Develiker terrible... so disappointed.

Softwing Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

SteinMo What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Sam Panico The film starts with Rose and her boyfriend Hart getting into an accident in the remote countryside. With no other option, they are sent to the Keloid Clinic for Plastic Surgery, with Hart suffering only a broken hand, separated shoulder and a concussion. Rose, however, is barely alive, needing several operations and skin grafts from being burned. Dr. Dan Keloid decides to try something new: he uses "morphogenetically neutral grafts" to heal her damaged tissue, hoping that it will heal on its own. A month later, Hart is ready to go home, but she remains in a coma.Sometime later - time isn't really of the essence in this nightmare world - Rose awakens screaming. When Lloyd, another patient in the clinic, comes to help her, she somehow cuts him. He doesn't remember how it happened, but his blood no longer clots and he can no longer feel pain. And Rose? Well, now she has a wound in her armpit that looks sexual - male and female at the same time. Shades of God Told Me To?Now, Rose can only subsist on human blood, which she discovers after cow's blood causes her to puke. A farmer watches and tries to rape her, but she is the predator now, soon devouring him and turning him into a zombie-like monster.All hell soon breaks loose - Lloyd attacks a taxi driver after escaping from the clinic, killing them both. Dr. Keloid attacks everyone within his own clinic. Rose tries to get Hart to save her, but escapes on her own, infecting people all along the way.Soon, Quebec is a nightmare city, with maniacs using jackhammers to tear people from cars, Santa Claus getting shot and a shoot to kill martial law policy being enacted on anyone showing signs of the virus.Hart tries to reason with Rose - she is the cause of all of this and needs to be stopped. Of course, things can't work out well. The world of Soylent Green has become near truth - there are so many dead people, garbage trucks are the only solution.Cronenberg wanted to cast Sissy Spacek in the lead, but her accent didn't work for the film's producers. He heard from Ivan Reitman, the executive producer, that adult film star Marilyn Chambers was looking for a mainstream role. Her being in the film would help sell it and she put in plenty of work, so Cronenberg was happy with the results. In fact, he had never seen the movie that made her famous, Behind the Green Door.Chambers was quite literally a pure Ivory Soap girl - appearing on a box of that cleaning product as a young mother with the tag "99 & 44/100% pure." Her appearing in the Mitchell Brothers' film - released at the height of post-Deep Throat porn chic, when adult films entered mainsteam consciousness - was a sensation. It didn't hurt that she was also the first white women in a major adult film to have a scene with a black man, Johnnie Keyes.Chambers was in the midst of trying a singing career - her song "Benihana" can be heard in this film - and she was married to Chuck Traynor, ex-husband of Linda Lovelace. You could write a novel about the mania of that dude.That said - for being a sex queen, Chambers comes off as cold in this film. That's probably Cronenberg's goal, to subvert notions. Even his heroes are no heroes. No one can stop what is set in motion and everyone is ineffectual. Such is the Cronenberg universe.One thing I've always wondered - why did they spoil the ending of this film in the original poster?

