Spooktober Day 19 SHIVERS!!

Day 19

Shivers

WELL SHIVER ME TIMBERS! HAaaa…ha….ha

God I’m so lonely…

ANYWAY! Cronenberg. Can’t go wrong with Cronenberg. The man knows how to tell a weird story, and pull out some dandy effects.  I was fortunate and had The FLY as my introduction to his films. From there I found RABID, SCANNERS, Videodrome and of course Shivers.

So of COURSE this will be a fun ol’ time! A fun quality possibly body horror, maybe twisted, could be wtf time.

At least we can hope. So lets book ourselves a trip to Starliner Island. They have a full sized Olympic pool, and cable tv is free too.

Speaking of that’s how our story begins, a nice commercial about a luxury apartment on its own island just outside Montreal, with everything we could ever need or want, and never have to leave the island to get. Including dry cleaning, a deli, and amazing dental care! Sounds like a promising start, and a good life for those who can afford it.

But we have some child killing to do first.

That’s right. This is a luxury apartment and two people are very curious about moving in, they have a scheduled interview and everything.

But we also have a grandfather looking back busting down the door of a young girls room and the two begin a life or death struggle. Which thankfully isn’t interrupting the new couples interview. That’d be awkward. Especially as violent as this fight gets between the balding older man and the girl. Off to a nice wtf start!

Even more so when the man seems to have over powered the girl and killed her. Which draws him to place her on the breakfast table and strip her down . He’s looking to perform some home surgery. Starline Island! Complete medical and home surgical needs!

Yeah he actually does cut her open, but we don’t see the gore. We just witness booba, some nice panties, and lots of blood along with….some chemicals being flooded into her stomach. For. Reasons. All topped off with the older man taking the knife he used on her, to himself. Cutting open his own chest and falling to the floor.

But enough of that, we have a nice couple looking around at the apartments and trying to decide if Starliner life, is a life fit for them.

Meanwhile the body is discovered by a man we can assume works for the building and. Appropriately he reacts in shock. To such a point he doesn’t want to talk to anyone until he gets to his office and well, has time for self reflection. Meanwhile a man in a very pretty sweater and large shirt collar arrives at the murder scene alongside the police.. Whom inform us the old man who strangled and cut her open, was a professor and doctor. Though the girl remains unknown. They’d seen her around the complex a time or two. But no one had talked to them apparently. So everyone is a little confused. Especially concerning the doctor and his sudden murderous turn and self mutilation.

Well it’s only going to get worse and sound like something you’d expect to see someone waving red flags in warning over.

At the scene was a friend of the professors, and was meant to have lunch with him. Well seeing as how that didn’t work out, he decides to head out and meet with a colleague of his. Who explains to him what they were working on.

Before we begin as it would be helpful I have no doubt. Names!  We need names. So the friend of the professor is Roger St Luc. I’d like to call him sweater man but. We will be nice and use his characters name.

So Roger gets the low down on this doctors work, and it is. Well here we go. He and a colleague were working on an alternative to organ transplants. That alternative is, growing parasites. Parasites which would live in your body. Taking a little of your blood, while performing the task of the organs they are there to replace. That’s right. Why have organ transplants when you could slip a parasite inside you to dissolve a bad kidney, feed off your blood and take over the duties of that kidney. What could possibly go wrong with this monstrosity. But remember, the professor was a genius! He got him and his partner large grants selling this idea and their study. Though his partner admits he was a terrible teacher. He was boring and no one cared for him. But he’s an amazing doctor and great at raising money.

He also was a pedophile. As his partner informs Roger, “Oh that girl? He had her around a few times, she was some kid from one of his classes. You know they found him giving her a tittie exam for breast cancer once? In the teachers lounge. She was 12 years old. He even brough her here a few times. Odd man.”, yeah. Odd. That’s the word for it. But again. Brilliant man! Who cut her open on a table, and then himself.

Yes no one seems to really care about the professors ‘transgressions’.  It’s all about the importance of parasite organs!

Which speaking of. Our friend who was shocked finding the bodies, who silently returned to his office? Well. He’s rather out of it. In fact he isn’t really himself. He’s just, sort of not there. He also seems to have dribbled some blood out the corner of his mouth. Surely nothing to worry about.

Of course it’s something to worry about!! The man goes home and tries to have a nice glass of scotch to relax and collect himself. But he ends up in a seizure, and coughing up blood. But he’s just getting started. He isn’t just puking up blood. He’s puking parasites. Which glide down the drain in his bath tub. He even eyes a moving target. An old lady walking with her friend and splat. He’s puked a parasite up on her umbrella. Buut it made an escape. Thankfully.

If you were wondering. Yes. Things are kicking off and we’re only 30 minutes into it.

So now there are organ parasites roaming the grounds of Starliner. And no one is safe!

Including a poor woman doing her laundry. As a parasite launches itself out at smooches her cheek. How cute. It’s only doing its job!

Next we have another man being seein by Roger the resident Starliner doctor. He’s complaining about little lumps he thinks he has under his skin. Which hurt a little, but he can move around. Which he says rather creepily, are like the pumps this girl had under her belly button which he thought were kinda sexy. Of course a building for rich people means they are weird ass pedophile professors and creepers. But he felt it worth bringing up to the doctor because. Well. Man talk. Apparently.

Back to more important things! Like the man throwing up parasites. Well his wife is home now, and finds her husband where he normally is by the evening time. Passed out on the kitchen floor half inside the fridge. Of course this isn’t normal! But she acts like it’s his regular Saturday night thing. So we shall as well. Of course I would hope when she sees the bloody slug trails all around the house she might think differently. But we will see.

I think the oddest thing to happen in the middle of all of this. The middle of a doctors exam and a man relating belly bumps that move. A wife moving around her oddly speechless and out of it husband puking parasites, and kids finding a parasite in a mail slot. Is none of this. No. Not any of these events. The oddest thing, is the earlier doctor talking about his professor friend. During that scene he was enjoying a sandwich and a pickle. A pickle he really REALLY was enjoying, So much so during that chat earlier he had to bring it up. And we see him with this pickle at the end of the scene. Well he’s back. For no reason at all. Seriously the film just randomly cuts to him, standing by a fridge with a taped on quote that says” Sex Is the Invention of a Clever Venereal Disease”, and he’s holding his pickle still. His half eaten, hours old pickle. The man is nursing that thing like Julian and his glass of rum in Trailer park Boys. It’s just not right.

Okay it’s weird to be but if you need something odd and gross, Well the man who passed out in his fridge, and his wife escorted to their bed. He was panting in bed watching his stomach. As it began to balloon with bulging parasite bumps. Ballooning out then vanishing. All while his wife. Looks at their blood streaked bath tub. Cries. Cleans it, then ask her husband, “Are you okay? Does your tummy hurt?” I would say no. No he is not alright, and yes. His tummy hurts considerably. But oh well. She’ll learn soon enough.

Now, that sign I pointed out earlier on the fridge next to pickle man? It is of some importance. Actually. Oddly. He decides to call Roger and inform him that the dead pedo professor was indeed, odd. But MORE odd than just being a pedo. He was odd in that he was screwing everyone over. Including the people financing his parasite program. He wrote notes about how man is nothing but an animal with too many guts. He also explains the parasite he developed which. Get ready for this one. Because it’s artfully told to us while Roger’s nurse, and a lady he’s apparently intimate with. Begins undressing for us while the parasite is explained, it is thus “A combination of aphrodisiac and venereal disease. That will hopefully turn the world into one beautiful, mindless orgy.” Again, this man was odd. Very. Very odd.

