A silly but moderately effective chiller about creeping parasites that systematically (and comically) 'infect' an entire highrise population with nothing less than sexual hysteria.
Shivers
✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Canada · 1975
Rated R · 1h 28m
Director David Cronenberg
Starring Paul Hampton, Joe Silver, Lynn Lowry, Barbara Steele
Genre Horror
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As a result of the actions of an unscrupulous doctor, the residents of a suburban high-rise apartment building become infected by a strain of parasites that turn them into mindless, sex-crazed fiends out to infect others by the slightest sexual contact.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Like the creatures in the films, and many of Cronenberg's other films themselves, Shivers is disturbing on an almost biological level.
TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh
Cronenberg's brand of body horror isn't to everyone's taste, but to call him a reactionary anti-sensualist who metes out grotesque punishment for sins of the flesh -- as detractors have -- is to miss the point.
San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle
A paranoid, prurient sexual nightmare.
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
It scares and shocks us because it's so cleverly made; the writer-director, David Cronenberg, uses invention and imagination to replace expensive shock effects.
The New York Times by Vincent Canby
It's apparent that someone connected with They Came From Within has an impertinent sense of humor even though the film is so tackily written and directed, so darkly photographed and the sound so dimly recorded, that it's difficult to stay with it.
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