Leofwine_draca An effective early effort from director David Cronenberg, RABID is a disturbing tale of a city overtaken by disease and fear. A cast of unknowns work hard to make this film seem as morally depressing and hauntingly realistic as possible, and the low, almost documentary style film making and the use of Canadian cities as a setting really work in its favour. The film deals with the subject of disease - something akin to rabies in this case - spreading through a city. It starts off with small isolated attacks but soon the city is put under martial law and the infected people are being shot on sight. Disease films are a frequent fixture in Hollywood - take OUTBREAK for example - and RABID is stylish and entertaining enough, in a low budget way, to warrant repeat viewings.Marilyn Chambers I found at first to be pretty annoying. A former porn star (as the box so proudly proclaims), she has a habit of removing her top in this film, but displays precious few acting talents. However her performance grew on me as the film progressed and she even becomes quite moving at the end of the tale; her offbeat acting style makes her in some ways quietly unforgettable. The rest of the cast have little to do, while the male lead looks strangely like Christopher Walken (who went on to star in Cronenberg's THE DEAD ZONE in 1983). However all involved turn in performances that are at the least adequate.The special effects are kept to a minimum in this film, with the 'star' of the show being a strange, pulsating tube which comes out of Chambers' armpit to suck the blood of her victims. This typical Cronenbergian image is pretty sick to watch but it's what you come to expect when you're a fan of the director. There are a few explosions and shootings to keep things moving along (the shootings are all violent scenes - the best taking place in a police station and involving a contaminated police officer and his companions all armed with shotguns - it's quick, blunt, and cuts straight to the point).The attacks on unsuspecting strangers by rabid, foaming maniacs are perpetrated throughout the film and are all handled with such style that you can't help but look forward to the next one (as sick as that may sound). All this and a downbeat ending help to make RABID a small, but nonetheless powerful, outing for Cronenberg, which is a must see for any fan of his. The film is at its best when it focuses on the spread of the disease and it does pack lots of horrifying vignettes into the running time, like the bit with the machine-gunned Santa Claus. I find that it outdoes Romero's THE CRAZIES in terms of pure effectiveness.

Spikeopath Rabid is written and directed by David Cronenberg and it stars Marilyn Chambers, Frank Moore and Joe Silver. Cinematography is by Rene Verzier and music by Ivan Reitman.When Rose (Chambers) is involved in a horror motorcycle accident, she undertakes experimental surgery in order to save her life. However, she develops a taste for blood and has grown a deadly orifice under her armpit. As the victims stack up and Rose grows ever more insane, the city is put on red alert.David Cronenberg's second full-length film continues the themes found in his smart debut Shivers from the previous year. Body horror and disease come to the fore but Cronenberg expands it out from the confines of one building, into a whole city! Once again operating with a small budget with great results, the director fills out the narrative with sweaty virus panic, intelligent barbs, addiction concerns and visceral nastiness, with the phallic destroyer under Rose's arm a frighteningly bonkers creation. True to the director's career peccadilloes, sex and violence also come under the microscope, while his camera work shows an inventiveness that off- sets the poor effects work. The city is suitably painted as dowdy so as to run concurrent with the diseased narrative, and porn star Chambers gives a very effective performance while others are merely adequate.A simple story and periods of sag and drag stop it being top of the line Cronenberg, but there's a raw energy to Rabid that is most striking. Watching it now as it heads towards being four decades old, it signals with intent a career being born of a most skilled auteur. 7/10

poe426 One of the things that distinguished early David Cronenberg films from those of other horror filmmakers was that they often looked and felt like Art House films. RABID is a prime example: the cinematography is often absolutely stunning. In one scene, we see the infected Marilyn Chambers walking down a lonely country road. She takes refuge in a barn and is discovered there, "milking" a cow of its blood. This entire sequence is beautifully shot- and it's not the only one. Another thing that separated Cronenberg from other filmmakers of his era was his approach to horror: he pioneered what was then called "bio-horror." This stemmed, in part, from his medical school background, which gave his unusual concepts more than a touch of verisimilitude (even if you didn't fully UNDERSTAND what was going on, it sure SOUNDED somehow plausible...). On top of everything else, Cronenberg's movies were genuinely SCARY- and, again, RABID is a Prime Example: there's an uneasiness that pervades the film from scene first to last; an end-of-the-world scenario that, while it may in the end offer a RAY of Hope, it's a dim, faraway Hope that may or may not pan out... The suspense is, at times, nigh intolerable. RABID was the first film that I recall seeing (at a drive-in) that captured what it might actually be like to find oneself in a No-Win Situation. (In that respect, it called to mind Cronenberg's earlier shocker, THEY CAME FROM WITHIN.) The sight of tanks blocking intersections and the matter-of-fact killing of The Infected on sight by soldiers was mind-blowing at the time. RABID remains, to this day, one of the premiere "viral Armageddon" movies. Oh, and the music is absolutely beautiful. Check it out- if you dare...