RABID (2019)

 

(Director /co-screenwriters: Jen and Sylvia Soska, a.k.a. The Soska Sisters. Co-screenwriter: John Serge.)

 

Review

The Soska Sisters’ RABID, shot in nineteen days, is a remake of David Cronenberg’s 1977 film of the same name. Both movies share the same set-up and title. Aside from that, this updated feminist version on a synthetic plague is Soska-centric.

RABID 2019 takes place in a modern-day fashion house, where Rose Miller (Laura Vandervoort, JIGSAW, 2017) is a shy dressmaker, aspiring to design her own dresses. Most, including her arrogant boss (Günter), consider her beneath their notice, and she internalizes that lie. A motorcycle accident nearly kills her, necessitating wildly experimental surgery to keep her alive. The site of her lifesaving, later cosmetic, surgeries: Burroughs Clinic, named for her surgeon, Dr. William Burroughs. (The Soskas’ use of Burroughs is a nod to Cronenberg, specifically his 1991 film NAKED LUNCH, based on William S. Burroughs’s 1959 novel of the same name.)

Rose comes out of her surgeries and follow-up therapy more beautiful and self-assured. Everyone around her is wowed not only by her improved appearance and outgoing personality, but the bold new dress designs Günter employs her to create. Privately, though, she is in turmoil. She has not fully wrapped her head around her recent sea-changes. It does not help that the red “special diet” smoothies Burroughs tells her to drink make her stomach cramp─even as she is unable to process regular food, aside from raw meat. Also, her dreams are horrific, splateriffic scenarios, situations where she is a flesh-tearing aggressor. Unbeknownst to her, she is Patient Zero in a savage epidemic.

The climactic scenes where Rose comes into her gory glory is holy-frak crazy, making the penile-worm-in-her-armpit look tame. This chaos erupts at Häus Günter’s splashy fashion show, revealing Rose’s like-nothing-seen-before dress designs. In the end, it’s up to each viewer to decide if Rose’s fate is kinder or crueler than that of her 1977 counterpart’s (Marilyn Chambers played Rose in the original film). It’s certainly different.

One way the Soskas set their RABID apart from Cronenberg’s is the cinematography (courtesy of Kim Derko, LAND OF THE DEAD, 2005). The Soskas’ film is glossy, with lots of theme-consistent, bright red on display─like the dresses the filmmaking siblings wear in their cameos, as cocaine-snorting, gossipy fashion snobs. The look of Cronenberg’s RABID is dark, wintry, and sludgy.

The Soskas, Serge and editor Erin Deck also created a tighter, more intuitive, and less character-raw film.  It flows better than Cronenberg’s version. The acting level is about the same, with campiness underscoring some of the characters’ interactions in the Soska version. Not only that, the Soskas have graced her with a last name and a job/career, something Cronenberg’s version did not mention or show onscreen.

Sharp-eyed Cronenberg fans may appreciate the scene where Burroughs and Dr. Keloid operate on Rose (Keloid is a character from the 1977 film; he is now played by an unsettling Stephen McHattie). During the surgery, Keloid and Burroughs wear wine-red surgeon’s gowns, a nod at Cronenberg’s 1988 film DEAD RINGERS, where twin brothers─also surgeons─wear the same outfits.

Both versions of RABID might prove interesting and worthwhile, if you shed expectations prior to viewing them. They’re different beasts built in a similar structure.

THE DEAD ZONE (1983)

 

(Director: David Cronenberg. Screenplay: Jeffrey Boam.)

Review

Based on Stephen King’s 1979 novel of the same name, this 1983 sad and horrifying David Cronenberg movie is one of my all-time favorite precognitive films. Its perpetually-set-in-wintry-tones mood is perfect for its emotional content and events while Johnny Smith tries to find his way in the world after a five-year coma, only to find that his melancholic recovery is complicated by a clairvoyant and precognitive abilities, which may kill him.

Boam’s screenplay and Cronenberg’s direction are great, with characters worth caring about and equally excellent actors to play them. Christopher Walken played Johnny Smith. Herbert Lom played Dr. Sam Weizak. Brooke Adams played his lost-love, Sarah Bracknell. Tom Skerritt played Sheriff Bannerman. Martin Sheen played Greg Stillson. Jackie Burroughs played Vera Smith, Johnny’s mother. Nicholas Campbell played Deputy Frank Dodd. Colleen Dewhurst, who played Henrietta Dodd (Frank’s mother), previously appeared in Woody Allen’s ANNIE HALL (1977) as the mother of Walken’s character, Duane Hall. Anthony Zerbe played Robert Stuart. William B. Davis (OMEN IV: THE AWAKENING, 1991), billed as William Davis, played "Ambulance Driver".

