Rabid (1977)

Directed by David Cronenberg. Starring Joe Silver, Frank Moore, Marilyn Chambers, Howard Ryshpan, Susan Roman, Patricia Gage, J. Roger Periard, Victor Désy, Terry Schonblum, Lynne Deragon. [R]

Following a motorcycle accident, Chambers gets a skin graft that develops in a most unusual (and grotesque) way: her body evolves a red, phallic “stinger” that emerges from a gooey sphincter under her armpit, striking and infecting victims with a disease that turns them into slavering, zombie-like monsters. Bizarre hybrid of zombie outbreak horror and epidemic disaster thriller witnesses the spread of the disease from a hospital to a major city, resulting in chaos, hysteria, and plenty of opportunities to see adult film star Chambers without clothes on (but, um, don’t get too close…). The best of writer/director Cronenberg’s early low-budget exercises in body horror/splatter still has its share of crude filmmaking techniques, and performances as stiff as the scripting, but it also delivers a few quality shocks, escalates in a surprisingly convincing and chilling fashion, and arrives at an effectively pitiless finale. Injections of offbeat humor and political content help keep interest in between the attack scenes. Remade in 2019. Ivan Reitman was one of the executive producers.

64/100