Rabid
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, it’s David Cronenberg’s Rabid! This 1977 horror film was made in Montreal, Quebec, and had the support of the Canadian Film Development Corporation. Packed with Freudian imagery and a healthy dose of gore, Rabid is an intriguing film. Cronenberg is one of my favourite directors and I find his work to be fascinating. His manipulation of sex and violence to provide shocking, stunning results is always something of note. He hasn’t abandoned those themes, either, as the recent Eastern Promises still demonstrates Cronenberg’s power as a director and his ability to create shocking yet compelling material. He is one of Canada’s best filmmakers, without question.
Rabid was Cronenberg’s fourth film. Cronenberg’s horror films always investigate the terror as it comes from within, not from some sort of external monster. Rabid is no different, following up on the theme of his previous film, Shivers, by manipulating the vampire theme slightly and including a strange lesion as the source of all of the havoc. Cronenberg’s metaphorical sense is on overdrive, too, as the appearance of the lesion is an odd combination of a vaginal-looking parasite with a phallic insert that drills into its victims. This amalgamation of male and female sexual organs is an obvious allegory towards unbridled sexuality and the rabid spread of disease, much like in Shivers.
Rabid stars Marilyn Chambers in her first non-pornographic role, which was clearly a risk. Chambers, who came to fame in films such as Beyond the Green Door, is actually quite good in her role as Rose. Rose becomes critically-injured after a motorcycle accident with her boyfriend, Hart (Frank Moore). Rose undergoes surgery at a nearby clinic which specializes in experimental plastic surgery. After she comes out of a coma, Rose begins to develop a taste for blood and starts seeking out victims. As she takes victim after victim, rabies begins to spread through a lesion on her body. An epidemic of rabies takes over Montreal, leading to martial law and all sorts of other chaos.
One thing Rabid does well is continue to keep its audience in a state of discomfort. Cronenberg has a knack for creating solid impact and sudden gore. In each of his films, he creates such bold impact with his camera, shattering glass or metal into twisted heaps of trash right before our very eyes. His work in films like Crash, Eastern Promises, and A History of Violence all highlight the immediacy that Cronenberg expresses towards violence and impact. Rabid is no different. One example of this is the car crash sequence, as the effects of it are shattering and intense without being gratuitous. Cronenberg doesn’t sit the camera in strange positions to shoot the scene, but rather he plants it right where an eyewitness would be and lets the true terror of the situation play out naturally. It is an organic experience that adds to the detail and the mood of the film.
The sudden flashes of gore are manipulated in the same way and we can see signs that lead to Cronenberg’s work with relentless violence in Rabid. In Rabid, Cronenberg is most assuredly dealing with some gutsy themes. He takes to the blood and violence with seriousness and a rigid attention to its forcefulness, which leads many of the scenes to develop in sudden, jerky ways rather than in the slow-motion torture-style fashion of many horror films. Cronenberg envelops us in the violence by making it quick, sudden, and stunning. His filmmaking is neither masturbatory nor excessive, creating evenness to the film that makes it highly effective.
Also worth nothing is Cronenberg’s attention to the themes of changing times and medical progress. This is especially prevalent in Cronenberg’s eXistenZ, an eerie film in its own right. Within Rabid, the theme is very similar as something has clearly gone wrong with the experimental plastic surgery. In the scenes spent in the facility, we are treated to visions of strange people with strange bandages and appearances. This manipulation of the essence of plastic surgery and progressive medical techniques is something that Cronenberg seems interested in, as he builds a tapestry out of the characterizations by drawing our attention to the odd details.
Rabid never heads into slasher territory, instead remaining on the fringe and focusing in on both the human story of the ordeal and on the strangeness of it all. The intelligence with which Cronenberg writes and directs the scenes of the medical staff trying to contain the rabies is admirable, as is the notion of Rose not knowing she is the carrier. Some elements take a bit too long to develop, but the film’s final sequence more than makes up for it as Rose is encapsulated in the inexorable results of her curse. Cronenberg doesn’t go for a happy ending, nor does he aim for resolution of the entire sequence of events. Instead, he aims for the next logical step in the journey of an ignorant woman carrying a vile disease. The implications are staggering and the film raises some intelligent questions about the nature of violence, sexuality, and horror. It’s worth a look.