The human-based horror, as well as its palpable mood, is unsettling and memorable, like that of the source book, King’s first Top-Ten of the year bestseller. Composer Michael Kamen’s score adds an extra sense of longing, loss and flinching terror to this potent mix of talents.

Deep(er) filmic dive

According to IMDb, King’s novel and Cronenberg’s film are “loosely based on the life of famous psychic Peter Hurkos. Hurkos claimed to have acquired his alleged power after falling off a ladder and hitting his head". 

Bill Murray was Stephen King’s choice to play Johnny Smith.

Helene Uddy, who played “Weizak’s Mother,” also appeared in MY BLOODY VALENTINE (1981), MRS. CLAUS (2018) and other, sometimes-notable films. 

RABID (1977)

 

(Director/screenwriter: David Cronenberg)

Storyline

An experimental plastic surgery turns a young woman into a bloodthirsty creature. She attacks her victims, infecting them, causing a city-wide epidemic.

Review

Cronenberg’s 1977 follow-up to the controversial SHIVERS (1974) is a thematic evolution and upgrade for the screenwriter-director whose early-to-mid-career cinematic works often focused on mutation, and body- and disease-based horror. The tone and flow of RABID is sharper and improved, less raw shot-wise. Theme- and writing-wise it’s a more self-assured and mature sibling to SHIVERS.

Ex-porn actress Marilyn Chambers (BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR, 1972) played Rose, the lead character and patient zero for the plague. She did a good job of conveying Rose’s journey from recovering accident victim, confused amnesiac to full-on predator─and while there are a few nude scenes with her, they’re restrained and non-gratuitous in that they further the plot in a meaningful way. Joe Silver, a veteran character actor, whose laidback performance was a highlight in SHIVERS, gets a pivotal role here as well, playing a medical expert (Murray Cypher). As fun as his character’s name is, it’s not quite as notable/darkly funny as the name of Rose’s surgeon, Dr. Dan Keloid (played by Howard Ryshpan)─the scene where an infected Keloid begins to lose his mind during a surgery is one of the more enjoyable scenes in RABID.

The penile mutation symbol, as in SHIVERS, is present here as well: this time out, it doesn’t crawl, slug-like, out of its victims, but instead nests within Rose’s armpit. With another director, this might be heavy-handed and silly, but in Cronenberg’s vision, there’s an added element of creepiness to it.

This relatively short feature is a maturation of Cronenberg’s filmmaking abilities, one that works and entertains on all still-icky levels, with an emotionally blunt end-scene that is striking in its tone-consistent, cold-reality harshness. According to IMDb, RABID remains one of Canada’s highest-grossing films of all-time.

SHIVERS (1975)

 

(a.k.a. IT CAME FROM WITHIN; a.k.a. THEY CAME FROM WITHIN; director/screenwriter: David Cronenberg).

From IMDb:

“The residents of a high-rise apartment building are being infected by a strain of parasites that turn them into mindless, sex-crazed fiends out to infect others by the slightest sexual contact.”

 

Review

Shot in fifteen days in 1974, Cronenberg’s first feature film is a nasty, blackly humorous piece of occasionally slapstick venereal-horror work, showing the trajectories of an experimental virus that reduces people to animalistic lust as it rapidly spreads throughout a high-rise and beyond its walls. SHIVERS is shocking and boundary-pushing for an R-rated film for its overtly sexual violence (although it’s nowhere near as graphic as Meir Zarchi’s rape-revenge torturerama I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, 1978). SHIVERS was so controversial in Canada that it got Cronenberg kicked out of his apartment in real life.

Despite its gritty, carnal themes and action, there is an underlying antiseptic nature to the film that is often present in Cronenberg’s early-to-mid-career flicks. That hospital-like undertone would come to the fore in his later movies. IMDb.com notes that every scene in SHIVERS contains the colors yellow or gold.

 All the acting is suitably over-the-top, though two actors stand out: the long, raven-haired Barbara Steele (Mario Bava’s BLACK SUNDAY, 1960; PIT AND THE PENDULUM, 1961), who adds a wild card intensity to the cavalcade of messy terror; and Joe Silver, a veteran character actor whose laidback performance in this was later revisited in altered form in Cronenberg’s 1977 non-sequel follow-up RABID.

 SHIVERS is not Cronenberg’s best work, but it is all-around excellent, a bold, raw cinematic announcement of an evolving, distinctive filmmaker unafraid to ruffle a few prudish feathers.