Oh, YEAH!!! Now THIS is what I'm talking' about!<br /><br />If you want to know who established a new direction towards more originality in horror, you almost don't have to look much further than David Cronenberg. On limited budgets, with practically no-name casts (at least in his earlier work), he created some of the nastiest little gems a horror hound could ever hope to skid across! Where Stanley Kubrick's excursions into sci-fi/horror warned that man's faith in technology would eventually betray and destroy him, David said, "Uh-UNHN, baby! Your body will turn against you first, way before that happens!"<br /><br />He'd said it before quite effectively in his first full-length feature, RABID. Then he took it to the next level with SHIVERS, (released in this country as THEY CAME FROM WITHIN.)<br /><br />At a swanky (well, for the '70's, anyway) and relatively isolated apartment complex outside of Montreal, a young doctor is about to discover the horrifying price for his relentless ambition, (as all well-intended mad doctors must.)<br /><br />In an attempt to develop a living organism that would potentially replace failing human organs as a viable substitute, he has instead created a highly contagious parasite, which infects its victims by means of almost any physical or sexual contact and turns them into deranged, sex-crazed zombies! Once the doctor thought he was the master of his creation, but now he is the Host! And for his mistake, everyone else in the complex is about to pay the ultimate price.<br /><br />Though you could say that SHIVERS "borrows" its influence from movies like William Castle's THE TINGLER or the cult favorites THE FLESH EATERS or FIEND WITHOUT A FACE, Cronenberg has put more thought - and a lot more gore - behind his movie than any of those. Plus you just can't go wrong when a movie allows Scream Queen Legend Barbara Steele to strip down and get naked in a bathtub scene...which is only sexy for about a minute, and I won't say more than THAT.<br /><br />Well, whatever inspired him to make it, Cronenberg in turn 'infected' countless other filmmakers with his vision of parasitic terror, and many, many horror films since have duplicated the SHIVERS vibe, (NIGHT OF THE CREEPS, THE HIDDEN, SLUGS and most recently the excellent SLITHER, just to name a few.) <br /><br />Though the low-budget is pretty obvious and some things about it are dated, (this WAS over thirty years ago, after all), Cronenberg still stages some scenes of horror here that will have you open-mouthed with shock and surprise. (Considering the plot of SHIVERS, though, you may want to keep your mouth shut...as much as possible!)