Sex is everywhere in the films of David Cronenberg, from his most violent horror films to his most austere dramas. The messiness of desire, and the strange things that it can reveal about people, have always been the things that have animated Cronenberg throughout his career. The early films are the ones that have what might best be called a “warts and all” approach to sex and desire. In particular, Shivers (1975), and Rabid (1977) grapple with sex and sexuality in a way that creates a thorny relationship with queerness. It might be easy to dismiss the representations in these films as “problematic,” but there’s something about the extremes that they go between that makes them endlessly compelling.

Shivers and Rabid could both be described with the same one-line summary: something passes between people through a kind of sexual contact, and this leads to monstrosity and violence. Shivers approaches it in a slightly more classically science-fiction way, complete with a variation on the mad scientist archetype in the form of Emil Hobbes. What Hobbes wanted to do was create a parasite that was, “A combination of aphrodisiac and venereal disease that will, hopefully, turn the world into one mindless orgy.” If the climax of Shivers is anything to go by, Hobbes succeeds in his mission. The idea of a parasite-fuelled orgy obviously creates room for a reading of queerness; rampant bisexuality and nymphomania brought on by an alien parasite obviously panders to some of the worst stereotypes around queerness, from the insatiable bisexual, to paranoia and moral panic around ideas of “infection.”

But the film isn’t as simple as that, Cronenberg doesn’t just use the parasite as a way to make everyone a queer monster, but, instead, as a way to interrogate sexuality and ideas around the erotic, moving from moments of intimacy in one scene to violence in another. Both Shivers and Rabid use images that feel like pornographic staples, from the doctors and nurses in Shivers to the leather-clad bikers that open up Rabid. One scene in Shivers has an older patient, Brad, flirting with a nurse, in what feels like a knowing nudge and wink to the stereotypes of the erotic. There’s a much darker riff on this later in the film once the parasites have run riot over the isolated Starliner Towers, as one man offers his daughter to another for sex, constantly saying, “I think you’ll like my daughter.” There’s a very dark comedy at work here, shoe-horning in the taboo.

But for all of the taboo and monstrosity that Shivers embraces, some of its most powerful moments come from explorations of sexuality that have nothing to do with Hobbes’ parasites. One of film’s narrative threads is the tentative relationship between Janine Tudor (Susan Petrie), and Betts (Barbara Steele). Janine’s marriage is unhappy, and her friendship with Betts flirts with queerness, a kind of intimacy she’s unable to find at home – her husband is cold and unfeeling until the parasite turns him into a monster. Janine and Betts’ relationship feels genuine; they’re drawn to each other for something that they can’t get anywhere else, and only after Betts is attacked by the parasite is she able to act on it. After being infected, in an intimate moment with Janine, Betts keeps repeating, “Let’s kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss and make up.” The parasite serves as a way to allow Betts to act on her desires, offering up a strange kind of liberation. It’s no accident that much of Starliner Towers is defined by coldness, a lack of physical affection between couples, lives that are isolated by more than just geography. This is what allows Cronenberg to flirt with liberation in Shivers, by exploring the – admittedly twisted – kind of freedom that the parasite offers, leaving people uninhibited and able to act on desires that they’ve kept hidden. The film’s now (relatively) famous climax, the residents of Starliner Towers in a swimming people, hands all over each other, as the last uninfected man is kissed in slow motion – an image that’s mirrored in Rabid – and the self-described “island” of Starliner becomes something different altogether. Of course, it’s like the “mindless orgy” that Emile threatened/promised (delete as appropriate) to deliver. But there’s also something about it that offers a kind of freedom, a liberation from the coldness of Starliner towers, with characters like Betts and Janine able to embrace their desire for one another.

One of the key differences in terms of queerness in Rabid when compared to Shivers is the extent to which the former embodies changes in sex(uality). In many ways, Rabid acts as a kind of precursor to the (in)famous stomach scene in Videodrome (1983), wherein the body of Max Renn (James Woods) mutates and he pulls a gun from a vagina that grows in his stomach. Rabid predates this with the changes that Rose (Marilyn Chambers) undergoes after her infection, growing something that looks vaguely phallic in her armpit, and using it as a way to transmit her infection in a way that echoes the sexuality associated with vampires.

When Rose infects people, the camera focuses on her new mutant appendage and shows it penetrating her victims. This penetration is what makes it read as a sexual act, as it often accompanies Rose in moments of intimacy. Like Shivers, the infections in Rabid heighten both sex drive and an appetite for violence. In Shivers, sex and violence become intertwined by the parasite; in Janine’s marriage, and in one scene of a woman, newly-infected and with blood on her lips, bellowing that she’s “hungry for love” as she looks for someone new to infect. This monstrosity is approached slightly differently in Rabid; both Rose and her victims have moments of lucidity, and instead become overtaken by their rabid desires.

