By Geno McGahee
I love the rawness of 1970’s horror and the fact that they do not put restrictions on the work. They actually thought that we were mature enough to handle it, which is something that you don’t see now in our PG-13 horror world. “Shivers” is an example of raw horror from that era and is really strange to boot, but it is very interesting and anytime that you have sex zombies, you can basically bank on a good review from me. I love sex zombies. That’s one of my life goals: create sex zombies. Since, at the current time, I cannot, I will have to live vicariously through Shivers, a film written and directed by David Cronenberg.
We begin with Professor Emil Hobbes (Fred Doederlein) attacking a young girl, Annabelle (Kathy Graham). She is doing everything that she can to fend him off, but he is too old, too big, and his man boobs are too intimidating to be stopped. He kills her and then performs surgery on her. The fact that the girl seems so young, mid teens, is disturbing, but to find out that he had a relationship sexually with her from the age of twelve makes this professor a villain pretty quick. That murder isn’t the only problem that this high rise apartment building has. The evil professor was working on a project with his partner Rollo Linsky (Joe Silver) where they will insert a parasite into a hopeful organ transplant recipient and it would actually take place of the surgery and save millions of lives. Unfortunately, Hobbes had a skewed view of humanity and altered the project to hurt mankind and turn people into mindless sex zombies.
Living inside the apartment complex and on the case is Doctor Roger St. Luc (Paul Hampton), who is also buddies with Rollo. They don’t understand the extent of the problem, but things in the apartment building begin to get weird. An old, fat, and repulsive woman gets attacked by a slug-like parasite and begins attacking people in search of sexual satisfaction. It reminds me of my 400 pound Aunt Polly. The only problem with her, is if she sat on your face, you’d die. R.I.P. Uncle Jimmy. You didn’t know. My God, you didn’t know.
The worst case in the building is Nicholas Tudor (Allan Kolman). He has all of these lumps in his stomach moving around and is vomiting blood on a regular basis. He is in bad shape and he won’t seek help. It seems that the parasites are manipulating him, making him think that he cannot live without them. His wife Janine (Susan Petrie) is helpless in the matter, and gets treated poorly when her hubby does respond to her inquires.
This movie is paced very well, and the sex zombies are fantastic. Sex zombies…leave it to the 1970’s. You’d never see that nowadays and I’m glad that I stumbled across this movie. I especially love the ending where Roger is trying to escape the apartment building but women and men are throwing themselves at him. If he wanted a sloppy parasite blow job, he wouldn’t have to ask. Why the hell was he trying to escape? I guess that guy that looked sort of like Tom Selleck would have scared me off too. He had that “tear that shit up” look in his eye, but the hot girls running around looking for sex? Jeez…why you running from that Roger? I would have told my wife that they took advantage of me…god damn sex zombies. (Note: Not the horny Tom Selleck one.)
This film also delivers a great horror film ending and is another hidden gem from the 1970’s. I recommend this and if you like sex zombies, this is the movie for you.
Scared Stiff Rating: 7/10.
