RABID

Canada, 1976, 91 minutes, Colour.
Marilyn Chambers, Frank Moore, Joe Silver.
Directed by David Cronenberg.

Canadian writer-director David Cronenberg has received much critical acclaim and many condemnatory reviews. His films are similar in bizarre plot but Shivers has to be one of the most visually nauseating films ever. A plague of aphrodisiac parasites infects society with insane results. Rabid is much more acceptable visually and the 'plague in society' theme is formulated in a modernised Vampire plot - Vampiric Rabies - and martial law in Montreal. It is thus a horror science fiction fable of scientists' pride, mutations and destruction of individual and social structures. Shivers focuses too much on its nausea for effectiveness. Rabid is more tasteful and better paced and is for horror addicts.

1. The significance and tone of the title, illness and madness, horror? Audience expectations ~ and fulfilment?

2. The value of horror films and the presentation of the ugly? The blend of reality and fantasy? Sick humour and the response to the shadow side, the dream side of human existence? The fantasies of the imagination? How necessary are horror films? This horror film?

3. Canadian production, atmosphere, perspective? The emphasis on the local scene, the universality of the story and its application?

4. How authentic the film? Plot, hypothesis, horror, behaviour? The presentation of the modern city, countryside? The presentation of people and their ordinary way of life and the intrusion of the parasites and the illness? The film's attention to details for the ordinary way of life? The effect of such intrusion and its credibility?

5. The importance of the special effects and their ugliness, the effect of the editing to highlight the horror? The organ for draining the blood, the gore, violence? Audience response to such blood and violence?

6. The introduction and the establishing of the mood, the situation, the horror? The personality of Rose, the accident? The consequences and the mystery? The details of bizarre behaviour and the continued mystery? The speculations about explanation?

7. The imagination of the writer-director in the story, the overtones of horror and science fiction, the Vampire traditions? The organ itself and its physical repulsiveness, the thirst for blood, the frenzy, blood lust, the contagion of the disease, its violent overtones, communication, destructiveness?

8. The contagion and its plague proportions? The way that it was spread, alarm? The disruption of the ordinary way of life in the city e.g. on the streets, in the trains, in modern department stores? The foulness and the juices going right through society? What happened to such society contaminated - could it be cleansed and renewed by such an illness or not?

9. The picture of the clinic, the patients, the various attacks? The doctor and people running amok? The clinic and the reversal of health and healing?

10. Rose as a modern type, her relationships, her infecting people, the boy~ friend, the hitch-hikers? The spreading of the disease through her? The exploitive tones in presenting her and the comment by the use of the overtones of exploitation movies?

11. The character of Hart and his concern for Rose, the hero of the film? Murray Cypher, his work, search, the attack?

12. The portrait of the police and their trying to cope? The importance of martial law being established? Health and illness as a cause for imposition of martial law? The carriers, the inoculations, the garbage? The transformation of society?

13. How important was the attention to detail in the drawing of characters, minor characters and their being established for their role in the spread of the disease, for horror and shock effects? The attention to the way of life e.g. in public transport, in the stores, in the streets?


14. The build-up to the climax, Hart and the confrontation with Rose? The vampiric frenzy at the end? The disposal of the refuse and the human refuse of the contagion?

15. The effect of an audience sitting through such a horror film? How many would want to appreciate this kind of film? The effect of its being a moral fable in horror and exploitive guise?