The word " auteur " is readily made for the Canadian film maker David Cronenberg and his brand of what is known as " body horror " . RABID is an early example of this and isn't unfortunately considered one of his best films . It lacks the laugh out loud funny twisted humour of SHIVERS , the mind bending cerebral prophecy of VIDEODROME , the polished mainstream feel of THE FLY , and the ready made controversy of CRASH
In its favour RABID is a fondly remembered film by people of a certain age when video recorders were becoming accessible in the early 1980s . It was one of these films that always heavily trailed when ever you hired an exploitation movie in that period. It contains gore and female nudity so what more does a teenage boy need from a film . Let's not be too low brow because it contains all the hallmarks of Cronberg's style and of heavy Fraudian symbolism . Effectively the premise revolves around nature being changed where a woman suddenly spouts a penis and has the instinct to use it at every opportunity whether the victim of her desire is willing or not
What drags the film down to a slight extent is that it's pretty obvious that the budget is limited . The director does the best he can but you're left feeling that he wants to create the sort of high budget scenario seen later in a film like 28 WEEKS LATER where literally hundreds of extras run a round infecting one another . There's also an aspect that this austerity extends to the gore itself and it could even more graphic but this is not a criticism since it contains a scene where a character goes in to his home to find his new born baby has been devoured by his wife . The fact that it's not spelled out is what makes it so shocking . As a footnote because of the low budget much of the score comes from a musical library and if you've seen a bleak depressing documentary in the last 35 years you'll recognise the track being continually played throughout this film involving a few bars on the piano
RABID probably isn't a horror masterpiece but it's made with enough care and intelligence to lift it above the vast majority of films that teenage boys watched on video recorders away back in nineteen eighty something . It certainly doesn't deserve to be dismissed as exploitation cinema but at the same time it's rather flat and conventional storyline combined with its low budget really stops it from being a classic horror from the 1970s
In its favour RABID is a fondly remembered film by people of a certain age when video recorders were becoming accessible in the early 1980s . It was one of these films that always heavily trailed when ever you hired an exploitation movie in that period. It contains gore and female nudity so what more does a teenage boy need from a film . Let's not be too low brow because it contains all the hallmarks of Cronberg's style and of heavy Fraudian symbolism . Effectively the premise revolves around nature being changed where a woman suddenly spouts a penis and has the instinct to use it at every opportunity whether the victim of her desire is willing or not
What drags the film down to a slight extent is that it's pretty obvious that the budget is limited . The director does the best he can but you're left feeling that he wants to create the sort of high budget scenario seen later in a film like 28 WEEKS LATER where literally hundreds of extras run a round infecting one another . There's also an aspect that this austerity extends to the gore itself and it could even more graphic but this is not a criticism since it contains a scene where a character goes in to his home to find his new born baby has been devoured by his wife . The fact that it's not spelled out is what makes it so shocking . As a footnote because of the low budget much of the score comes from a musical library and if you've seen a bleak depressing documentary in the last 35 years you'll recognise the track being continually played throughout this film involving a few bars on the piano
RABID probably isn't a horror masterpiece but it's made with enough care and intelligence to lift it above the vast majority of films that teenage boys watched on video recorders away back in nineteen eighty something . It certainly doesn't deserve to be dismissed as exploitation cinema but at the same time it's rather flat and conventional storyline combined with its low budget really stops it from being a classic horror from the 1970s