Shivers (1975 film)

At Starliner Towers, a luxury apartment complex outside of Montreal, Dr. Emil Hobbes murders a young woman named Annabelle. He slices open her stomach, pours acid into the wound and then commits suicide. Nick Tudor, who has been suffering from stomach convulsions, finds their bodies but leaves without calling the police. The two bodies are found by resident doctor Roger St. Luc, who calls the police. Hobbes' medical partner, Rollo Linsky, tells St. Luc that he and Hobbes had been working on a project to create "a parasite that can take over the function of a human organ."

After suffering more convulsions, Nick leaves work early. He vomits a parasite over the railing of his balcony. The parasite slithers back into the apartment, where it attacks a cleaning woman in the basement, attaching itself to her face. Nick's wife Janine tries to care for him, but he ignores her and prefers to talk to the parasites undulating in his abdomen. At the clinic, Roger sees a sexually active middle-aged resident who has been suffering from stomach convulsions. Roger speculates that his condition might be an STD that he caught from Annabelle.

Linsky calls Roger from Hobbes' office downtown to tell him that Hobbes had developed a parasite that was "a combination of aphrodisiac and venereal disease that will, hopefully, turn the world into one beautiful mindless orgy." Hobbes believed modern humans had become over-intellectual and estranged from their primal impulses. Hobbes' ambition with his parasitic invention was to reassert humanity's unbridled, sexually aggressive instincts, and he used Annabelle as his guinea pig. Linsky warns Roger not to approach anyone who is behaving in a strange manner.

Nick tries to force Janine to have sex with him, but she recoils in horror when one of the parasites crawls from his mouth. She rushes to the apartment of her friend Betts, who was infected by one of the parasites while taking a bath. Betts seduces Janine and as they kiss, passes a parasite to her. Meanwhile, other residents, including a little girl in an elevator with her mother, who are assaulted by a deliveryman, become infected with the parasite, attack other residents and continue to spread the infection. Soon the hallways are full of people sexually assaulting or fighting one another. Roger combs the complex looking for the parasites while Forsythe—his nurse and lover—tends to an elderly couple who were attacked by one of the parasites.

Linsky arrives at Starliner Towers and goes to the Tudor apartment, as Roger had identified Nick as someone Annabelle might have infected. He finds Nick lying in bed, parasites crawling on his abdomen. When Linsky examines him more closely, one of the parasites latches onto his cheek. Linsky tries to pull it off with pliers, but Nick kills him and swallows the parasite. Forsythe tries to flee the complex in her car but is attacked by the infected security guard. Before he can rape her, Roger arrives and kills him, and the two hide in the basement. Forsythe tells Roger of a dream that mixed eroticism and death, then vomits up a parasite. Roger knocks her out and tries to carry her to safety, but they are attacked by a horde of infected sex maniacs. Roger is separated from Forsythe and is forced to flee as she is overwhelmed by the infected.

Roger kills Nick in his apartment, then tries to escape the complex, but is thwarted at every turn. He finally makes it to the swimming pool area where he encounters Janine and Betts swimming fully clothed. The two walk to the edge of the pool and smile seductively at him as he finds a door to the outside, but the infected block his path and he is pulled into the pool by Janine and Betts. The rest of the infected, including the little girl from the elevator, plunge into the pool fully dressed or otherwise and swim towards Roger to hold him down. Roger is eventually surrounded and finally infected by Forsythe.

Roger, Forsythe and the other Starliner residents drive out of the building's garage. Early the next morning, news reports encourage listeners not to panic as police investigate an epidemic of sexual assaults in Montreal.

After finishing Crimes of the Future David Cronenberg lived in Tourrettes-sur-Loup, France, where he shot filler for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation using a 16 mm camera he purchased with a Canada Council grant. During his time in France he went to the Cannes Film Festival where he realized that he "couldn't make movies like Stereo and Crimes and consider myself a professional film-maker" and that he needed a broader audience. He returned to Canada and started work on Shivers.[2]

Cronenberg joined Cinépix which he described as "sleazy distributors, and I say that with great affection - my kind of people".[3] Cinépix was attempting to enter the American market and John Dunning believed that Cronenberg's film would aid them.[4][5]