But aside an undressing and fully naked nurse to help us take in this information. We also learn that the young girl who had lumps under her belly button that moved, and the same girl the professor strangled and cut open. Well. Her name was Annabelle and her spirit now possesses a doll. Actually no. BUT her name IS Annabelle, and the professor was using her as a guinea pig. Implanting the parasites inside of her. But once the parasite took over, she went berserk. So he had no choice but to strangle her and try to burn out the parasites from her body, in hopes of saving her. But instead ended up killing her. Believing himself to be infected, he killed himself trying to remove them from himself. Roger informs us that Annabelle was a ‘pretty popular’ lady around the complex as the old perv talked about touching her belly and below the belly button so he could feel those moving bumps. And apparently she may have had contact with other men as well. BUT ENOUGH OF THAT!

For now we are preparing for a scene so popular. For reasons. That it ended up the box art. Which is of course a woman at the complex stripping down naked and preparing for a comfy bath, with a nice glass of merlot. Of course a parasite appears. Coming up from the bath tub drain. Of course it creeps over between her thighs. And yes. It creeps up her hooha and she begins thrashing about violently as blood mixes with the water and she fights the parasite as it enters her body. She appears dead for a moment. But as we learned with the puking man. She is not. She soon rises from the bath, walking on shattered glass(also a Britney Spears song) and we now have three known people infected with the butthole looking parasite. Yes. Even the lady from the laundry room is infected.

Whom we get to meet again, as she opens the door spotting a room service man roaming by and says “I’m hungry…hungry….hungry for love!” So she grabs the poor man and pulls him into her den of sin. Her room.

So apparently yes. These parasites are working perfectly. They’re making people super duper horny. But also taking over their bodies and making them go berserk. In fact. People are openly attacking others in sex rages! Even people we didn’t know ere infected!

The nurse from earlier is cooking her roast, enjoying a nice merlot. When suddenly a man pounds on her door and begins trying to have animalistic rage sex with her. Which is not funny, but kind of is after the fact. She escapes, and runs into Roger. Who she tells “I was making you and I dinner, and he came in tried kissing me and taring my clothes. I think I killed him, I don’t know.  He just did this and he tried to kiss me” I would have some questions. But Roger is in no mood for questions. He just looks politely at her, smiles and assures her he will look into this right now. Well when he enters the room looking over the scene. All over the floor is droplets of blood, and clothes. Clearly not the mans clothes, But it looks like random clothes belonging to the nurse. It’s…weird. But hey look! Vomit samples! Yes Roger stops looking for a dead man and sexual attacker, and begins collecting samples.

All of these people, are rather odd. Yes. Odd.

Seriously these people are crazy af and odd is not the word any of these people should use for each other. Its insane. But it’s also a choice.

So Roger is escorting the poor nurse down the hall, assuring her they will solve who that man was and why it happened. But hold the phone! They reach the elevator and an elderly couple come out begging for his help as the mans wife has poopy burn marks on her arm from a parasite! The doctor can’t catch a break! His only hope is that this elderly woman won’t become a sex starved parasitic freak machine and start dragging them off to a chamber of sultry elderly loving.

Speaking of. On another elevator. We have an unfortunate attack of the hornies. A mother and daughter are riding an elevator to their floor, enjoying a magazine together. Until the doors open and a man presents his hand. Holding a squashed crumbling slide of cherry pie. Which he not so sensually eats in front of them. Before trying to dry hump the mom as the doors close and they shout.

The hornies are attacking everywhere! Even and more violently, with the vomit man. Who calls his wife to their bedroom, and pulls her into his arms. Telling her she’s beautiful and growing out ‘Make love to me!” which I believe normally might work, if not for the fact she had to clean up a bathtub full of his vomit blood, and a kitchen streaked in vomit blood with not even a word from her as to why what and how. But after a few gentle lovers slaps and forceful grabbing she is fine with making love. Until her bare tummy feels his stomach moving with parasites. THEN she chooses to freak out. Even covering her breast again, which to be fair her top did very little to hide as it’s. Well 70’s fashion embraced an odd trend of very see through tops, and her nipples have been watching things with the rest of us.