Unlike Shivers, Rabid approaches the theme of venereal disease in greater detail. The fact that Starliner Towers is isolated from the rest of the world makes a more widespread infection a less important detail, but, in Rabid, Rose is told, “You carry the plague, you’ve killed hundreds of people,” and her treatment as a kind of Patient Zero reads as darkly prophetic of what the next decade would bring for queer people. As Rabid is much darker than Shivers, it’s more difficult to read the events here through the lens of liberation and, instead, they become emblematic of infection. More so than Shivers, Rabid looks at these ideas through science: while Shivers gives a one-line summary of a mad scientist’s parasite, Rabid presents Rose after a horrifying crash, being saved by scientists and surgeons who try to graft “more genetic tissue” over her injuries, an experiment that goes horribly awry.

In many ways, Rabid feels like an echo of Shivers, and some of this comes through in the ways that both films engage with ideas of intimacy and eroticism. One of the most striking things about how both films handle this are in the moments that explore queer desire without infection or monstrosity, amplifying them and creating the fascinating sense of liberation that runs through to the climax of Shivers, through the relationship between Janine and Betts. But, in Rabid, though there’s a similar scene of queer intimacy, it’s rendered tragic by infection.

Rose and another woman are in a hot tub. The dialogue reads like a kind of pornographic setup; this is amplified by Cronenberg’s casting of Marilyn Chambers, who played the female lead in the hardcore porn film Behind the Green Door in 1972, and in the Insatiable series in the 1980s. The latter, in a way fitting with the proliferation of sex in Cronenberg’s body horror films, have Chambers’ character asking for “more, more, more” as the credits roll. The hot tub scene has dialogue like, “Do you mind if I get in with you? My body aches all over. I’m so glad I ran into you.” There’s an intimacy here that reads as genuine to begin with, but is turned on its head when Rose is overcome by her disease, an echo of the “kiss and make up” scene in Shivers. These moments of queer intimacy that read as genuine, not just something created by aphrodisiac parasites or experimental surgery gone wrong, are key in considering how Cronenberg’s body horror approaches queer identity relative to the “mindless orgy” that’s promised in Shivers. By presenting these scenes in a way that’s stripped back, with the horror elements literally fighting their way in, Shivers and Rabid refuse to present queerness as something inherently monstrous, something that still has power and resonance decades later.

One element of Rabid stands alone and has no point of comparison with Shivers: the ways in which Rose’s infection – and the way that she transmits it – explore the idea of gendered bodies in flux. It creates a role reversal when she infects men: she’s the one that penetrates them. And more importantly than just the ways in which Rabid explores gender roles through sex, is the fact that Rose’s body exists outside of the norms of biology. In The American Nightmare (2000), Cronenberg describes the idea that, in his films, “Biology is destiny,” and that the characters are rebelling against destiny when they challenge the norms of biology, as Rose does in Rabid. Rose’s body-in-flux invites readings of people who don’t consider themselves to be outside of the gender norm as being monsters, but it’s this challenge against destiny that gives it a more nuanced angle. It never reaches the point of liberation, but, instead, a kind of reckoning, a moment where Rabid seems to stare into the limits of biology, gender, and sex. It’s messy, evil, and to say that it presents a positive image of queerness is short-sighted, but, like the Starliner residents at the end of Shivers, it dives headfirst into the waters of identity, refusing to look away from the contradictions it creates by tying together ideas of sex, bodies, violence, and intimacy. Both Shivers and Rabid create monsters, but their power comes from acknowledging not only the humanity that was inherent in them to begin with, but in asking the questions of what happens when the monsters take over; what they reveal about the old world order, and the places offered to outsiders when a new one is dawning.

Sam Moore is a writer, artist, and editor. Their work has been published by the LA Review of Books, i-D, the BFI, and other places. They are one of the founding editors of Powder, a queer zine of art and literature.

Julia Sayapina is an llustrator and artist based in Moscow. She works worldwide on self-publishing art projects, illustrations, collaborations with other artists and teaches contemporary art. Julia is most inspired by cinema, music and literature and how they can interact with the visual arts. Her main interest is horror and its intersection with queer and feminist topics.

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Bloody Women

A Mindless Orgy: Liberation and Monstrosity in Cronenberg's Body Horror