Rabid is a violently cryptic—if conceptually underbaked—body horror film about plastic surgery experimentation gone wrong. After a bad motorcycle accident in Montreal caused by her driving boyfriend, Hart Reed (Frank Moore), Rose (Marilyn Chambers) gets ambulanced to a nearby plastic surgery center. As the place is headed by a negligently ambitious Dr. Dan Keloid (Howard Ryshpan), who has all sorts of medically wild plastic surgery theories that he tests out on real patients, Rose quickly finds herself changed after getting some skin grafts. Waking up with an insane hunger and anus-looking holes by her armpits, she tries desperately to fulfill her new needs before discovering a societally terrible truth: she has a craving for blood. As she begins feeding on people, hugging them close as her pit-mouths consume their insides with phallic-shaped piercers, the victims slowly transform into savage, lip-foaming beasts with the same bloodlust, only they go entirely crazy and die shortly after they’re restricted from another meal. As the city quickly falls into a catastrophic epidemic, Hart and sane doctors who worked under or with Dr. Keloid, such as Murray Cypher (Joe Silver), must do whatever they can to stop the violence’s bile spread, and Rose herself, even if it’s painful.

Cronenberg delivers yet another relatively socially adept showcase of natural human fluids, bite marks, and sexually inclined gore. The atmosphere is immediately creepy. Cracks in the universally familiar city concrete litter dimly lit alleys, grayed walls, and faded signs, illuminating, with an ever-present synthesizer soundtrack supervised by Ivan Reitman (!), how creepy even the most beautiful city spots can become terrifying. The surgery center immediately instills an off-kilter mood as well, with little on the walls reminiscent of an insane asylum’s emptiness, back-hunched workers dragging themselves through the halls, and icy interiors built from post-industrial revolution whites and browns. Dr. Keloid, brought to eerie life by Ryshpan with an unstably monotone voice and subtly expressive facial contortions (especially as he gets closer to achieving his experiments’ hoped-for results), at this point is simply the person expected to arrive and catalyze Rose’s later issues with how much of Rabid‘s unsettling world is already introduced. The gore, therefore, is on a whole other level: created with god knows what to replicate the crushing of organs, evisceration of skin, and penetration of the body from an already horrific looking claw that shoots out of a literal armpit asshole, Cronenberg elegantly displays the viscous reds, browns, whites and yellows of our insides as they’re turned outwards. With Marilyn Chambers amping up the seductiveness and naivety a gut-horny Rose uses to reel in new victims—”I’m freezing cold! Ah, but you… you’re so warm. Hold me… please?” a naked Rose pleads with doe eyes to a different doctor before making him her first meal—these environments and the gore are that much further enhanced as she makes succumbing to infection a terrifyingly easy possibility.

While Rabid is much lighter in thematic exploration than other Cronenberg pieces, to its dismay in some ways, it has one solid throughline: how the scientists react vs. how politicians respond. Painfully reminiscent of the recent COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, Rabid displays a chaotic race to control this epidemic before it spreads beyond Montreal’s perimeter, driven by smart medics and less astute, more socially concerned politicians. The former, taking up most of the film’s screentime, stabilizes the situation with COVID-era mandates as they believe the affliction is another strand of rabies: “All those receiving shots of the new vaccine are being issued these plastic identity cards. Viewers are urged not to leave their homes unless absolutely necessary,” says one TV-projected news reporter. Through various public statements, such as the one above, and private conversations captured by Cronenberg, it’s a no-brainer what needs to occur. But the world and politicians get in the way, as a spokesperson demonstrates in conversing with one Dr. Lapointe (Victor Désy): “The city is a complex machine, Mr. Lapointe. It needs constant attention. The mayor will listen to you, but you’re not the only one. It takes time.” Such mixed reactions from those in power, though brief in Rabid, are dangerous in times of medical crises. Look at how the current U.S. president reacted to COVID-19 in his first term, swearing on bleach being a viable preventative. Cronenberg clearly understands the intricacies of such disasters, with arguments continuing over the best course of action as people scramble to avoid infection or turn on each other when infected. Rabid is thus as much a gore showcase as it is an argument against politics in times of widespread danger.

Unfortunately, Rabid also lacks a lot of punch for what its hefty environment and destabilizing world harbor, due to relatively bland writing and typical plotting. Half the movie sees Rose killing creepy men who try and hit on her or rape her—which is, nonetheless, very fun—with little to no exploration beyond about Rose’s reclaimed identity/womanhood in a world run by creeps. Cronenberg certainly wanted to go further, especially as one creep feels up Rose during a movie screening that pontificates off-screen about the boundaries and effects of love, but he doesn’t. The more well-developed threads discussed above also become similarly repetitive. After the fourth or fifth time of doctors discussing the details of their new epidemic with no variations or evolutions in argument, it becomes dull quickly. Rabid‘s also relatively predictable; from which characters would be dead to how the chaos arises, everything can be guessed beyond what kind of body horror will appear. Thus, while Rabid certainly has issues of pacing, layering, and consistency, it’s a fun, bone-chilling, and cryptically relatable scare-fare.

Screens Friday, 6/20, 6:00 p.m. & 10:00 p.m. @ The Brattle Theatre
Double feature w/The Brood
Part of the ongoing repertory series: Cronenberg summer