Eviscerating Middle Class Comfort: David Cronenberg's Rabid and the City of Montreal

by Nick Thomson © 2024

N.B. The following is an updated version of an essay that I wrote in April 2005, titled “Tearing Apart Stuffy, Middle Class Comfort: David Cronenberg's Rabid and the City of Montreal”, for a third year course called 'Canadian & Québecois Cinema', during my degree in Film & Television Studies at the University of East Anglia.

Do also note that the following contains SPOILERS for the films discussed.

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David Cronenberg's second full-length feature film Rabid (1976) became a conspicuous financial success, emerging “unexpectedly from a country at best in the twilight zone of film-consciousness”ⁱ focusing on a “disease-driven apocalyptic revolution”ⁱⁱ set in the city of Montreal, in the Canadian province of Québec. The film centres on Rose (Marilyn Chambers), who suffers severe injuries after being involved in a motorcycle crash on a lonely country road with her boyfriend Hart (Frank Moore). She is whisked away to the nearby Keloid Clinic – a private health centre for plastic surgery – where the opportunistic Dr Keloid (Howard Ryshpan) uses her as his guinea pig. Cronenberg's disparaging reaction to institutional life is central to his films, most potently in his early works, from the Somafree Institute in The Brood (1979) to Consec in Scanners (1981) and Spectacular Optical in Videodrome (1983), in which they all lead towards disease, trauma, and death.

Foreseeing present day skin graft and stem cell techniques, Cronenberg introduces the viewer to 'neutral field tissue', which has the ability to rebuild damaged flesh and conform itself according to the characteristics of its new locale on the human body; this is a continuation of a thought process started in 1975 with Shivers. In that film, within the Starliner Tower (an apartment complex on the outskirts of Montreal, designed to house every consumer need) a parasite has been developed, intended to replicate human organs, but which instead turns the host into a sex-crazed lunatic intent on only three things: lust, murder, and the spreading of their disease. The final shot of the film sees the contaminated inhabitants of this secluded, stylish, and modern community heading off to corrupt the rest of the world, an infection aimed outwards by comparison to the inward spread of disinhibition and social collapse witnessed in J.G. Ballard's novel High Rise, also released in 1975; Cronenberg would adapt Ballard's 1973 novel Crash to much controversy in 1996. Building on this shared fascination, Rabid continues Cronenberg's critique on a progressive society by subtly undermining comfortable middle-class idleness as a predatory civilisation obsessed with cosmetic surgery...

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Flavours of the Month: August 2011...

LOOKS:

Hobo With A Shotgun (Blu-Ray) - my favourite movie of 2011 finally hits UK shores on home video. Check out my review from earlier this month.

Beaver Falls - showing on E4, this show about three Brits who spend their summer as camp counsellors at an American summer camp is pretty good fun. It's much better than Glory Daze which also showed on E4 earlier this year, but a mere six episodes in length feels a bit too brief.

Wilfred - a sitcom about Elijah Wood and a guy dressed as a dog (but is actually a dog to everyone else). Nuff said. Good fun.

SOUNDS:

Nirvana - I've been touring through their back catalogue, from "Bleach" to "Unplugged In New York".

Rage Against The Machine "Maggie's Farm" - as heard at the end of The Other Guys.

VIBES & FLAVOURS:

Alan Wake - I've been meaning to replay Remedy's excellent 'psychological action thriller', but there had always been something else to fill my designated 'videogame time' - however I finally got around to giving it a second run through, and once again I loved every second of it. It deserved to sell many more units than it did (it clashed with the excellent Red Dead Redemption, after numerous delays), and while it has some flaws, it's just so involving and atmospheric and has that unique Remedy vibe.

Scotland - I was off on holiday to Scotland again this year to catch a bit of the festival and do some of the tourist spots. The Royal Yacht Britannia, Best of the Fest, Ed Byrne at the EICC, The Real Mary King's Close, and Stirling Castle were some of the highlights - and I even spotted comedian Mark Watson walking past the BBC Three compound.

Frank Miller "Sin City: The Hard Goodbye" - I loved the movie, but I haven't gotten around to reading the graphic novels, however I finally gave this one a read (included with the Recut & Extended Region 1 DVD that I got damn near six years ago) and so I think I must give the un-filmed books a look-see.

Triple Bill Mini Musings: Booze, Zombies, and Cannonballers...

