Review #820: 'Rabid' (1977)

After a near-fatal motorbike accident, Rose (Marilyn Chambers) undergoes experimental skin-graft surgery to help her recover from the horrific wounds she had inflicted. Luckily for her, and surprising to most of her doctors, her body takes to the transplants and starts an immediate recovery. However, the surgery has left her with a strange orifice under her armpit which contains a stringer. She is soon seducing men and infecting them, leaving her victims in a shocked state and unable to remember anything. An outbreak is soon on the cards as the infected go on a biting rampage, spreading a strange disease which causing the host to turn rabid and zombie-like.

Only his fourth feature, and only his second horror after Shivers (1975), this is not Canadian director David Cronenberg's finest achievement. But thankfully, a bulk Cronenberg's filmography is outstanding and Rabid is still an extremely effective little horror film. The infected are a mixture of zombies and vampires, although they aren't really either by definition, but Cronenberg uses them as well as anyone could hope for. The film is little more than a series of set-pieces, but one in particular, involving a woman on a packed trained slowly coming to the realisation that one of the infected is on board, is as good a scene depicting sheer terror and panic as I've ever seen.

Of course, this being Cronenberg, undertones of psychosexuality run throughout. It's no coincidence that the orifice underneath Rose's armpit looks like a vagina, and no surprise that it attacks with a phallic stinger. Rose's sexuality is her real weapon, as it lures her victims close enough for the attack. Whether it be a fear of women or a warning about progressive plastic surgery that her character is trying to articulate, ex-porn star Marilyn Chambers handles her role extremely well. Though she is naked for the most part, she convinces as a seemingly nice girl turned sexual predator. Cronenberg would translate similar themes into better films and he would go on to develop body horror into a true art-form, but Rabid is an accomplished early effort.


Directed by: David Cronenberg
Starring: Marilyn Chambers, Frank Moore, Joe Silver, Howard Ryshpan
Country: Canada

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie