Rabid (2019)

Run, Rabid, Run

Rabid
2019 USA Directed by Jen and Sylvia Soska
World Premiere screening at FrightFest on Monday 26th August

Warning: Some very slight spoilerage here if you’ve not seen Cronenberg’s original.

Wow... just wow. Turns out that the last film I saw at FrightFest this year was also the one that took the cake and really rocked it. And I really wasn’t expecting that. I’d kind of only half appreciated the Soska Sisters’ movie I’d seen prior to this, American Mary (reviewed by me here). I wasn’t all that keen on it and a quick reread of my old review makes me come across as somewhat jaded. So I was quite worried about this film for a couple of reasons.

One thing was the trailer... which really does nothing for me and, I think, almost undersells just how remarkably good this new incarnation inspired by David Cronenberg’s classic (which I recently reviewed here) actually is. I honestly wasn’t sure about shelling out for a ticket for this one on the strength of that but then I remembered the exclusive footage I’d seen from this presented at last year’s Halloween Edition of FrightFest and thinking it was pretty great. And then, of course, I found out The Banana Splits Movie was playing before this and I had to see that (my review of that one is here) and so I figured, what the heck, I’m going to see this new version of Rabid, too.

And I’m so glad I did because, right from the opening shot, the Soska Sisters suckered me into accepting their new take on this even while I was aware of the manipulation tactics they were lovingly employing to make sure the Cronenberg fans were kept on board and happy with what they were doing here. And I mean quite literally the opening shot, which starts off with a leather jacket clad girl standing by her motorcycle... just as Marilyn Chambers did in the original, before panning down and away to reveal that it’s actually a billboard advertisement (shame it wasn’t an ad for Ivory Snow, I guess). We see the main protagonist/antagonist of this movie, Rose (played by Laura Vandervoort) standing by her own modest scooter and looking up at the advertisement before riding off to her job as a staff, fashion designer for a conceited fashion superstar called Gunter (played by Mackenzie Gray).

As she approaches her work area we hear Gunter giving a speech and, again, I suspect this is all about the Soska Sisters wanting to make the Croneneberg fans feel comfortable because he’s talking about ways of remaking oneself... while it also taps nicely into both the body horror theme of the story and the idea of his upcoming ‘Schadenfreude Collection’. So, yeah, it was overt but by this point the idea of being open to a remake was slowly settling in with me. I’m pretty hit and miss on remakes myself... everybody loves the third version of The Maltese Falcon with Bogart, for example but, if you are going to be remaking stuff like Ringu then you’d better watch out, as far as I’m concerned.

Anyway, over the next few scenes the characters such as Rose’s best friend and model Chelsea (played here by Hanneke Talbot) and the potential boyfriend Dominic (played by Stephen Huszar) are introduced and Rose’s back story is also fleshed out a little before we get into the main first incident which sparks all that follows, which people who know the original will remember is a motorcycle accident and there is a variant of that here. The nice thing about this was that the directors appear in a few cameo scenes at a party and, due to something they are saying in a toilet cubicle, overheard by Rose, they kinda become the catalyst of all that is to follow because Rose is not left in a stable mindset after this scene.

So after this, things run pretty similarly to the original movie in terms of the main plot focus... the accident happens and a new form of living skin graft is applied to what is left of Rose’s grizzly, hollowed out face and torso. And after things take their course we have the craving for blood, spells of amnesia and, of course, the attacks which begin and, as in the original, escalate on their own independently of Rose who is the carrier of a viral, “don’t mess with me big time” version of rabies. And all I will say as to what Rose becomes in this is... well, you remember those little armpit stingers in the original? I was wondering if the directors would run with that concept here or do their own thing as a replacement and, without getting into spoilers, all I am saying is that this film doesn’t do anything small. And I’ll  leave that for you to discover.

In terms of how the film plays.... well it’s just beautiful. Vibrant, sometimes almost primary colours and shot set ups with a Bavaesque quality to them which eschew some of the more coldly clinical moments of Cronenbergism while simultaneously enhancing the content of key scenes where a sequence might be washed in a dominant green or red playing in contrast to the preceding scene.

Added to this you’ve got a lot of strong performances in here and in terms of the story and dialogue... well it mostly does the same kinda thing but it reaches its end goals in a way which, I think, is more in tune to the way stories are explored and presented now as opposed to, obviously, the late 1970s. Which is absolutely right for this because... who wants to see a so called remake when it just does exactly the same thing as the original, which is its own entity entirely? This one tries to take the essence of Cronenberg’s ideas but makes it more direct and takes its time more in certain areas and rushes through other bits which don’t seem so important in this vision of the tale. Again, it feels like this was the right way to do this and I think this new version is different enough that it would make for a good cinematic double bill with the first version playing right before it.

And, as I said earlier, this one shouldn’t alienate those who are big Croneneberg fans. There are a lot of visual and textual references to his world scattered throughout. For instance, the surgical gowns in the operating room presided over by... ahem... Dr. William Burroughs (played by Ted Atherton) are a deliberate echo of the surgical gowns worn by Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers... as are the names of the characters played by the Soska Sisters in this, Bev and Ellie. And there are quite a few little nods in this to keep enthusiasts for the work of Mr. C on their toes, such as a shop Santa Claus being gunned down, just like in the original (but for slightly different reasons). One which I’m not 100% sure was deliberate or just me imagining things, is when Dr. Burrough’s wife turns up near the end of the film. I’m skirting around specifics here because of spoilers but the visual look of some of the scenes she is in reminded me somewhat of a reveal right at the end of The Brood. Like I said, though, I’m not sure if that was on purpose or just me getting too near to my bedtime.

Oh... and Claude Foisy’s score works a charm here and is certainly a lot better than the needle dropped tracks on the original Rabid. It’s a shame that this thing isn’t on a CD because I would rush out and buy it (or, you know, my fingers would rush to the internet to grab it) and I’d similarly do the same thing with his score to Pontypool (reviewed here) if it was around on physical media. It’s one of those scores which has moments of great beauty interspersed with an almost industrial grating, ragged style of musical colour and it’s really much more appropriate to this film than what was used in Cronenberg’s original.

If I had one criticism of this version I’d say the ending, which is quite a bit different from the 1977 one, due to the fact that by this point the character of Rose is now quite self aware of what she has become, maybe missed the best part to just stop at. There was a moment near the end where she does something and I thought... “Yes. Good ending! This is precisely what she should do here.” Alas, the scene has a follow up where things are somewhat compromised in terms of how Rose is left and I felt it diluted things a little but, honestly, it’s a very minor criticism of what I shall be proclaiming to people is the Soska’s great masterpiece (with many more to follow, I’m sure) and I can kinda see why this particular ending would also have been a desirable one. It'll grow on me.

Okay... I think I’m drying up on things to say about this because I really need to see it again and study it properly for a few more hits and, alas, it doesn’t come out on Blu Ray here until October... although I think this would have done well as a full cinema release over here, for sure. This is one of the most beautiful looking horror movies made in the last few years and it doesn’t skimp on the gore here either... which is kind of a bonus when it’s done as well as this. Whether you are familiar with the wonderful original version of Rabid or not, this new film deserves your attention. I was, as you can probably tell by now, really bowled over by the Soska Sisters' movie here (who did their Q&A wearing the same dresses as they wear in the film) and I really can’t wait to see where they are going next. Guess it’s about time I ordered their first movie to have a look at on the strength of this one. I’ll try and get that one watched and reviewed sometime next year. Check out Rabid though because... you know... it’s kind of sensational and everything I didn’t think it could be.

Rabid

Value Rabid Attacks

Rabid
Canada 1977
Directed by David Cronenberg
Arrow Blu Ray Zone 2

As I said in my review of Cronenberg’s Shivers the other day (you can read that review here), I’ve been wanting to rewatch Rabid because I have a ticket to the world premiere of the new remake by the Soskia Sisters in just under two weeks and wanted this to be fresh in my mind. Having rewatched it now on a nice Arrow Blu Ray (although, I understand there’s a brand new, even more super duper restoration out later this month from 101 Films) it’s easy to see why I always get Shivers and Rabid confused. They’re both concerned with the spreading of a virus... by parasites in Shivers and, arguably, a kind of parasite in Rabid... and they both have the juxtaposition of hard violence and sex appeal to them. I’ll expand on that statement a little down the page.

The very first shot of the film introduces us to the person who is both the main protagonist and antagonist in the film, Rose, played by the late, great Marilyn Chambers. I’ll get back to her in a little while too but the opening credits start as she is waiting for the film’s other main protagonist... her boyfriend Hart, played by Frank Moore... her impressive figure leaning against his motorcycle. Hart soon picks her up and a lot of the titles pay out to various dynamic shots of the two of them on his motorcycle, whizzing around on a road trip...

Then, right bang smack in the middle of these credits, the cycle zooms past a building and instead of following the vehicle as we have in all the shots prior to this, we stay with the shot of the exterior of the building, The Keloid Clinic... because the director is now using this held moment as an establishing shot... followed by the interior of one of the offices where Dr. Keloid, his wife and his business partner Murray Cypher, played by Joe Silver (who also has a similar kind of role in Shivers) are discussing the future of his business, which is a cosmetic hospital specialising in modern techniques of plastic surgery. This is a great way of quickly filling in the audience about the hospital prior to the next series of shots which, when the titles resume, show a vehicle in the road blocking it after a man has an argument about directions with his wife and the motorcycle swerving to miss it but going up and over the edge of the highway. Hart is thrown clear but Rose lands underneath the motorcycle which then explodes on top of her.