It took around three years to gain financial backing from the Canadian Film Development Corporation which viewed the movie as "disgusting, awful, horrific, perverse" according to Cronenberg. Jonathan Demme was offered the position of director.[6] Cronenberg directed the film, but stated "I had fifteen days to learn how to make a movie. I didn't know how to make movies, just films." and that he "didn't know what the fuck was going on" at his first production meeting.[7]

The film was written under the titles The Parasite Complex, Starliner, and Orgy Of The Blood Parasites. Ivan Reitman produced the film. It was shot at Nuns' Island from 21 August to 17 September 1974. The film was given a budget of $115,000, but cost $179,000 (equivalent to $967,420 in 2021) with $76,500 coming from the CFDC.[8] Dick Smith and Joe Blasco worked on effects and makeup for the film.[9] It was shot at Tourelle-Sur-Rive, a 1962 apartment building designed by Mies van der Rohe.[10]

The film was released as Shivers in Canada and the United Kingdom, The Parasite Murders and Frissons in Quebec, and They Came From Within in the United States. The film was released in Canada in Montreal by Cinépix on 10 October 1975, in English in three theatres and in French in seven theatres.[8][11] Regional showings in the United States started in San Antonio, Texas, on September 26, 1975.[12]

The film was successful in Quebec, but failed in the United States with Cronenberg blaming American International Pictures's poor distribution. Multiple scenes were cut from the American release to prevent a X rating. The film earned around $5 million after a theatrical release in forty countries.[11]

Making $1 million in Canada, Shivers was one of the highest-grossing English-language Canadian films of all time,[15] and more profitable than any previous Canadian film.[16] According to Cronenberg it was the first film funded by the CFDC to earn a profit.[17]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 85% based on reviews from 26 critics, with an average rating of 6.7/10. The site's consensus states, "Shivers uses elementally effective basic ingredients to brilliant effect — and lays the profoundly unsettling foundation for director David Cronenberg's career to follow".[18]

Critical reaction to the initial release of the movie was negative, however.[19] Of a selection of 28 reviews from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and France, 16 reviews were negative—12 of these very negative—versus 6 that were positive. Of the positive reviews, 3 were very positive. 6 reviews were neutral.[20] Canadian critics such as Martin Knelman, in The Globe and Mail, and Dane Larnken, in the Montreal Gazette, gave the film negative reviews.[21] American critic Roger Ebert noted that while he expected Shivers to be a dismal exploitation film, since it was part of a double bill with the purported snuff film Snuff, he instead was impressed by much of the movie. He gave it 21⁄2 stars.[22]

Canadian journalist Robert Fulford previously praised Cronenberg's prior film Stereo.[23] However, Fulford, writing under the pseudonym Marshall Delaney, decried the content of Shivers in the national magazine Saturday Night. Since Cronenberg's film was partially financed by the taxpayer-funded CFDC. Fulford headlined the article with You should know how bad this film is. After all, you paid for it. He called it "crammed with blood, violence and depraved sex", and "the most repulsive movie I've ever seen."[24] Not only did this high-profile attack make it more difficult for Cronenberg to obtain funding for his subsequent movies[25] it also resulted in him being kicked out of his apartment in Toronto according to Cronenberg, due to his landlord's inclusion of a "morality clause" in the lease.[26] The controversy over the sexual and violent content of Shivers grew to the point that the Parliament of Canada debated the film's social and artistic value and effect upon society.[16]

The screenplay was published by Faber & Faber in the 2002 collection David Cronenberg: Collected Screenplays 1: Stereo, Crimes of the Future, Shivers, Rabid.[27]

• Parasites in fiction
• Rabid

• Cronenberg, David (2006). David Cronenberg: Interviews with Serge Grünberg. Plexus Publishing. ISBN 0859653765.
• Jancovich, Mark (2003). Defining Cult Movies: The Cultural Politics of Oppositional Tastes. Manchester University Press. ISBN 071906631X.
• Rodley, Chris, ed. (1997). Cronenberg on Cronenberg. Faber and Faber. ISBN 0571191371.
• Turner, D. John, ed. (1987). Canadian Feature Film Index: 1913-1985. Canadian Film Institute. ISBN 0660533642.
• Vatnsdal, Caelum (2004). They Came From Within: A History of Canadian Horror Cinema. Arbeiter Ring Publishing.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Shivers.

• Shivers at IMDb
• Interview with David Cronenberg about Shivers (CBC television via TIFF)