Genre:
Horror
Distributor:
Arrow Video
BD Release Date:
13th October 2014(UK)
Rating:18
Director:
David Cronenberg
Cast:
fred doederlin, joel silver, lynn lowry,paul hampton
Buy:Shivers [Dual Format DVD & Blu-ray]
Shivers was the debut feature film from David Cronenberg. He previously made numerous shorts for Canadian TV and some experimental hour-long films. It’s certainly not one of Cronenberg’s great films but a lot of the themes that his later better films are here. He didn’t make a truly great film until Videodrome even if all his previous films have their virtues except maybe The Brood.
The film’s story is textbook Cronenberg body horror. Dr. Emil Hobbes (Fred Doederlin) has been conducting experiments on a young mistress with parasites and due to her promiscuously she spreads in though the high rise, which she lives in. Dr. Hobbes kills the girl and then himself. It spreads throughout the high rise and turns everyone into sexual crazed zombies who want to infect anyone with the slightest sexual conduct. Can the local physician Roger St. Luc (Paul Hampton) stop it before it spreads outside of the contained high rise or is he too late?
It’s fair to say it’s not a coincidence that Shivers came out the same year as J.G Ballard’s novel High Rise (which is currently being adapted into a film). Cronenberg is a great fan of Ballard’s work, so much so he adapted his novel Crash to the big screen 20 years later. They both share the basic concept of luxury high rise residents degenerating into savages. High Rise may not have physical infections but certainly the mentally infects the residents. The parallels are highlighted in the fantastic documentary on the making of Shivers included on the disc which is some ways is better than the film itself.
Shivers remains an important film in Cronenberg’s film career and it was the first commercially released flm he made. It has much of the body horror that he would make his early name on. It was met with great controversy because it used Canadian tax money to make it and its artistic value was even debated in their parliament. Cronenberg had the last laugh, however, because it was the most profitable Canadian film up to that point. It suffers from budget constraints, some poor acting and ideas that aren’t fully realized due to the budget but it does feature some impressive effects.
Surprisingly it’s the first film Arrow Video has released by David Cronenberg, they are going to follow up with Rabid soon as well. Hopefully they can eventually get the rights to Videodrome because they are desperate to release that. It features the aforementioned documentary of the making of Shivers, which was made for Canadian TV, which features lots of interviews with cast and crew and is very well made and informative. It also includes a new making of documentary produced by Arrow and also a video essay of Cronenberg’s work up to Videodrome.
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