Rabid (1977)

(On Cable TV, March 2020) Considering that the current international headlines are all about a global pandemic, watching writer-director David Cronenberg’s Rabid isn’t so much mindless fun right now. This being said, even if Rabid is definitely about a zombie epidemic going out of control, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic is unlikely to attain the wild body-horror madness of Cronenberg’s take on a (now) well-worn trope—by the time the heroine (played by porn star Marilyn Chambers) has a phallic appendage growing out of her armpit and motivating her to feed on human blood, well, I feel confident that we’re some way away from even the most horrible reality. What I liked most about the film, however, wasn’t its horror aspect as much as setting and atmosphere—loudly and proudly taking place in late-1970s Montréal, it features eye-catching details of the era and a fun “feels like my childhood” quality to an otherwise humdrum story. But unless you were born within three years and two hundred kilometres from Rabid’s production, I can’t quite promise the same kind of inherent interest. Otherwise, it’s an early Cronenberg, tackling a now-overexposed topic and doing it in a typically Cronenbergian way—which either counts as an advantage or a distraction.