However, this action has been witnessed by one of the cosmetic patients at the clinic through their binoculars and it’s not long before Dr. Keloid is racing to the scene of the accident with an ambulance and rushing the two patients back to his hospital where he has to perform an emergency operation on Rose which is an experimental form of surgery he is trying out, to do with using internal skin grafts. As he explains to his team while he cuts some skin from Rose’s thigh, he is going to be using “unusual skin grafts treated so they become morphogenetically neutral.’ Neutral field grafts which grow with the patient like an embryo. Now, I don’t pretend to completely understand the scientific lingo here but it’s the only explanation we get to a possible reason as to what happens next in the film... which truly continues Cronenberg’s obsession with ‘body horror’ that he was responsible for popularising around this time.

What does happen next is that, Rose wakes up and, mostly using her natural sexual attraction, starts drinking people’s blood by biting them with a kind of proboscis which retracts from a new orifice in her armpit. When she tries the same trick on a cow or tries to eat normal food, it just makes her throw up so very quickly the ‘half Rose-half beast’ she has become learns that she needs to drink the blood of humans to survive. Unfortunately, this also gives her victims a kind of untreatable super-rabies which causes them to attack others and spread the virus before dying themselves. Soon after Rose ‘escapes’ from the hospital, the new rabies spreads like wildfire and it’s not long before Canada is under martial law. And so the plot of the movie becomes Rose trying to find safe haven in between sexually enticing various human snacks while both Hart and Murray are out on the streets looking for her.

It’s business as usual for Cronenberg then... or at least what would become business as usual during this cycle of the writer/director’s career and I have to say, he has the added bonus of having more money (it seems to me) to make his wonderful shot compositions sparkle... he tends to gravitate to the centre or just slightly off-centre of the screen with some of his designs in this one, as he sets up vertical blocks of colour and texture to compartmentalise the screen.

There’s also the fact that many of the performances seem somehow more professional than some of those in his previous feature, not least of all Marilyn Chambers’ turn which really does stand out here in comparison to the expectations of her more famous career. And if you don’t know who Chambers is... or rather was, she died ten years ago.... she was the wholesome face of the Ivory Snow commercials in America. Yep, the famous Ivory Soap girl with her “99 & 44/100% pure” catch line. Well, she was the Ivory Soap girl until she started appearing, simultaneous to her advertising career with Ivory Soap, as the leading porn star in such, perhaps fondly remembered, pornographic films as the notorious Behind The Green Door, Resurrection Of Eve and Insatiable. This caused a scandal within the advertising industry at the time but, in the very rare crossovers she did, she really showed that she was more than up to the task of doing some good (and in this case somewhat ‘out there’... in the best Cronenbergian sense) performances and could hold her own with much more experienced commercial actors. I think this also shows how good porn actresses can be in general and that they shouldn’t necessarily be typecast in the genre of films with which they are most famously associated. An argument for a different article perhaps but, one wonders if Brian DePalma’s pursuit of porn actress Annette Haven for the lead in his film Body Double (which she ended up not starring in after all) was inspired by the casting of Marilyn Chambers in this.

It’s interesting that, although the method of viral contamination in Rabid is not a sex based one like it is in Shivers, the film seems somewhat more sexualised because there are a fair few nude shots of Chambers, who would have been totally comfortable doing those kinds of scenes anyway. It gives the film possibly a little more of an erotic edge to proceedings than in the previous movie where the theme of sexuality was more pushed to the foreground while remaining discretely in the background at the same time.

As well as the usual horror effects... which are done quite well with the proboscis that lurks within a sphincter under the armpit being particular well done, as sophisticated as anything in Cronenberg’s later ‘body horror’ movies... he also injects a more overt, almost slapstick sense of humour, into things at times. The moment in the shopping mall, for instance, where a policeman armed with a machine gun sprays a rabid attacker with lead and inadvertently also kills the Santa Claus in the Christmas Grotto is a particularly humorous swipe at establishment values, it seems to me.

Also... and perhaps I’m being a little unkind here but... whoever picked out the needle-dropped cues from a music library on this one (it may have been Cronenberg himself) did not do nearly as good a job as was done in Shivers. The over the top 1950s B-music style stings are lovely but totally out of place with the scenes they are scored with here and certainly give an unintentional humour vibe in places when it’s more than likely that the opposite effect is probably what was required.

Asides from that minor gripe though, Rabid is another early winner from the mind of David Cronenberg and I can’t really decide which, between Rabid and Shivers, I like more. I’d certainly recommend the movie as another good jumping on point to this writer/director’s cinema for those who haven’t seen his work before and now, all that’s left for me to do, is to go and see the new Soskia Sisters reboot at the London Frighfest this coming Bank Holiday Monday, so I can watch it with the original template in mind. And, hopefully, unless anything happens to me, a review will follow soon.