CULT – Shivers

Published on: 7th September, 2009

CULT - Shivers  | read this item

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“Betts tries to scream but can’t. The parasite suckers its way between Betts’ thighs. She screams a silent scream in the tub, her mouth wide open, her head rolling from side to side. The only sounds are the thrashing of her legs in the water and the gurgle of the drain.” David Cronenberg’s ‘commercial’ debut (or as commercial as an artist of his mentality could have been at that time) Shivers was an uncompromising exploration of sexual liberation that could have best been described as ‘Night of the Living Dead with a hard-on.’ Set in a luxurious apartment block, a viral outbreak unexpectedly transforms its residents into sexually charged zombies, regardless of age, gender of orientation. The product of a crazed scientist who had wanted to turn the world into ‘one giant orgy,’ the disease could be seen as an allegory of AIDS (a sexually infection) or even as an erotic variant of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which all of the residents have become mindless drones, whose only motivation is fornicate without prejudice or preference.

With his sixty-minute short Crimes of the Future having introduced his obsession with sexuality and the body, Shivers would display his interest in disease and the deconstruction of the body. It was a bold move for a first time filmmaker (all of his previous efforts had been below feature length) and would showcase many of the themes that Cronenberg would later explore in more detail in his later career, such as experimental parasites (Rabid), the body’s deterioration from disease (The Fly) and sexual awakening (Crash). Whilst the final moments of the movie would see its ‘hero’ eventually succumbing to the infection, the director questions whether or not this is a bad thing. Whilst he may have lost the battle and become ‘one of them,’ he has been stripped of his repressive nature and is finally free.

David Cronenberg was born on March 15 1943 in Toronto, Canada, where he would continue to work throughout his career. The son of a pianist and journalist, Cronenberg always believed he would become an author, although he would initially study biochemistry upon enrolling at the University of Toronto. He eventually changed his major to English, where his ambitions would take a drastic turn upon viewing Winter Kept Us Warm, a romantic drama written and directed by David Secter that several of Cronenberg’s friends had made an appearance in. Realising that the easiest way to make a movie was to simply go out and shoot it, he became immersed in New York’s underground scene and tried his hand at shooting his own short films, resulting in Transfer and From the Drain, in 1966 and 1967, respectively.

He soon progressed from 16mm to 35mm with Stereo, based around the fictitious Canadian Academy of Erotic Enquiry. Up until this point, the country’s film industry had been almost non-existent, but suddenly support was being offered by the Canadian Film Development Corporation (CFDC), who had offered funding for low budget features. Instead, Cronenberg approached Cinépix, a distributor of various cheap exploitation titles such as The Nine Ages of Nakedness, Dare the Devil and The Detention Girls. Cinépix had been formed by John Dunning and his producing partner Andre Link, who had also worked as writers on the low budget horror Le diable est parmi nous (The Possession of Virginia) in 1972. The duo would later make name for themselves when they produced a series of successful features, including Meatballs, My Bloody Valentine and Happy Birthday to Me.

Cronenberg’s full length screenplay was entitled Orgy of the Parasites and would sex elements of zombie films, Avant-garde and monster movies to create what would later be dubbed as ‘body horror.’ Set in The Starliner Towers, a new state-of-the-art apartment block that is situated just off the mainland, the story opens with the murder of a young woman at the hands of a demented doctor. It is later revealed that he was a scientist who had been experimenting with a virus that combined elements of venereal disease and aphrodisiac, but out of fear of a mass outbreak he had killed the girl and then slit his own throat. His efforts, however, had been in vain as soon afterwards a strange phallic parasite begins to make its way around the residents, reducing them to aroused ghouls who literally rape their victims.

Cinépix had expressed great interest in the screenplay but were hesitant about entrusting it to a director with limited experience, instead negotiating in secret with Jonathan Demme, who would later find acclaim for his Academy Award-winning thriller The Silence of the Lambs. Unable to convince either Cinépix or the CFDC, Cronenberg instead travelled to Los Angeles with his close friend Norman Snider (his co-writer on the 1988 drama Dead Ringers) to meet with cult producer Roger Corman. Unable to meet him in person, his script had convinced Corman’s associates that they should take the risk, when suddenly the CFDC changed their minds and agreed to co-finance the project. With Cinépix also on board, Cronenberg was issued the necessary budget and pre-production was underway.

With the Canadian film industry lacking presence around the world, the filmmakers felt that it would be important to cast recognisable faces from other popular genre films. Lynn Lowry’s first movie had been an uncredited turn in David E. Durston’s I Drink Your Blood in 1970, before appearing in The Battle of Love’s Return in 1971, directed by future Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman. But her first significant role would be in George A. Romero’s cult horror The Crazies in 1973, a film that would be influential on Cronenberg’s second film, Rabid. In the role of Betts, the woman attacked in the bath by the parasite, the producers settled on English star Barbara Steele, who had first gained acclaim for her starring role in Mario Bava’s gothic masterpiece La maschera del demonio (Black Sunday) in 1960. This would be followed by such classics as Riccardo Freda’s L’orribile segreto del Dr. Hichcock (The Horrible Dr. Hichcock), Federico Fellini’s 8½ and Antonio Margheriti’s Danza macabra (Castle of Blood).

Many of the talent behind the camera would later find success in Hollywood. Cinematographer Robert Saad would follow Shivers with two Police Academy movies and several episodes of Paramount’s hit sci-fi show War of the Worlds, whilst editor Patrick Dodd would work on the likes of Ed Wood, Se7en and Deep Rising as a supervisor of sound effects. One important member of the crew was Ivan Reitman, who would work as both a producer and music supervisor. Reitman would later become a Hollywood player after the success of Ghostbusters in 1984, later followed by Twins, Kindergarten Cop, Evolution and My Super Ex-Girlfriend.

Principal photography would take place throughout August and September 1974 at a high-rise apartment block on Nuns Island in Montreal, where the entire production would be based. In order to remain on the location in between filming, Cronenberg was forced to take residence in the apartment reserved as the makeup room, resulting in him having to sleep on a bed that was still soaked by fake blood and surrounded by fake parasites and real leeches, which had been kept in the fridge as the filmmakers had originally intended on using them for close-ups of the creatures (although an accident with the fridge’s temperature would leave them frozen). The stress of making his first feature would soon take its toll on the young filmmaker but he would manage to survive the shoot without any major incidents.

The movie was released in Canada on October 10 1975 as The Parasite Murders, whilst in America it was renamed They Came from Within. In the French-speaking regions of Canada, the film was screened as Frissons and was performing far better. Because of this, Cinépix decided to re-release it under its English translation, Shivers, where it would become more successful. Its British run, meanwhile, was initially as a double-bill with Reitman’s horror comedy Cannibal Girls (marking an early appearance for American Pie’s Eugene Levy), also distributed by Cinépix. The critical reaction to Shivers would be mixed, with Variety describing it as ‘a silly but moderately effective,’ whilst The New York Times stated that it was ‘so tackily written and directed’ One person who took the film seriously, however, was Marshall Delaney of the influential Canadian publication Saturday Night, who angrily stated that ‘This is pornography. It’s disgusting and you paid for it. You the taxpayers paid for it.’

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