A young woman develops a taste for human blood after experimental plastic surgery, and her victims turn into blood-thirsty zombies, leading into a city-wide epidemic.A young woman develops a taste for human blood after experimental plastic surgery, and her victims turn into blood-thirsty zombies, leading into a city-wide epidemic.A young woman develops a taste for human blood after experimental plastic surgery, and her victims turn into blood-thirsty zombies, leading into a city-wide epidemic.
- Awards
- 2 wins
Roger Periard
- Lloyd Walsh
- (as J. Roger Periard)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaSissy Spacek was David Cronenberg's first choice to play Rose. Ivan Reitman suggested Marilyn Chambers because he wanted sex appeal.
- GoofsWhen Hart's car is attacked by a crazy, and a clean-up crew shoots and disposes of it, the cameraman who is shooting the "through the windshield" shots is clearly visible in the back seat of the car.
- Quotes
Murray Cypher: [to baby, referring to cartoon on TV] See how Potato Man loves Ketchup Man?
- Alternate versionsAll UK DVD versions are missing around 20 secs of footage from a conversation between the 2 male leads and a policeman in a parking lot. The edits were not made by the BBFC and appear to have been a result of print damage.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Long Live the New Flesh: The Films of David Cronenberg (1987)
Featured review
Attack of the bloodsucking armpit.
After a nasty motorcycle accident, a young couple, Hart (Frank Moore) and Rose (porn star Marilyn Chambers), are taken to a nearby plastic surgery clinic, where Rose undergoes a revolutionary skin grafting technique that results in the growth of a bloodsucking tumour. Driven by the lust for plasma, Rose flees the clinic and embarks on a series of attacks which leave her victims alive, but infected with a strain of rabies that causes them to react in a violent manner. As the disease rapidly turns into a city-wide epidemic and martial law is imposed, Hart attempts to locate his missing girlfriend, unaware that she is the carrier of the disease.
With crisper cinematography and more confident direction from David Cronenberg, Rabid is a technically superior effort to his 1975 film Shivers, but doesn't manage to be as satisfying an experience thanks to a script that becomes a tad too repetitive at times, strays a little to close to George Romero's The Crazies (1973) for comfort, and perhaps most importantly, fails to answer burning questions about the nature of Rose's condition: the needle tipped, phallic mutation, which emerges from a sphincter-like orifice from under Rose's arm, is as grotesque and unsettling as anything Cronenberg has conjured up since, but it's existence is never adequately explained, most likely because no amount of in-depth exposition could ever be convincing enough.
On a more positive note, Chambers does reasonably well in her first non-porn lead role, there are some genuinely nasty moments for which makeup guy Joe Blasco provides some pretty decent effects work (I particularly enjoyed the 'finger snipping' moment, and the impressive use of a pneumatic drill by one of the infected), and Cronenberg occasionally ditches his sober approach for the odd spot of delightfully twisted humour, such as the scene in which a mall Santa Claus gets accidentally machine-gunned by a trigger happy cop (well, I found it funny!).
Whilst Rabid certainly doesn't qualify as essential Cronenberg, it is still worth a look if you're a fan of the man's work and merits a reasonable 6.5 out of 10 from this viewer (generously rounded up to 7 for IMDb).
With crisper cinematography and more confident direction from David Cronenberg, Rabid is a technically superior effort to his 1975 film Shivers, but doesn't manage to be as satisfying an experience thanks to a script that becomes a tad too repetitive at times, strays a little to close to George Romero's The Crazies (1973) for comfort, and perhaps most importantly, fails to answer burning questions about the nature of Rose's condition: the needle tipped, phallic mutation, which emerges from a sphincter-like orifice from under Rose's arm, is as grotesque and unsettling as anything Cronenberg has conjured up since, but it's existence is never adequately explained, most likely because no amount of in-depth exposition could ever be convincing enough.
On a more positive note, Chambers does reasonably well in her first non-porn lead role, there are some genuinely nasty moments for which makeup guy Joe Blasco provides some pretty decent effects work (I particularly enjoyed the 'finger snipping' moment, and the impressive use of a pneumatic drill by one of the infected), and Cronenberg occasionally ditches his sober approach for the odd spot of delightfully twisted humour, such as the scene in which a mall Santa Claus gets accidentally machine-gunned by a trigger happy cop (well, I found it funny!).
Whilst Rabid certainly doesn't qualify as essential Cronenberg, it is still worth a look if you're a fan of the man's work and merits a reasonable 6.5 out of 10 from this viewer (generously rounded up to 7 for IMDb).
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- BA_Harrison
- Nov 24, 2009
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Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- Rage
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- CA$530,000 (estimated)
- Runtime1 hour 31 minutes
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.78 : 1
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