Now for something completely different. A totally unnecessary review of David Cronenberg’s 1975 film, SHIVERS. Not much point writing about horror here, but it is an important genre, and this film is massively overlooked. I also put this together for a piece I submitted to write for an online horror website. Hope you enjoy!
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“Sex goes together like bacon and eggs,” so says David Cronenberg, in an interview from one of his recent films, “A History of Violence”. It is obvious through his most recent film that this is a base, powerful theme for him. The first time he was able to artistically address this was the powerful 1975 “zombies in the form of nymphomaniacs” film, SHIVERS. The genius of this film isn’t that it lends itself to the zombie horror film convention, but that it cleverly hides the zombies in the form of the mindless automotans a la “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”, but drives them to mirror the social fear of the time. It is an obvious part-homage to Romero’s 1968 “Night of the Living Dead, but reinvented the genre for his own commentary. It was the end of the hippy culture of love in the 60’s, and the free love movement had transformed into a defeatist, vacuous subculture of mindless consumption. From consumerism in the vein of disposable fashion, to mindless consumption of drugs, free love had blurred into an addicted, hollow culture of risky, unaccountable sex. A culture of fear began to usurp the half decade old sex positive culture, and began to represent a culture of abandon and disease. It is this culture that Cronenberg addresses his common theme about transformation of the body into the next phase. The phase being that of letting go of your humanity and falling prey to your basic, animal urges; becoming an empty, poisoned vessel that only mirrors the degradation and saturation of society around you. It isn’t that one man can stand tall and emerge victorious against this culture of gluttony in sex and violence. It is that the inevitable onslaught of sex and violence from this oppressive will finally wear you down and break you in… it is inevitable that the mindless culture will turn you. Well ahead of it’s time, and a source for many directors after him… Cronenberg was daring in the creation of this film, and received a decent amount of flack for it, creating funding problems for his future films, as well as being kicked out of his apartment at the time. Revisit this phenomenal film, and see the skill and eye of one of our most important directors in horror history. Cronenberg’s Shivers deserves it’s place in the history books, and definitely deserves a spot in your DVD collection next to your favourites.