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261 Days of Horror, Day 53: Rabid
Mar. 14th, 2007 11:06 pmRabid. 1977. Written and directed by David Cronenberg. Distributed by New World/Warner.
Forget the heartbreak of psoriasis. The worst skin condition you can develop is an armpit penis. That's the lesson we learn from David Cronenberg's classic 1977 movie Rabid, a damned fun film that gets too much notoriety for its star (former porn star Marylin Chambers), and not nearly enough for the actual story.
We start on a road somewhere near Montreal. A couple is riding along on a motorcycle. Alas, a bickering family is also driving along the road, and is too busy arguing to notice that they're about to send the bike flying through the air until it's too late. The male rider is thrown off, but the girl, Rose, lands under the bike, which catches on fire. By the time she's rescued, she's been burnt to a crisp, and will likely be in a coma for the rest of her life
Fortunately, there's a plastic surgery clinic nearby. And we all know how great plastic surgeons are at saving lives, right? The clinic's mad doctor has just the untested, experimental procedure to try out. And, as he notes, it's not like he could possibly do her any harm, right?
Yeah.
Over the next few months, the untested experimental plastic surgery manages to heal her pretty damned nicely, amazing when you consider that plastic surgeons thirty years later still make Liza Minelli look like something Stephen King would dream up. Eventually, Rose wakes up, feeling all better. Things seem wonderful for a little bit, but things eventually go wrong once Rose wakes up. You see, somehow, the plastic surgery causes Rose to grow an underarm penis.
Actually, it's more like an underarm vagina with a very flexible and bloodthirsty clitoris. But whatever we call it, there's an opening in her armpit, and the appendage that emerges from it sucks blood. Also, it makes Rose very horny. When she seduces the first doctor she sees on waking, her underarm penis latches onto him and sucks his blood. She follows this up by killing a woman in a hottub before leaving the clinic and attacking others.
Alas, the folks who don't die (including the plastic surgeon who performed the surgery in the first place) mutate, becoming flesh-eating zombies. We discover this when a farmer goes mad at the local chicken shack and kills a poor counter girl. Yes, the victims of the underarm penis* become "rabid," and they now spread the virus with their attacks.
As Rose deals with her issues, the city starts to panic. Citizens start committing random acts of violence. Unlike traditional zombies, the assorted victims of Rose are more concerned with committing brutal acts of violence in general, biting, bludgeoning, and otherwise assaulting their fellow Canadian citizens. This, in turn, creates all sorts of chaos, including a classic scene in which overzealous cops, attempting to stop an infected man at the mall, gun down Santa Claus in front of a bunch of kids. Every movie needs a dead Santa**.
Eventually, a combination of martial law and a very quickly-developed vaccine save the city, but not before poor Rose dies as the result of one of the maddened attackers. As the movie ends, we see her body in a garbage truck, carried away.
Let's face it: if it's a David Cronenberg movie, it's about sex on some level. And Rabid is a lot less subtle than some of his other ones (although not up there with Shivers). The sexual transference of the "rabies" is a not very subtle analogy for venereal disease (and, in the pre-AIDS days, the insanity associated with this disease is not unlike an extremely mutated case of syphilis). But Cronenberg's movie here is really about the fragility of society, and how easily it can be torn apart; the sex is merely a byproduct of that plotline.
Early Cronenberg movies aren't known for their stellar casts, but Chambers does a decent enough job in her first mainstream role. Cronenberg does a solid job of moving the action along, with great B-movie dialogue and action framing the tragic fate of poor Rose. It's a short, brutal movie, but one that's still a lot of fun thirty years after its release***.
*Yes, I've used "underarm penis" more in this review than I ever have in anything else I've written.
**And yes, this is the second consecutive movie in which a Santa is murdered. Pure coincidence, I swear.
***According to the IMDB, it was released on my birthday thirty years ago, actually. Wonder why my mom didn't take me to see it for my fifth birthday party.
Forget the heartbreak of psoriasis. The worst skin condition you can develop is an armpit penis. That's the lesson we learn from David Cronenberg's classic 1977 movie Rabid, a damned fun film that gets too much notoriety for its star (former porn star Marylin Chambers), and not nearly enough for the actual story.
We start on a road somewhere near Montreal. A couple is riding along on a motorcycle. Alas, a bickering family is also driving along the road, and is too busy arguing to notice that they're about to send the bike flying through the air until it's too late. The male rider is thrown off, but the girl, Rose, lands under the bike, which catches on fire. By the time she's rescued, she's been burnt to a crisp, and will likely be in a coma for the rest of her life
Fortunately, there's a plastic surgery clinic nearby. And we all know how great plastic surgeons are at saving lives, right? The clinic's mad doctor has just the untested, experimental procedure to try out. And, as he notes, it's not like he could possibly do her any harm, right?
Yeah.
Over the next few months, the untested experimental plastic surgery manages to heal her pretty damned nicely, amazing when you consider that plastic surgeons thirty years later still make Liza Minelli look like something Stephen King would dream up. Eventually, Rose wakes up, feeling all better. Things seem wonderful for a little bit, but things eventually go wrong once Rose wakes up. You see, somehow, the plastic surgery causes Rose to grow an underarm penis.
Actually, it's more like an underarm vagina with a very flexible and bloodthirsty clitoris. But whatever we call it, there's an opening in her armpit, and the appendage that emerges from it sucks blood. Also, it makes Rose very horny. When she seduces the first doctor she sees on waking, her underarm penis latches onto him and sucks his blood. She follows this up by killing a woman in a hottub before leaving the clinic and attacking others.
Alas, the folks who don't die (including the plastic surgeon who performed the surgery in the first place) mutate, becoming flesh-eating zombies. We discover this when a farmer goes mad at the local chicken shack and kills a poor counter girl. Yes, the victims of the underarm penis* become "rabid," and they now spread the virus with their attacks.
As Rose deals with her issues, the city starts to panic. Citizens start committing random acts of violence. Unlike traditional zombies, the assorted victims of Rose are more concerned with committing brutal acts of violence in general, biting, bludgeoning, and otherwise assaulting their fellow Canadian citizens. This, in turn, creates all sorts of chaos, including a classic scene in which overzealous cops, attempting to stop an infected man at the mall, gun down Santa Claus in front of a bunch of kids. Every movie needs a dead Santa**.
Eventually, a combination of martial law and a very quickly-developed vaccine save the city, but not before poor Rose dies as the result of one of the maddened attackers. As the movie ends, we see her body in a garbage truck, carried away.
Let's face it: if it's a David Cronenberg movie, it's about sex on some level. And Rabid is a lot less subtle than some of his other ones (although not up there with Shivers). The sexual transference of the "rabies" is a not very subtle analogy for venereal disease (and, in the pre-AIDS days, the insanity associated with this disease is not unlike an extremely mutated case of syphilis). But Cronenberg's movie here is really about the fragility of society, and how easily it can be torn apart; the sex is merely a byproduct of that plotline.
Early Cronenberg movies aren't known for their stellar casts, but Chambers does a decent enough job in her first mainstream role. Cronenberg does a solid job of moving the action along, with great B-movie dialogue and action framing the tragic fate of poor Rose. It's a short, brutal movie, but one that's still a lot of fun thirty years after its release***.
*Yes, I've used "underarm penis" more in this review than I ever have in anything else I've written.
**And yes, this is the second consecutive movie in which a Santa is murdered. Pure coincidence, I swear.
***According to the IMDB, it was released on my birthday thirty years ago, actually. Wonder why my mom didn't take me to see it for my fifth birthday party.