This
is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has
arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month
long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of
horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down
upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that,
admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like
comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days
leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary
movies to help you celebrate Shocktober. Night 3: Dial C for Cronenberg, “Biology is destiny.”
–David Cronenberg
Whether he is working with a big budget or a small one,
master filmmaker David Cronenberg uses ideas to disturb his audience and make them
squirm. No matter how graphic or gross the special effects are, they always
emphasize an idea or serve as a metaphor. A special effect is never just an
empty thrill in a Cronenberg film. This is true even in 1975 Cronenberg’s debut
feature, Shivers, in which
the budget is low and effects are sparse and even tame when compared to his
later films like The Brood and The Fly.
Shivers takes
place in an ultra-modern, nearly self-sufficient, luxury high rise apartment
building called Starliner Tower on an island in a lake just outside of
Montreal. In the opening scene we see an older man struggling with a teenage
girl in a school uniform. He cuts her open on a table then kills himself. Very
little is shown, but the sound effects we hear more than make up the lack of
blood and guts. We find out later that the man was a scientist who created a
parasite that would make people think less and be more
sexual with the ultimate goal of turning the world into "one beautiful mindless orgy.”
He changed his mind and was trying to kill the parasite he infected her with,
but the parasite worked too well, and by that time she had already spread it to
a few different men in the building. The scientist’s idea seems outlandish
until I remember that the era of Vietnam War protest signs reading “Make Love
Not War” had only recently ended.
With a premise like that, you might expect Shivers to be an
exploitation film and though there is a fair amount of nudity, this film does
not have a lascivious gaze. Shivers unnerves its audience so well
because it does not take a stance on whether spreading the parasite is
good or bad. Cronenberg has said in interviews that the parasite is a metaphor
for any idea that takes hold. A dramatic and severe change is spreading through
the high rise building and Cronenberg is ambivalent about that change, but he
is aware and direct about his ambivalence. He does his best to
show that “…things might be dangerous and wonderful at the same time, that
things might be disgusting and beautiful at the same time.” He says that the
movie takes the viewpoint of “straight society” but “emotionally and
viscerally” the audience was with the infected people.
Shivers is an
interesting take on the on the zombie film, which had only recently been reinvented
by George Romero in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead. “Straight society” is represented by Dr. Saint Luc (played by Paul Hampton) who
works in the building’s medical clinic with his girlfriend, Nurse Forsythe. They
respond to reports of tenants acting strangely, and attacking other tenants. Some
of the infected people act crazed and bizarre like the bellhop who obscenely
eats a slice of pie at a mother and daughter in an elevator. Others act only
slightly odd and suspicious like the woman who consoles her upset friend by
seducing her. The number of infected grows and Dr. Saint Luc is soon being
pursued by a horde. It seems as though everyone has gone mad and he is the
last sane person. When he runs down a hallway, every apartment he looks into
has something strange happening. It reminded me of the scene in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining where Shelley
Duval runs though the Overlook Hotel and finds something horrifying at every turn. The
final scene finds Dr. Saint Luc at the Starliner’s indoor pool seeing an
infected Nurse Forsythe rise up out of the glowing waters. It is a haunting image
that is equal parts alluring and frightening.
Shivers is a low
budget horror film that makes the best of what is available. Cronenberg shows
great skill at making a believable self-contained world in Starliner Tower. The
special effects are simple but effective. The parasites themselves, little
slug-like creatures, are not shown very often. The cast is solid though there
is some overacting from the minor characters but that hardly harms the movie.
The original title of Shivers
was The Parasite Murders. In the U.S.
it was released as They Came From Within,
which is a title that Cronenberg actually liked and felt fit the theme of the
movie. Change and revolution have seemingly external beginnings, but the
ultimate change in person from one way of thinking to another happens within.
As an idea spreads and other people embrace it, the world may seem like it is
turning upside down, until you come around to embrace the same idea. Sometimes
the change is for the better, sometimes it is not. Sometimes change just needs to
happen.
My favorite scene of Shivers
happens after Nurse Forsythe has been infected with the parasite. She tells Dr.
Saint Luc about a dream she had days before that had been troubling her. What
follows is a beautiful, haunting, exciting, and frightening speech excellently written
by Cronenberg and wonderfully delivered by actress Lynn Lowry. It is also a
sort of thesis statement for just about the entirety of David Cronenberg’s body of
work. She says that in her dream she was trying to make love to a man, but he was
old and dying and repulsive: “But then he tells me that everything is erotic,
that everything is sexual… He tells me that even old flesh is erotic flesh.
That disease is the love of two alien kinds of creatures for each other. That
even dying is an act of eroticism. That talking is sexual. That breathing is
sexual. That even to physically exist is sexual. And I believe him, and we make
love beautifully.”
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