SHIVERS (1975)
By Logan Crow - 06-02-09
Sex + Violence = David Cronenberg. Sex & mutilation (Crash and Dead Ringers and eXistenZ), sex & television (Videodrome), sex & typewriters… Truly he has something to say, and whether he’s telling a new story or adapting a literary work (some of his best works - including Crash , The Fly, Naked Lunch, Spider, and Dead Ringers - are adaptations of celebrated works), Cronenberg always infuses his signature blend of rage and sexuality. These, he seems to say, are woven together and unavoidable: male or female, gay or straight, man or mutant, we are all sexual beings and thus prone (he seems to imply) to extreme acts of violence. For perhaps the most jarring example of this, flash back to 1975 and a disturbing early Cronenberg effort, Shivers.
Eight minutes into Shivers, a seemingly disoriented man strangles a young girl in a prolonged and graphic scene, her legs kicking high and wide enough to expose her adolescent legs and schoolgirl panties. As would eventually become typical to Cronenberg, it is a moment both disturbing and seemingly titillating - no, this isn’t supposed to arouse you, but we’re going to make it look quite arousing to the assailant. Twenty minutes later, a nubile young blond inexplicably performs a strip tease before the camera as her lover talks in graphic detail about the mutilated corpses that are starting to pile up at an apartment complex, while - PHALLUS! - an eel slithers wantonly around his tank.
And yes, seconds later, enter the parasite - a horrific penis-shaped creature that slides itself right up a woman’s…well she’s in a bathtub, so it could have been one of two places. What’s important here is, she doesn’t look too upset once it finds its way in. In Cronenberg’s quasi-zombie thriller, the victims don’t moan for brains; they pull their prey into their apartment buildings while screaming “I’m hungry for love!” (literally…). By film’s end a mutated child has made out with a terrified old man, an infected woman has seduced a terrified female neighbor, an man has propositioned his own daughter before making out with her - again, Cronenberg’s zombies aren’t hungry for brains…
Of all the modern auteurs known for their personal and visionary cinematic acrobatics, Cronenberg’s have always been the most distrubring to me. I can deal with Kubrick’s “Wake up - dystopia is now” and Lynch’s “Wake up - it’s all a dream” and Aronofsky’s “Wake up - all dreams die”, because none of these filmmakers, as much as I admire them, seem as dedicated as Cronenberg to cast their tales of ordinary madness in an ordinary world. Lynch landscapes are quirky; Kubrick’s vastly epic in scale; Aronofsky’s painstakingly stylish. Cronenberg’s Shivers takes place in an apartment building so plain and drab and - well, 1970’s - that one can’t help to recognize it; the same is even true of The Fly, where so much care is taken to make Seth Brundle’s incredible telepods stand out against an otherwise completely recognizable 1980’s. Shivers brims with hand-held cameras, cleverly disorienting editing, and perhaps most impressive, a score as chilling as it is very discreet - it is bare-boned filmmaking, and no doubt to the audiences who first saw it in the 70’s, a sign of a great film career to come…
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