But thankfully she is able to escape the hornies by using one of, if not the best lines to escape such a situation of unwanted sex. “I want to make love, but I need to use the bathroom first, I want to put my contacts in so I can see you, okay?” Well either it works, or the hornies are just too wild and reject his body, because he allows her to leave. She however not so smartly returns to the bedroom to cuddle him from behind tearfully. As she watches him vomit up a parasite.

And what, of the mother and daughter you ask? The two with Mr. Cherry pie man? Well they’ve arrived not on their floor, but the lobby. The mothers skirt long gone, and the daughter is now eating the mashed cherry pie. The man infected with the hornies who attacked them now attacks the front desk clerk, whom the mother attempts the sex with, and, creepily. The movie moves into slow motion as the little girl with a face smeared with cherry pie, kisses the front deskman and feeds a parasite to him. It’s creepy but mostly gross and done for the shock of “Oh my, even she now is infected!”, which honestly becomes creepy when you remember what these parasites do to people.

Even the lady from the bathtub whos vagina the parasite crawled up into is attacking her friend with the hornies.

The whole DAMN building is overrun with the hornies. No one is safe. No one!!

But Roger. Brave, brave dumb roger. Is still smiling and calm as ever. That’s the kind of guy you want your doctor, he could tell you you’ve got a horny parasite up your butt and you’d feel so comforted by his politeness and smile you wouldn’t mind that you are going to go berserk with rage and die.

Seriously how this guy is spending over an hour of this film facing down parasites, the hornies, being attacked in the laundry room, collecting puke samples from his nurses home. With nothing more than a cheerful polite smile and pleasant disposition. It’s either years of training, or he’s Mormon.

Though now he has an actual problem to deal with, for once. His nurse, whom was attacked, and we watched undress earlier. She left the safety of his room to go out looking for him and find a car so they could escape. Meaning. She’s now in the garage.

The garage. The meeting place of many a horny soul under regular circumstances, and now. A breeding ground for the hornies and their parasites. SO OF COURSE SHE’S ATTACKED AGAIN! Another man throwing himself shamelessly atop her trying to rub belly bumps and do the sexing. But thankfully Roger is there and he kills the man. But just as they look to escape, another horny man in his car decides to ram into them, his hornies are gone and now overrun with ragies. 

But it’s not over yet. We’re entering apocalyptic horniness now. The wife who escaped the barfing man has turned to her friend for solace. But her gal pal is now asking, begging her to make the sex with her, and she gives into her confused feelings in that moment as quickly as a porn star lesbian in her “My first time with a woman’ video. Giving us a slow motion shot of a parasite in the womans bulging throat traveling from her, into the wife. Sadly lost to us now.

As are all the people in the complex, as we find a couple trying to make their escape to safety, and the doorman telling them it’ll be safe inside his office. Which of course it isn’t. there’s at least 6 people in various states of undress going at it, and now they too are fell upon and soon to be swallowing parasites.

It’s pandemonium and the place is beginning to smell like boiled mushrooms and buttermilk.

But. Perhaps. There is hope. See, the good doctor who worked with the odd professor. He’s decided to come to the complex and check on the people. His first stop is the vomiting man. Who is now nursing an open stomach flooded with parasites. Which jump onto the doctors face in a bloody mess. And the doctor though he struggles, ultimately falls victim to a horny open stomach wound parasite invested vomiting man and a hammer hitting him on the head.

So yeah. Not much help.

But what of Roger and his nurse?

Well. The nurse begins to share her sexy thoughts with Roger. She talks about a dream she had. A sexy dream. Where an old man tells her that even old flesh is erotic, and that love making is two aliens….well its weird and she’s rather odd. Because Oh noooooo she’s infested with the hornies. So Roger does the only thing a professional gentlemen and doctor in his position can do. He punches her right in the parasite hanging outside her mouth and ties a shirt around her mouth. To keep the parasite at bay.

