disgusting, overrated, pointless

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The film starts with Rose and her boyfriend Hart getting into an accident in the remote countryside. With no other option, they are sent to the Keloid Clinic for Plastic Surgery, with Hart suffering only a broken hand, separated shoulder and a concussion. Rose, however, is barely alive, needing several operations and skin grafts from being burned. Dr. Dan Keloid decides to try something new: he uses "morphogenetically neutral grafts" to heal her damaged tissue, hoping that it will heal on its own. A month later, Hart is ready to go home, but she remains in a coma.Sometime later - time isn't really of the essence in this nightmare world - Rose awakens screaming. When Lloyd, another patient in the clinic, comes to help her, she somehow cuts him. He doesn't remember how it happened, but his blood no longer clots and he can no longer feel pain. And Rose? Well, now she has a wound in her armpit that looks sexual - male and female at the same time. Shades of God Told Me To?Now, Rose can only subsist on human blood, which she discovers after cow's blood causes her to puke. A farmer watches and tries to rape her, but she is the predator now, soon devouring him and turning him into a zombie-like monster.All hell soon breaks loose - Lloyd attacks a taxi driver after escaping from the clinic, killing them both. Dr. Keloid attacks everyone within his own clinic. Rose tries to get Hart to save her, but escapes on her own, infecting people all along the way.Soon, Quebec is a nightmare city, with maniacs using jackhammers to tear people from cars, Santa Claus getting shot and a shoot to kill martial law policy being enacted on anyone showing signs of the virus.Hart tries to reason with Rose - she is the cause of all of this and needs to be stopped. Of course, things can't work out well. The world of Soylent Green has become near truth - there are so many dead people, garbage trucks are the only solution.Cronenberg wanted to cast Sissy Spacek in the lead, but her accent didn't work for the film's producers. He heard from Ivan Reitman, the executive producer, that adult film star Marilyn Chambers was looking for a mainstream role. Her being in the film would help sell it and she put in plenty of work, so Cronenberg was happy with the results. In fact, he had never seen the movie that made her famous, Behind the Green Door.Chambers was quite literally a pure Ivory Soap girl - appearing on a box of that cleaning product as a young mother with the tag "99 & 44/100% pure." Her appearing in the Mitchell Brothers' film - released at the height of post-Deep Throat porn chic, when adult films entered mainsteam consciousness - was a sensation. It didn't hurt that she was also the first white women in a major adult film to have a scene with a black man, Johnnie Keyes.Chambers was in the midst of trying a singing career - her song "Benihana" can be heard in this film - and she was married to Chuck Traynor, ex-husband of Linda Lovelace. You could write a novel about the mania of that dude.That said - for being a sex queen, Chambers comes off as cold in this film. That's probably Cronenberg's goal, to subvert notions. Even his heroes are no heroes. No one can stop what is set in motion and everyone is ineffectual. Such is the Cronenberg universe.One thing I've always wondered - why did they spoil the ending of this film in the original poster?

As big of a name that David Cronenberg is in the horror scene, then I can't really claim to be a fan of everything that he touches. I have never heard about "Rabid" before I happened to stumble upon in this late in 2017. I read the synopsis and it sounded like something that could potentially be alright, as it did have that zombiesque vibe to it.I managed to endure 30 minutes of "Rabid" before I gave up out of sheer and utter boredom. I actually found myself with my mobile phone in my hand and was playing a game while watching this movie. Yeah, it was that boring to me.From what I managed to see during the 30 minutes that I sat through, then there was nothing appealing or interesting here that fell into my taste and preference. So I can in all honesty say that I am not going to return to watch "Rabid" later on in order to finish it.As for the cast and their acting talents, well, I can't really complain about anything here. The acting seemed adequate considering that the movie was from 1977 and given the limitations of the script and storyline imposed on them."Rabid" didn't really make much use of special effects in the 30 minutes that I managed to endure. So whether or not the movie actually did well on the effects department, that I cannot make a proper statement about.This was a rather bland and uneventful 30 minutes that I will never get back. And from what I saw, then my rating of "Rabid" is a meager 3 out of 10 stars, and I do feel somewhat large and generous here actually. The movie cover boasted "Pray it doesn't happen to you", which actually happened to summarize the feeling of having to sit down to watch the movie quite well.

In Camelford, while swinging his van across a narrow road to make a u- turn, a driver stalls the vehicle that does not restart. Hart Read (Frank Moore) is driving his motorcycle with his girlfriend Rose (Marilyn Chambers) and he drives off the road to avoid the collision. Hart suffers minor injuries while Rosie is injured and burned by the flames when the motorcycle explodes. The ambulance from the nearby Keloid Clinic for Plastic Surgery brings the couple and Rose, who is in coma, is submitted to an emergency surgery and to an experimental plastic-surgery technique by Dr. Dan Keloid (Howard Ryshpan) to retrieve her skin in the chest and abdomen. Hart is discharged but Rose stays in coma in the intensive care unit (ICU) to recover. Out of the blue, Rose awakens from her coma one month later and screams. A nurse helps her but is wounded by her and then he cannot remember what has happened to him. He is sent to a hospital in Montreal while Rose realizes that she needs to feed with blood. However her victims become zombie-like creatures. Rose flees from the clinic to Montreal to meet her friend Mindy Kent (Susan Roman) spreading her infection in the big city. Meanwhile Hart is seeking for her."Rabid" is a horror film by David Cronenberg that becomes better with time. In the present days, with so many news and unknown worldwide diseases, the idea of an infection that spreads in a geometric progression turning people into zombie-like creatures is totally feasible. Marilyn Chambers, from the cult adult film "Behind the Green Door", surprises with a good performance. The conclusion is deceptive and could be better, maybe due to lack of budget. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Enraivecida na Fúria do Sexo" ("Rabid in the Fury of Sex")

Being a David Cronenberg fan, I was really looking forward to seeing 'Rabid.' Granted I've left it a bit late, watching it after pretty much all his other films. And perhaps that was the wrong way to do it. Basically, I preferred his other stuff. Although that's not to say that Rabid isn't without its shades of goodness.It's a zombie film. Nothing new there these days, but, in the seventies, the undead were still a rarity. Okay, so the purists will shout how these 'zombies' aren't really zombies, but, like with films such as '28 Days Later' the principal is the same, i.e. you get bitten, you turn into one. Here, a young woman suffers a horrific motorcycle accident and, during the experimental surgery to save her, she contracts a disease (much like rabies) which makes her hungry to bite people (albeit with a weird extra spike protruding from her – you'll have to watch the film to see what I mean by that, as it's a little hard to describe!).Basically, it's a slow burner. Don't expect any 'Dawn of the Dead' type action sequences to move it along. The first half was actually a little too slow for my liking, but I am glad I stuck with it, as the true 'horror' of the situation is cranked up in the second act. You actually get some pretty hard hitting scenes that are quite bleak and nasty if you're prepared to wait for them, as the authorities find the disease pretty hard to contain.All performances are functional. None of the actors really stand out too much. You'll have to remember that it was the seventies when this was made, so 'attractiveness' wasn't high up on the list of requisites for male acting leads. The actress at the centre of it all – if you believe the trivia surrounding the film – was picked due to her good looks over other actresses deemed better at their trade, but lacking in the 'bombshell' qualities.So, if you're looking for a slow-burning blast-from-the-past with a decent amount of gore and creepiness in the latter stages, give this a go. Personally, I preferred Cronenberg's Shivers, Videodrome, Scanners and The Fly, but I didn't regret at least seeing Rabid.