{"id":5052,"date":"2014-10-06T10:38:16","date_gmt":"2014-10-06T09:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/?p=5052"},"modified":"2014-10-08T01:10:42","modified_gmt":"2014-10-08T00:10:42","slug":"shivers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2014\/10\/06\/shivers\/","title":{"rendered":"Shivers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Shivers<\/a>
Shivers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

\nFormat:<\/B> DVD + Blu-ray

\nRelease date:<\/B> 13 October 2014

\nDistributor:<\/B> Arrow Video

\nDirector:<\/B> David Cronenberg

\nWriter:<\/B> David Cronenberg

\nCast:<\/B> Fred Doederlin, Paul Hampton, Lynn Lowry, Barbara Steele

\nUSA 1975

\n88 mins\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

A delivery boy strolls down the hall of a new luxury high rise just as a grotesquely corpulent old woman pokes her head out of a doorway and moans lasciviously: \u2018I’m hungry.\u2019 She waits for a response, then parrots petulantly: \u2018I’m hungry!\u2019 Lunging violently at the lad, her teeth bared, she screams, \u2018I’m hungry for love<\/I>!\u2019 As she sates her unholy desires, a gelatinous blood-parasite is deposited down his throat as she sucks face with him. <\/p>\n

This is one of many vomit-tempting moments in David Cronenberg’s first commercial feature film, Shivers<\/I>, which happily inspired incredulous Canuck pundits to demand government accountability, as the picture represented an early investment from the Dominion\u2019s federal cultural funding agency. The 1973 horror classic has now been restored and premiered during the 2013 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival. It\u2019s not only a scare-fest, but is also replete with all manner of nasty laughs, all of them wrenched naturally out of an utterly unnatural situation. Pre-dating the AIDS crisis, Cronenberg links sex with death. The delightfully simple tale involves a new form of parasitical venereal disease spreading like wildfire within a Montreal luxury community, gated by its island borders on the mighty St Lawrence. The disease turns its victims into homicidal sex maniacs.<\/p>\n

Allow me to repeat that:<\/p>\n

HOMICIDAL SEX MANIACS!!!<\/p>\n

And what a frothy concoction Shivers<\/I> truly is with all manner of viscous emissions:<\/p>\n

\u2022\tBlood parasites being vomited from a balcony onto an old lady’s clear plastic umbrella;
\n\u2022\tParasites roiling and bubbling just under the surface of Alan Migicovsky’s sexy, hairy belly;
\n\u2022\tA lithe, nude body of a lassie formerly adorned in a school uniform has her midriff sliced open, her insides then<\/I> drenched in acid.<\/p>\n

Add to this frothy concoction a whole whack o’ babes, from pretty Susan Petrie as a weepy wifey, Lynn Lowry as a drop-dead gorgeous nurse, to the heart-stopping British scream queen Barbara Steele.<\/p>\n

Stunningly, Cronenberg manages, in one salient area, to match the great Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho<\/I>. Hitch, of course, infused utter terror in the minds of millions who dared to take a shower. In Shivers<\/I>, Cronenberg delivers one of the most horrendous bathtub violations ever committed to celluloid. Best of all, the sequence involves Barbara Steele. \u2018God bless you, Mr Cronenberg, God bless you!\u2019<\/p>\n

This review was first published as part of our TIFF 2013 coverage<\/a>.<\/div>\n

Greg Klymkiw<\/I><\/B><\/p>\n

Watch the trailer:<\/b><\/p>\n