Which leads me to a unintentionally funny scene. He’s trying to escape with her down a hallway and suddenly JUMPSCARE! The doors open and a storm of horny naked and half naked people storm out trying to hunk his junk and rub tummies. They instantly claim his nurse and he escapes. However he says something. Which is inaudible. Even the subtitles don’t tell you. But it sounds like, and I’m 87% sure, that he says “We’re done”, I really don’t think he’d say that, but I swear it sounds like that’s exactly what he says. What a fun but sad end for his nurse. Hauled off by naked horny people, “We’re done!”

Well now Roger may well and truly be done. Things begin to turn into a scene out of Night of the Living Dead, but they’re all horny and mega thirsty. It’s also a bit disturbing some of the things we see. From two young girls on dog leashes barking, to old men giving the sexy eye to the doctor, a man offering his daughter to be shared. Swimming pool full of breast and underwear. And to top it off, a shot of people on a hillside moaning, zombie walking in various states of undress, all chasing after Roger.

How does it end?

Well the only way naturally it could.

Roger chooses not to attempt the hill of horniness, and opts instead to find an alternate route at the complex. Which leads him back to the pool of hornies. Who grab onto his leg holding him there. Until a horny german man gives him the sexy eyes and pushes him into the pool. Where no less than 30 hornies attack him, rubbing their breast and bellies and thingies on Roger, until a girl in a sheer purple wet dress walks over and lands the kiss of parasitic doom on him. The film cuts to the garage, and we see Roger. Smoking a pipe, cheerful as ever, sat beside his nurse. As he and the others drive off to Montreal, to infect Canada with the hornies.

Now granted, knowing the visuals this film gives us, all of which are not that wonderful or terrifying now, so much as they are creepy especially with the kids in it. It’s still an entertaining, if odd and funny film. Which is pretty much. More of less Cronenberg in a nutshell. The guy makes odd, sort of funny, entertaining movies. There’s always a commentary with them of course, and this is no exception. It’s every bit as weird as you’d expect from him, which somehow outdoing Rabid, which focused on a woman surviving a bike accident, ending up with a mouth dart thing under her armpit that both sucks blood and turns people into zombies. Well. Yeah, Cronenberg.

It’s still a classic and certainly has its share of fans. I’d be interested to see how if ever they’d do a remake of the film today. I mean honestly, would they? They redid Night of the Creeps which also dealt with slug like being slithering into people and controlling them. And we had the James Gun flick Slither which. Well that was also special in its own right. But also featured sex and alien tentacles.

But somehow I doubt they’d try.

Well I was wrong.

But still right.

How so? Well. There was an article in 2013 talking about a remake being done on the film. But nothing else came of that. So I did a bit of digging and. Funny enough. It seems each year since then, they’ve attempted to remake the movie. The remake has been scheduled for 2014, 2014,2016,2017,2018, 2019, and lastly 2020. But nothing to close out this year with, or word on 2022. I guess it’s not surprising, we live in a world where not only was “I Spit on Your Grave” remade, but it had two sequels, AND they made a direct sequel to the original WITH the original leading lady AND her daughter. So anything is possible in this odd world.

Seriously does anyone refer to someone who did things like that Professor did as ‘odd’? That just bugs me. A lot.

But yes, you should check the film out. It’s actually Cronenbergs  first feature film and definitely memorable. That’s for sure. It may not be a typical horror, but that’s what you get with him. Something different. Almost, Canadian. Ha.

And yes as I mentioned before, the poster art comes from the bath tub scene. It was just one of those gasp moments and chuckle scenes so, it worked so well they thought “Why not put it up on a poster! A bath tub, and a blonde gasping in terror! I don’t care if the actress had raven black hair! Sell it Jerry!”, and sell it Jerry they did.

The film not long ago got released in a spiffy special by Vestron video, so it looks much cleaner and happier than a VHS for sure. Give it a look and until tomorrow. Keep away from the hornies!