. He vomits a parasite over the railing of his balcony. The parasite slithers back into the apartment, where it attacks a cleaning woman in the basement, attaching itself to her face. His wife Janine tries to care for him, but he ignores her and prefers to talk to the parasites undulating in his abdomen. At the clinic, Roger sees a sexually active middle-aged resident who has been suffering from stomach convulsions. Roger speculates that his condition might be an STD that he caught from Annabelle.

Linsky calls Roger from Hobbes' office downtown to tell him that Hobbes had developed a parasite that was "a combination of aphrodisiac and venereal disease that will, hopefully, turn the world into one beautiful mindless orgy". Hobbes believed modern humans had become over-intellectual and estranged from their primal impulses. Hobbes' ambition with his parasitic invention was to reassert humanity's unbridled, sexually aggressive instincts, and he used Annabelle as his guinea pig. Linsky warns Roger not to approach anyone who is behaving in a strange manner.

Nick tries to force Janine to have sex with him, but she recoils in horror when one of the parasites crawls from his mouth. She rushes to the apartment of her friend Betts, who was infected by one of the parasites while taking a bath. Betts seduces Janine and as they kiss, passes a parasite to her. Meanwhile, other residents, including a little girl in an elevator with her mother, who are assaulted by a deliveryman, become infected with the parasite, attack other residents and continue to spread the infection. Soon the hallways are full of people sexually assaulting or fighting one another. Roger combs the complex looking for the parasites while Forsythe—his nurse and lover—tends to an elderly couple who were attacked by one of the parasites.

Linsky arrives at Starliner Towers and goes to the Tudor apartment, as Roger had identified Nick as someone Annabelle might have infected. He finds Nick lying in bed, parasites crawling on his abdomen. When Linsky examines him more closely, one of the parasites latches onto his cheek. Linsky tries to pull it off with pliers, but Nick kills him and swallows the parasite. Forsythe tries to flee the complex in her car but is attacked by the infected security guard. Before he can rape her, Roger arrives and kills him, and the two hide in the basement. Forsythe tells Roger of a dream that mixed eroticism and death, then vomits up a parasite. Roger knocks her out and tries to carry her to safety, but they are attacked by a horde of infected sex maniacs. Roger is separated from Forsythe and is forced to flee as she is overwhelmed by the infected.

Roger kills Nick in his apartment, then tries to escape the complex, but is thwarted at every turn. He finally makes it to the swimming pool area where he encounters Janine and Betts swimming fully clothed. The two walk to the edge of the pool and smile seductively at him as he finds a door to the outside, but the infected block his path and he is pulled into the pool by Janine and Betts. The rest of the infected, including the little girl from the elevator, plunge into the pool fully dressed or otherwise and swim towards Roger to hold him down. Roger is eventually surrounded and finally infected by Forsythe.

Roger, Forsythe and the other Starliner residents drive out of the building's garage. Early the next morning, news reports encourage listeners not to panic as police investigate an epidemic of sexual assaults in Montreal.

Cast

• Paul Hampton as Roger St. Luc
• Joe Silver as Rollo Linsky
• Lynn Lowry as Nurse Forsythe
• Alan Migicovsky as Nicholas Tudor
• Susan Petrie as Janine Tudor
• Barbara Steele as Betts
• Ronald Mlodzik as Merrick
• Barry Boldero as Det. Heller
• Camil Ducharme as Mr. Guilbault
• Hanka Posnanska as Mrs. Guilbault
• Wally Martin as Doorman
• Vlasta Vrána as Kresimer Sviben
• Silvie Debois as Benda Sviben

Production and response

Shivers was filmed over fifteen days at Tourelle-Sur-Rive, a 1962 apartment building designed by Mies van der Rohe, on Rue de Gaspé, Nuns' Island. It was Cronenberg's third feature film, and the most profitable Canadian film made to date in 1975, but was so controversial that the Parliament of Canada debated its social and artistic value and effect upon society, because of objections to its sexual and violent content.

Release

Shivers opened theatrically in the United States under the alternate title They Came From Within, with regional showings beginning in San Antonio, Texas on September 26, 1975. The film was released in Montréal on October 10, 1975 where it was distributed by Cinépix. The film was released in Canada as The Parasite Murders and in both Canada and the United Kingdom as Shivers.

Home media

The film was released on DVD by Image Entertainment on September 16, 1998 and is currently out of print.

On September 15, 2020, Lionsgate issued the film on Blu-ray in the United States as part of its Vestron Video Collector's Series. This release includes, among other features, a new commentary by filmmaker David Cronenberg.

Reception

On its initial release, Shivers was not a positively received film. Of a selection of 28 reviews from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Belgium and France, 16 reviews are negative, six were positive and the rest could be classified as neutral. From the negative reviews, 12 of the 16 negative reviews are very negative while three of the six positive reviews were very positive. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a rating of based on reviews from critics, with an average rating of . The site's consensus states "Shivers uses elementally effective basic ingredients to brilliant effect — and lays the profoundly unsettling foundation for director David Cronenberg's career to follow".

Canadian journalist Robert Fulford, writing as "Marshall Delaney", decried the content of Shivers in the pages of the national magazine Saturday Night. Since Cronenberg's film was partially financed by the taxpayer-funded Canadian Film Development Corporation (later known as Telefilm Canada), Fulford headlined the article with "You should know how bad this film is. After all, you paid for it." He called it "crammed with blood, violence and depraved sex" and "the most repulsive movie I've ever seen." Not only did this high-profile attack make it more difficult for Cronenberg to obtain funding for his subsequent movies, but Cronenberg later said Fulford's article also resulted in him being kicked out of his apartment in Toronto, owing to his landlord's inclusion of a "morality clause" in the lease. Other Canadian critics gave the film negative reviews, such as Martin Knelman in The Globe and Mail and Dane Larnken in Montreal Gazette. American critic Roger Ebert noted that while he expected Shivers to be a dismal exploitation film, since it was part of a double-bill with the faux-snuff film Snuff, he instead was impressed by much of the movie and ended up giving it a two-and-a-half star rating.

The film was one of the highest-grossing English-language Canadian films of all-time, with a gross of $1 million in Canada.

Related works

The screenplay was published by Faber & Faber in the 2002 collection David Cronenberg: Collected Screenplays 1: Stereo, Crimes of the Future, Shivers, Rabid.

See also

• Parasites in fiction
• Rabid

External links

• Shivers at IMDb
• Interview with David Cronenberg about Shivers (CBC television via TIFF)