| Shivers | |
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film poster under an alternate title |
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| Directed by | David Cronenberg |
| Produced by | Ivan Reitman |
| Written by | David Cronenberg |
| Starring | Paul Hampton Barbara Steele Lynn Lowry Joe Silver Ronald Mlodzik Fred Doederlin Allan Migicovsky |
| Cinematography | Robert Saad |
| Editing by | Patrick Dodd |
| Distributed by | Cinépix Film Properties Inc. |
| Release date(s) | 1975 |
| Running time | 87 minutes |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Budget | C$179,000 (est.) |
Shivers (filmed as Orgy of the Blood Parasites; alternate titles: The Parasite Murders, They Came from Within, and Frissons for the French Canadian distribution) is a 1975 Canadian body horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg. Cronenberg won "Best Director" at the 1975 Sitges Film Festival.
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Dr. Emil Hobbes (Fred Doederlin) is conducting unorthodox experiments with parasites for use in transplants, however, he believes that humanity has become over-rational and lost contact with its flesh and its instincts, so the effects of the organism he actually develops is a combination aphrodisiac and venereal disease. Once implanted, it causes uncontrollable sexual desire in the host. Hobbes implants the parasites in his teen-aged mistress, who promiscuously spreads them throughout the ultra-modern apartment building, outside Montreal, where they live. The community's resident physician, Roger St. Luc (Paul Hampton), and his assistant, Nurse Forsythe (Lynn Lowry) attempt to stop the parasite infestation before it overwhelms the city's population.
The film's chaotic structure mirrors the collapse of residential life in the apartment block. The opening shows a young couple being welcomed as residents to the tower block, intercut with Dr Hobbes murdering his adolescent mistress by strangling her, then cutting open her stomach and pouring acid into her body to kill the parasites, and then cutting his own throat. Partway into the story, the audience learn the reason for Hobbes's actions; most of Shivers consists of social set piece tableaux showing the sexual promiscuity that spreads the parasites to the other residents.
Director Cronenberg said he identified with the residents after they were infected; and shows the swinging sterility of "normal" life mercilessly caricatured through the characterisation of the bland, rich, young professionals inhabiting the apartment block, and the hard-sell estate agent's sales pitch from Merrick (Ronald Mlodzik), which accompanies the opening titles.
Shivers was Cronenberg's first feature film, and was the most profitable Canadian film made to date in 1975, but was so controversial that the Canadian parliament debated its social and artistic value and effect upon society, because of objections to its sexual and violent content.
The Canadian journalist Robert Fulford 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 (or Telefilm Canada), Fulford headlined the article "You Should Know How Bad This Movie Is, You Paid For It." Not only did this high profile attack make it more difficult for Cronenberg to obtain funding for his subsequent movies,[1] but Cronenberg later said Fulford's article also resulted in him being kicked out of his apartment in Toronto due to his landlord's inclusion of a "morality clause" in the lease.[2]
The film was released theatrically in the United States by Trans American Films in July 1976.[3]
The film was released on DVD by Image Entertainment in 1998.[4] This version is currently out of print.
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