Film

Rabid

Name: Rabid
Genre: Horror, Science Fiction
Released: 1977
Cast: Marilyn Chambers, Terri Hanauer, Frank Moore, Joe Silver, Howard Ryshpan

Zombie horror
Science fiction
Very dark
Relentless

Cronenberg's gleefully perverse revenge on cosmetic surgery, a woman transformed by experimental medicine into a vampire who spreads plague through a city. It's body horror as allegory—surgical nightmare meets zombie outbreak—and a portrait of monstrosity blooming from medical hubris. Deliberately provocative, shot with clinical precision, made for anyone curious about where horror lived in the 1970s.

TMDb rating

3.2

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like low-budget body horror with a grubby, Cronenberg-style eye for flesh and paranoia, where the dread builds through ordinary streets and clinics rather than big set pieces.

Skip it if you want slick scares or a tidy, fast plot; it is talky in stretches, the effects show their age, and its pacing drifts between queasy and sluggish.

What it asks of you: Settle in for about ninety minutes of unhurried, grimy 1970s city life, with patience for slow build-up and a tolerance for gore that is more icky than polished.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Fly1986

Cronenberg's remake perfects his obsession with flesh betraying the self. A man's body becomes enemy territory through no fault of his own. It's grotesque, heartbreaking, and undeniably his masterpiece.

But The transformation scenes are sustained and detailed enough to genuinely unsettle. If body horror makes you physically uncomfortable, this will.

The Brood1979

Another Cronenberg fury-dream about trauma made flesh. A woman's rage gives birth to homicidal children. More abstract than Rabid, more purely psychological, equally bizarre and furious.

But The imagery is strange rather than thrilling—it's more an endurance test for weirdness than a conventional narrative.

Shivers1975

Cronenberg's debut: parasites in an apartment building that make residents lose all inhibition. The grandfather of epidemic horror in close quarters. Sickly funny, genuinely unsettling, and entirely its own thing.

But It's deliberately provocative about sexuality in ways that feel dated rather than transgressive. Some may find it more distasteful than scary.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Rabid

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers1978

Both are about epidemic horror triggered by transformation—your own body becomes the weapon that spreads contagion.

Kaufman's remake captures the same paranoia about your body becoming something hostile, something you inhabit but cannot control. The plague spreads through touch and intimacy. Both films are about loss of self through no moral failure of your own.

But It's a slower-burn sci-fi thriller than straight horror. The political allegory is there but subtle, which some find underbaked.

Videodrome1983

A video pirate loses his grip on reality through a mysterious broadcast. Cronenberg at his most hallucinatory and conceptual—a fever dream about media and desire that gets more relevant and more bewildering with time.

But The plot deliberately unravels. If you need things explained and resolved clearly, this will frustrate you.

Dead Ringers1988

Twin gynecologists descend into codependency and madness. Cronenberg's most controlled and tragic work—intimate psychological horror with Jeremy Irons delivering a performance that demands attention.

But It's slow and deeply unpleasant in ways that accumulate rather than shock. There's no catharsis, only rot.

Scanners1981

Telepaths with godlike powers clash across a conspiracy thriller. Exploding heads, philosophical ambition, and genuine suspense wrapped around Cronenberg's gift for making the impossible feel visceral.

But The second half pivots toward more conventional spy-thriller plotting, which some find a betrayal of the premise.

eXistenZ1999

Reality and video game blur in a tense, delirious escape thriller. Deliberately confusing and strange, built on paranoia and Cronenberg's commitment to making the weird feel ordinary.

But It actively resists being understood. Some read it as pretentious rather than genuinely enigmatic.

Cosmopolis2012

A billionaire's limo ride across Manhattan becomes a spiral into meaninglessness. Adapted from Don DeLillo, visually baroque, a fascinating late-period Cronenberg exercise in watching society collapse from inside a car.

But It's willfully stilted and abstract. The dialogue is artificial on purpose, which reads as cold rather than fascinating to many.

Ms .451981

Both films use a woman's transformation as the engine for spreading chaos and violence. Where Rabid sees her as a plague, Ms. 45 asks us to see her as justified.

Abel Ferrara's acid-bright revenge film: a mute seamstress is assaulted and remade into an avenger. Like Rabid, it's about a woman's violation and the violence that follows, but it owns her rage instead of pathologizing it. Brutal, gorgeous, feminist in its fury.

But It's graphically violent and doesn't pretend otherwise. The ending is deliberately unresolved and harsh. It will anger you, possibly more than it satisfies you.

Dead Poets Society1989

All three are about a normal body or person becoming host to something grotesque and foreign, spreading contagion or horror through a society that can't stop it.

A teenager discovers his wealthy suburb is literally a body—the wealthy are a parasitic collective organism. Screaming Body Horror, full of practical effects so grotesque they're almost funny, wildly ambitious and genuinely demented. Punk-rock premise, punk-rock execution.

But It's cheap-looking and relentlessly ugly. The acting is broad. Many will find it ridiculous rather than effective. It's difficult to take seriously because it doesn't.