The Untouchables: A classily made drama about prohibition and the take down of Al Capone from Brian DePalma, what's not to like? While the script can suddenly leap forward in time a bit too readily on occasion, it doesn't stop the film exuding a clear sense of quality. For example, one sequence at a train station is a masterclass in tension building, and it even references the famous sequence from Battleship Potemkin involving a baby in a pram during the slow motion climax of the scene. Plus it's got Billy Drago in it, and what's not to like about that? Nightmare City: Umberto Lenzi's action-horror features zombies, or are they infected people, or are they vampires? Whichever way, the movie cannot decide, and freely does whatever it damn well pleases. Long before horrifically convincing infection flicks like 28 Days (and Weeks) Later - both of which are NOT zombie films, FYI - the Italians were running around with gleeful abandon, just like their infected-vampire-zombie-things. A mysterious plane lands, a bunch of infected loons wreak havoc, and the infection spreads from one disjointed plot point to another ... but then many of those working in Italian exploitation didn't care much for well crafted scripts (one scene in a military bunker features the most atrociously overcooked, underwritten, ill-considered dialogue this side of Ed Wood). On the plus side, despite the complete and utter lack of cohesion, there's a good helping of action and bloodletting, doled out by these infected freaks who seem to have a distinct distaste for women's blouses. A final point of interest is that the lead protagonist is played by Hugo Stiglitz - whose name was used for an infamously deadly Nazi killer in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (which also referenced Antonio Margheriti, director of Cannibal Apocalypse - another Euro-Exploitation flick which did a more convincing job of illustrating a city-wide blood-thirsty epidemic). The Cannonball Run: Being a fan of the likes of the Gumball Rally, and the Bullrun, it was cool to finally see the movie which inspired them both. A bunch of oddballs (played by various big names and character actors of the day) all go tearing across America in a race to cover 3000 miles in 72 hours. It's silly, it's a little bit cheesy, but it's also an old school early-80s slice of good fun ... and further on the plus side, Adrienne Barbeau makes a memorable appearance as a Lamborghini Countach racing beauty.

City of the Living Dead...

AKA "The Gates of Hell" in the USA.

It's been in my collection for ages now, and I've just never gotten around to it until the other day. I've been in a bit of a grindhouse vibe of late again (what with Cannibal Apocalypse and The New York Ripper last month), so it was time for a new (to me) slice of Lucio Fulci - this time his 1980 supernatural undead follow-up to his rather successful (and rather good) Dawn of the Dead rip-off Zombi 2 (aka Zombie Flesh Eaters) from 1979.

Unfortunately, while COTLD looks the part with creepy, smoke-drenched production design, luxurious camerawork (even if the stylishly fun zooms are overused), and moments of superb gore (a fantastic scene where one victim cries blood - with utterly convincing make-up effects - before vomiting up her own innards steals the whole show, as does a scene which introduces a head to a bench drill), it just doesn't live up to the pace (or gore) of Zombi 2, nor the exploitation hallmarks of The New York Ripper.

Indeed the pace of the plot is at times mind-numbing in its ponderousness, and while sleazy grindhouse flicks aren't renowned for having Oscar-worthy scripts, COTLD barelys makes a lick of sense for the most part which leaves the viewer frustrated, confused and bored. It's only in the final act that things begin to pick up pace (aside from a few choice moments in the first hour) and the film starts to live up to its name ... although neither of the titles mentioned here are lived up to. Dunwich certainly isn't a city (it's more like a rural town), and there's not nearly enough of the supernatural/hell aspect to warrant the North American title - what's more, there's not nearly enough zombies throughout until the final moments.

All-in-all, while it's dripping with style and looks, and moments of fantastic gore, it simply cannot match its peers, nor better examples of Fulci's work. A shame really.

Sounds of the City (2005)...

This was the first of two group projects shot for the Documentary Video Production course at the University of East Anglia, and it was all about the buskers on the streets of Norwich city centre. I fondly remember how we studiously worked constantly with the tripod and boom microphone as a foursome, running around the city centre pointing our camera at the variety of buskers.


Unfortunately after the first of two days of filming I ended up with a dreadful flu and was physically incapable of making the second day. I also remember the tense times editing the projects for Documentary Video Production – four people crammed inside a small, non air-conditioned edit suite. It was ultimately a good lesson in group work ethics, and it was a pretty good little video that was well-liked by our tutor and peers.


Watch the film below: