'Shivers' was the first major horror movie from Canadian film maker David Cronenberg, future director of 'The Brood', 'Scanners', 'Rabid', 'Videodrome', and the remake of 'The Fly'. I saw it in 1979 when it played on a double-bill with 'Rabid'. Afterwards, I found I had missed the last bus, and had to walk home three miles along a dimly-lit country road. You have no idea how scared I was! ( film critic Barry Norman said he felt like throwing up in the gutter after watching it ). <br /><br />Shot in Montreal and on a low budget, 'Shivers' is set in a newly opened posh apartment block. One of the residents, a doctor, is struggling with a schoolgirl. He overpowers her, puts her under anaesthetic, and opens her stomach, before pouring acid into it. He then cuts his own throat with a scalpel.<br /><br />He has created a strain of parasites intended to replace malfunctioning internal organs but which are now out of control. Resembling big worms, these bugs are passed onto people via sexual intercourse. Annabelle, the schoolgirl, has slept with every man in the building. Once infected, the victims - male and female, young and old alike - spread the plague to others, who then vomit blood and bugs all over the place. A small group of people try to escape but the victims have sealed the exits and cut off the phone lines.<br /><br />This is 'Night Of The Living Dead' with an interesting, perverse twist. The zombies don't want to eat you, they want to make love to you! In common with many other '70's horror films, the lack of money proved advantageous as film makers had to rely on their imaginations to create terror, rather than fall back on the safety net of special effects. Romero, Carpenter, DePalma, and Cronenberg et al produced some of the finest horror pictures of all time in this period.<br /><br />The cast of 'Shivers' were mainly unknowns, except for Barbara Steele, star of numerous horror classics such as 'Black Sunday' and 'Pit & The Pendulum'. Again this works in the film's favour. You feel as though you are watching real people in danger.<br /><br />No special effects as such, except for Joe Blasco's 'creatures' and they are suitably disgusting. You won't eat a Hot Dog again after seeing this film! Despite the somber mood, there are a few touches of humour, such as a bug landing on someone's umbrella, and a man in a laundry room being ambushed by an obese, unattractive woman who wants his body: "I am hungry for love!". Yuck! One idea Cronenberg would not get away with today is the lift scene in which a mother and her young daughter are confronted by an infected man. The intimation is that he has sex with both of them. The leashed girls crawling around on all fours also probably would not be done now.<br /><br />It is a gripping and terrifying film, but not for everyone - at least one person walked out during the screening I attended in 1979 - and also manages to make a serious comment about the nature of human sexuality. The world the infected wish to create - where everybody makes love all the time - sounds attractive, but what would it means in terms of depersonalisation? ( I know what you are thinking. Who cares? )<br /><br />'Shivers' should not be remade. It was of its time. I would hate to see it redone with lashings of C.G.I. and all its intelligence removed.