Rabid
1977, Canada, Directed by David Cronenberg
Colour, Running Time: 86 minutes
DVD, Region 2, Metrodome, Video: Anamorphic 1.78:1, Audio: Mono
Straight on from the success of his first real commercial outing Cronenberg wrote a downbeat story about a couple who are involved in a motorcycle accident during a recreational trip. Spotted by the patients of a secluded specialist hospital the alarm is raised and they’re quickly picked up by the ambulance. Suffering merely damaged bones and minor injuries Hart (Frank Moore - a sort of Christopher Walken lookalike) is taken for conventional treatment but his more seriously injured girlfriend is rushed into the hospital for emergency surgery that includes groundbreaking skin grafting techniques. Waking up the dazed Rose can’t seem to stop herself attacking one of the hospital’s staff, after which she leaves the hospital prematurely and seemingly uncontrollably attacks a number of others while making her way back home. While her actions seem to be the product of a confused mind what she doesn’t realise is that she’s spreading a rabies-like disease via a prehensile, vampiric tube that protrudes from her armpit, possibly a by-product of the near experimental surgical procedures that were adopted during her operation. Before long her victims are spreading the disease through their own homicidal and quite insane behaviour and chaos throughout the region brings about martial law.
While Cronenberg was still a few years away from perfecting (as far as something can be perfected) his approach to film-making he had certainly broken away from the near incoherent arthouse pretensions of his earlier work (see Crimes of the Future and Stereo) to a point where he could construct a commercially viable outing that not only would a relatively large number of people be able to engage with but would also produce a profit whilst remaining commendably faithful to the director’s ongoing artistic ethic. Characters are fleshed out beyond their almost alien equivalents of his early work, becoming much closer to real people and consequently engaging the viewer’s attention a little easier. Rose in particular is an interesting oddity. The accident and subsequent operation leaves her in a sometimes confused state, her attitude swinging between apparently malicious and childlike bewilderment. What’s going on in her brain it’s difficult to determine, hence she becomes an enigma. Marilyn Chambers, someone known for her porn outings, makes a good job of conveying this enigmatic quality to the audience but a mainstream career was unfortunately not to be. While the porn trappings undoubtedly made the small number of nude scenes easier for her to deal with, what is more beneficial is the enhanced sexual understanding that injects her vampiric attacks with the duality of violence and eroticism. Scattered around the rest of the film are a few Cronenberg regulars and it’s quite fun to spot them: Joe Silver from Shivers, Gary McKeehan turned up in The Brood, Robert A Silverman from Naked Lunch and eXistenZ, that weirdo from the aforementioned early films, etc. In many ways this is all taking place very much in the same universe as the previous year’s Shivers, taking the conclusion of that film one step further by actually demonstrating the outcome of the infectious spread by touching on apocalyptic territory as the whole world around the characters begins to go mad and fall apart - there must surely be a debt here to Romero’s The Crazies and his earlier Night of the Living Dead, and effectively executed it is too. The conclusion to this film suffice it to say, without giving too much away hopefully, is pretty dark. This is quite an ambitious project for a director still in his vocational infancy and would prove to be just a taster of what was to come.
Opening credits present the film in roughly a 1.55:1 ratio, presumably accurate to the source. It then switches to 1.78:1 (enhanced) and is therefore cropped to a small extent. The image graduates between quite rough and average; on a small screen it’s not too bad, it just doesn’t hold up well to large screen projection. Mono sound quality occasionally exhibits hissing but like the image is not the worst I’ve experienced. There’s a short video piece of Cronenberg himself introducing the film, and this is welcome but the disc is otherwise barebones really. There was an ‘SE’ in the US but the only real advantage over this UK disc was the inclusion of a director’s commentary (though that’s a pretty good bonus in the case of Cronenberg, one of the most intriguing directors at work today). Adding a scientific literacy unusual to genre films at that point Cronenberg was establishing himself as a force to be acknowledged with these seventies films and Rabid therefore is an integral cog in the developing machine that was/is David Cronenberg.