Rabid.

Being the earliest entry into the Cronenberg oeuvre I have seen, it also feels the most deliciously classic. The visceral money shots that pre-date his most well known films are right at home and in appropriately raw form. In the wake of a motorcycle crash, a young girl undergoes lifesaving experimental surgery that leaves her hungry for blood, which she sucks from other humans through a blunt proboscis located under her left armpit. Those that she bites turn rabid, foaming from the mouth with bloodshot eyes and a hunger for flesh. The film has the air of a zombie outbreak, although in this case started by innocent porn star Marilyn Chambers in the quaint Quebec countryside.

Rabid is a telling film in the avid work of Cronenberg. The dangers of medical experimentation are explored to extensive degrees and the wider impact clearly warned of. Yet in comparison to heavier films like Videodrome, it is relatively easy to sit back and enjoy. Evidence of the young state of his career, this film certainly paves the way, both thematically and visually, for what Cronenberg will be most remembered for. We see it here in the rampant flesh explosions as the rabid citizens are gunned down. We also are treated to the fleshy orifice from which the hematophagic plunger emerges. And while the film may not be the most technically developed of its kind, its inclusion in this particular oeuvre awards it more credibility than the slew of b-grade horror films that surround it.

Yet the place that most solidifies this film into Cronenberg’s body of work is in its warning. Similar to a host of his other films, Rabid bluntly exercises fear of the scientific experimentation from which the blood-thirsty girl is created and in turn infects a population. It is in the guise of help, to create a morphogenetically neutral piece of flesh that can replicate any other, that the doctor grafts her skin in an attempt to save her life. And while the potential for such a procedure is more than relevant and current, this case is marked by a severe and dramatic failure.

What Rabid is, then, is a tentatively shlocky yet important stepping-stone for Cronenberg. One cannot expect to arrive at the top, especially with the content and themes of films that are to follow. And just as relevant, and hinted above, the film would likely be a formulaic and perhaps forgettable horror entry if the commanding career of the director had not prospered (in a manner of speaking) as it has.