Rabid
(1977) 91 Min.
Rated: R (gore, nudity)
Country: USA | Canada
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Marilyn Chambers, Frank Moore, Joe Silver
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★★☆☆
A woman who ends up in an accident becomes the unwitting root of a plague.
Synopsis:
Rose (Chambers) and Hart (Moore) are lovers enjoying a motorcycle ride through the countryside when they crash into a van stopped in the middle of the road. Hart is thrown from the vehicle but fairly okay. Rose is pinned under the motorcycle and in worse condition. The two are taken to a nearby hospital, the Keloid Clinic for Plastic Surgery.
Dr. Dan Keloid decides to perform a radical surgery on Rose. He explains that it uses morphogenetically neutral grafts to her chest and abdomen, taken from her thigh, in the hope that it will differentiate and replace the damaged skin and organs. One month later, Hart is released while Rose remains in a coma.
One night, Rose screams awake and patient Lloyd Walsh walks into her room to calm her. Rose insists on hugging Lloyd and he starts to bleed as they embrace. Lloyd wanders into another patient’s room claiming he can’t remember what happened. Lloyd also can’t feel sensation on the side of his body the wound is on.
Rose wakes again and escapes the hospital. She enters a nearby dairy farm and tries to hug a cow, but finds the blood not to her liking, so she vomits. The farm owner enters the barn she’s in and tries to molest her, but Rose attacks him and runs off. Rose tries to phone Hart, but he doens’t hear the phone ringing.
Rose then wanders into a hot tub where a lady name Judy is napping and she attacks her, drowning her.
Lloyd leaves the hospital. During a car ride, he suddenly grows pale and attacks the driver causing a car crash that kills them both.
Rose returns to the hospital. Dr. Keloid reassures her that everything is okay. He inspects under her arm to find an orifice where the scar tissue would be. Dr. Keloid insist that she take her nutrients from bags, but Rose says that she hasn’t taken it since “That man”. She then proceeds to hug Dr. Keloid with a small appendage with a stinger coming out of her arm and striking Dr. Keloid.
The farmer from earlier ends up at a diner and bites a waitress. Authorities believe that the farmer had rabies.
Dr. Keloid, now infected from his contact with Rose, goes berserk during an operation and attacks a nurse. Police swarm the hospital as Hart and a friend are looking for Rose.
Rose, meanwhile, has escaped and is hitchhiking with a trucker. She eventually attacks him after realizing she can’t eat meat normally without throwing up. She then leaves him and gets a ride from an older lady. She ends up in Montreal and moves in with an old friend named Mindy.
Hart is with cops and finds out that a policeman who got infected was given a rabies treatment and still turned into a rabid zombie.
Rose goes to a sex cinema and is harassed by a man. She allows him to touch her so that she can sting him. She leaves him in the theater, passed out.
The infection spreads through the population and citizens are encouraged not to leave their houses. There is a preventative vaccine that can be taken, but for those infected there’s no hope.
Rose goes to a mall and meets a random man who offers her a cigarette. He gets attacked by a zombie nearby. Rose goes home to Mindy who promises to take care of her. Rose is growing increasingly sick from not feeding.
Hart finally walks into Mindy’s apartment to find Rose feeding on Mindy. Hart realizes it’s Rose who has caused the plague. Rose pleads that she needs to drink blood to live. They argue and scuffle into the apartment stairwell and Hart falls down some stairs. Hart is knocked out. Rose then takes her coat and rushes out into the apartment lounge area. She flirts with a random man.
Rose calls Hart from the random man’s apartment. She has locked herself into his apartment to test whether she created the plague. Hart tries to plead with her to run out and escape, but the man becomes infected and attacks Rose.
The next day Rose lays in the trash, dead. She is picked up by a garbage truck and placed inside as the movie ends.
Review:
This is a film in which because of plastic surgery, a woman creates zombies after drinking some blood from other humans using a small stinger in her arm pit. It’s hard to take this film seriously, but it’s strange premise helps to explore new territory in the old vampire and zombie lore. Here we have a new monster in Rose who was created by doctor without regards to traditional methods and trials. Rose became an experiment gone awry that killed untold hundreds in Montreal.
Cronenberg does his best to give a creepy low-budget film life. Small things, like the mall cop shooting a mall Santa to the horror on the train. All these little scenes add to the over all sense of dread and drama. Rose’s scene in the cinema is also notable.
The only drawback in story was Hart’s search for Rose which was also shown intertwined with Rose’s hunt for food. Hart’s character seemed well meaning but lost and helpless. I suppose his existence at least informed Rose of the plague she caused and also he was audibly a witness to her death over the phone.
The film is worth seeing if you’re a fan of Cronenberg or would like to see another take on an “infection”. You must also be willing to accept that the film will never truly explain why a skin graph made Rose into a armpit-stinger vampire or why her victims always ended up as mindless zombies. Still, it’s an interesting ride.
Murray Cypher:”Oh look at potato man. See how potato man loves ketchup man?”
Watch The Ketchup Song by Stompin’ Tom Connors (as well as the animation used in Rabid!)