Shocktoberfest 2019 Begins! Rabid (1977) [Cronenberg]

This is not the first time David Cronenberg’s 1977 film  Rabid has been reviewed at the Insomniac Theater. When I wrote about it in 2010, it was as a pre-AIDS metaphor for the devastation of a sexually transmitted epidemic. This time around, I tried to look at it from a different perspective.

Recently, I read Sady Doyle’s interesting and provocative book Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers, which has the subtitle “Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Female Power.” I first heard about Ms Doyle when she was interviewed by one of the co-hosts of the Faculty of Horror podcast.  Faculty of Horror takes a scholarly, more academic approach to horror to look beyond the ghoulish thrills and chills of as an attempt to unearth where the roots of horror run.  Ms Doyle's assertions that the creation of female monsters is a direct result of men's fear of females and are often attempts by men to control women were quite interesting.

Attempting to watch Rabid through that lens, Rose, the female protagonist and Typhoid Mary of a sexual pestilence, is a victim of men's oppression who takes back her power in a fearful way.  She is surrounded by men who hurt her, albeit accidentally, who want to sleep with her or to control her, and they turn her into a monster of enormous power that unleashes a plague of violence and death on a large metropolitan area.

The first act perfectly puts all the players in place as young lovers Hart and Rose survive a horrific motorcycle crash. In order to save her life, the plastic surgeon Dr. Keloid, who has pioneered a new skin graft technique, recklessly attempts an experimental procedure  on her. The second act is about her learning to survive as a new creation. She awakes from her coma and wanders the hospital and surrounding countryside using phallic shaped proboscis that emerges from a very vaginal looking new orifice in the graft area to feed and protect herself from would be rapists. The male survivors wake, themselves transformed into blood thirsty monsters that further spread the epidemic.

Rabid transforms in  a revenge movie when Rose returns to Montreal in the final act. There she haunts places women seldom go alone, an adult movie theater, an empty lobby at night, the mall, infecting  the men who approach her. This part of the film resembles George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, which was released the previous year,there is even an attack in a mall. But this time, instead of focusing on a small group attempts to survive, it is the monsters themselves and most specifically Typhoid Rose that takes the center stage. Systematic chaos ensues as the city handles its new health crisis by declaring martial law.

As an added bonus, it is Christmas time in Montreal!

IMDB      |    Trailer