Overview
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Release Date:
6 July 1976 (USA)
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Tagline:
T-E-R-R-O-R beyond the power of priest or science to exorcise.
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Plot:
The residents of a suburban high-rise apartment building are being infected by a strain of parasites that turn them into mindless, sex-crazed fiends out to infect others by the slightest sexual contact.
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User Comments:
Night of the slimy sex-monsters
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Crew believed to be complete
Additional Details
Also Known As:
Frissons (Canada: French title)
Orgy of the Blood Parasites (Canada: English title) (working title)
The Parasite Complex (Canada: English title) (working title)
The Parasite Murders
They Came from Within (USA)
Parasiten-Mörder (Austria) (West Germany) [de]Dreszcze (Poland) [pl]Frissons (France) [fr]Frossa (Sweden) [sv]Il demone sotto la pelle (Italy) [it]Kylmät väreet (Finland) [fi]Os Parasitas da Morte (Portugal) [pt]Vénen de dintre de... (Spain: Catalan title) [ca]Vinieron de dentro de... (Spain) [es]
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Runtime:
87 min
Aspect Ratio:
1.33 : 1
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Fun Stuff
Trivia:
Canadian journalist Robert Fulford attacked the content of ‘Shivers’ in the pages of the national magazine, ‘Saturday Night’. Since Cronenberg's film was partially financed by the taxpayer-funded National Film Board of Canada (or NFB), Fulford headlined the article "You Should Know How Bad This Movie Is, You Paid For It". Not only did this high profile attack make it more difficult for Cronenberg to obtain funding for his subsequent breakthrough movies, but Cronenberg later said Fulford's attack on him also resulted in him being kicked out of his apartment in Toronto.
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Goofs:
Continuity: Roger St Luc rings the old French couple from the lobby after being attacked in the basement. But we saw the manager cut the phone lines in the previous scene. Despite this, the French couple answer the phone and tell St Luc his girlfriend the nurse has left the apartment. But the reason she had left the apartment was because the phone had been cut off.
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Quotes:
Forsythe:
He tells me that even old flesh is erotic flesh, that disease is the love of two alien kinds of creatures for each other, that even dying is an act of eroticism.
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Cronenberg's variation on the Zombie theme was his first full length feature film and for this it is surprisingly good.
From the technical point of view, it is very amateurish. The lighting and camera work are highly reminiscent of home made Super 8, and the sound is bad beyond belief.
Although the mindless creatures attacking anything that moves immediately recall the Zombies, Cronenberg's movie has some original ideas. In fact, watching German television these days, the subject of bored middle class diving into sex orgies (at least in their fantasy) seems more up to date than ever. Unlike Romero's Zombies, Cronenberg's creatures simply embark into endless sexual excesses, including minors. Indeed, one of the most scandalous scene shows two young girls on dog leashes, climbing up a stair and barking - unexcusable image!
The special effects in "Shivers" work very well and are more slimy, organic, and visceral than say Romero's, and give better testimony of the vulnerability of the human body. They set the tone for Cronenberg's use of gore in his subsequent films.
"Shivers" earned Cronenberg immediately the title of the "reigning king of shlock horror" - very appropriate.