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21 out of 25 people found the following comment useful :-
Cronenberg's Impressive Feature Debut, 20 July 2000
Author: marquis de cinema from Boston, MA

Shivers(1975) is a fascinating first film especially for a person who was learning to direct professionly on the job. An interesting part about this movie is that Cronenberg did Shivers(1975) without having a clue of what people in the film crew does or containing knowledge of film terms. The fact that he made a cult classic is a testament to his potential at the time to be an excellent movie maker. Shivers is basically the first horror film made in Canada as far as I know and David Cronenberg was the first director to open the flood gates for the horror film in Canada.

This motion picture mixes together the erotic with the zombie genre made famous by George Romero in 1968. In fact, there are many references to the zombie classic Night of the Living Dead. The movie is about parasites who enters people's bodies and turn them into sex maniacs. It dares to break many sexual taboos that many film makers would be afraid to explore.

Shivers would provide a starting point for some themes that David Cronenberg would explore in later films like Rabid(1977), The Brood(1979), Scanners(1981), Videodrome(1983), The Fly(1986), Dead Ringers(1988), and Crash(1997). The two themes are disease as the transformation of the body into the next state of evolution for the human being and the other theme of the outsider who does not understand why they are so different from other people. Barbara Stelle provided the movie with many memorable moments especially the infamous "bath tub" scene. It is a groundbreaking movie because it would become a source of many movie directors for the next two decades.

One great scene is the "bath tub" scene which is a classic example of building up suspense until the final moment when the scene ends. Another excellent scene is when the protagonist tries to escape outside and he goes back in as swarms of Sex zombies go chasing after him. I consider this movie the beginning of a trilogy I call the 'sexual evolution' trilogy. The trilogy starts out with Shivers(1975), continues with Videodrome(1983), and finishes with Crash(1997).

Shivers(1975) would be a major influence for the scifi-action thriller The Hidden(1987), especially with the idea of a parasite entering a person's body and changing their entire personal behavior. Also influenced by Shivers were the Alien series(especially Alien(1979) which was made four years after Cronenberg's directioral debut) and there are a couple of examples of this influence. First, the two movies involve parasites who go in and put out of a person's body as well as having acid for blood. Second, They both take place in an isolated and high placed area with Alien(1979) taking place on a spaceship in the middle of nowhere and Shivers(1975) takes place on a apartment complex called the Skyliner Towers on the middle of an island that is isolated from the rest of Canada.

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14 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
Zombies of Sex, 14 February 2006

Author: Claudio Carvalho from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

In the fancy Starliner compound in an island near Montreal, a mad scientist tests a parasite in the body of his mistress. He believes that man is an animal that thinks too much, and he develops a parasite to increase the violence and sexual desire of mankind. There is an outbreak in the condominium, with the fierce dwellers becoming zombies of sex.

"Shivers" is the first movie of this great Canadian cult director David Cronenberg, indeed a very low budget trash movie, with a final cost of US$ 179.000,00. The story mixes humor and horror and the effects are very nasty and disgusting, a trademark of Cronenberg. The story is a kind of sexual version of "The Night of the Living Dead", with people turning out zombies of sex. The screenplay of 1979 "Alien" used many concepts of this movie. The interview of David Cronenberg in the DVD is excellent, and it is very funny to know that the actress Sue Patrick asked him to slap her face in the scenes that she needed to cry, and Barbara Steele reaction to this physical assault. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Calafrios" ("Shivers")

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14 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
Better than expected, 6 September 2001
Author: hugoconductshugo (hugoconductshugo@yahoo.com) from Chicago, IL

I'm a big fan of the director's but had never seen this one until the other day (the VHS re-release "director's cut" or whatever). The other user comments had let me to expect an amateurish curiosity, but I found it polished and feel no need to make any excuses for it (perhaps the new release is a cleaner print).

It's pretty sly, the acting's not bad and I found the film most remarkable for its restraint and subtlety. I'm not sure I buy the idea that the parasites are a metaphor for Americanization - Cronenburg's concerns are, I think, more personal and abstract than such a reading gives him credit for.

The movie is deliberately paced and the shock/gore factor is relatively low. I found it to be a modest footnote in a career that later bore stranger, richer fruit.

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13 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
Night of the slimy sex-monsters, 17 August 2001

Author: AS-69 from Germany

Cronenberg's variation on the Zombie theme was his first full length feature film and for this it is surprisingly good.

From the technical point of view, it is very amateurish. The lighting and camera work are highly reminiscent of home made Super 8, and the sound is bad beyond belief.

Although the mindless creatures attacking anything that moves immediately recall the Zombies, Cronenberg's movie has some original ideas. In fact, watching German television these days, the subject of bored middle class diving into sex orgies (at least in their fantasy) seems more up to date than ever. Unlike Romero's Zombies, Cronenberg's creatures simply embark into endless sexual excesses, including minors. Indeed, one of the most scandalous scene shows two young girls on dog leashes, climbing up a stair and barking - unexcusable image!

The special effects in "Shivers" work very well and are more slimy, organic, and visceral than say Romero's, and give better testimony of the vulnerability of the human body. They set the tone for Cronenberg's use of gore in his subsequent films.

"Shivers" earned Cronenberg immediately the title of the "reigning king of shlock horror" - very appropriate.

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8 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Night of the Orgies, 4 May 2008

Author: sol1218 from brooklyn NY

***MAJOR SPOILERS*** Having felt that man has not lived up to his potentials since he's restricted by the laws imposed on him by society Dr. Emil Hobbs, Fred Doedrlein, has developed this parasitic type earthworm. The parasite when entering the human body, orally as well as sexually, will cause the person to drop all his or her inhibitions, as well as their pants and skirts, and let it all hang out attacking and raping anyone they come in contact with.

Having implanted his new "invention" on one of his patients Annabelle, Kathy Graham, Dr. Hobbs soon realized that he had created a Frankenstein monster! In a wild frenzy Dr. Hobbs strangled Annabelle in his suite at the Starliner Apartment Complex before , feeling a deep sense of guilt, slitting his own throat.

It turned out to be too late for the guilt-ridden Dr. Hobbs to stop the sexually transmitted plague that he created. It soon becomes evident that the parasite left the dead Annabelle's body and started infecting everyone in the apartment complex. Traveling though the air-condition ducts garbage disposal and plumbing systems of the apartment complex the parasite has easy excess to everyone living there. By the time the movie is over everyone living and working in the apartment complex had become a victim of the attacking parasite.

Both young and old, from pre-teenagers to senior citizens, people that were infected by the parasite became so horny and sexually aroused that they went on a full scale wild orgy by the time the movie ended. These uncontrollable sexual acrobatics not only spilled into the surrounding neighborhoods but city's and towns as well.

Even though the movie "They Came from Within" or "Shivers" was made some five years before the emergence of the deadly AIDS epidemic in the early 1980's its striking similarities to that both sexually and blood transmitted disease is absolutely amazing. The deadly parasite, like the AIDS virus, enters it's victim and causes him or her bodily defenses to totally collapses: It's there where the similarities between the AIDS virus and parasite ends.

The parasite soon causes its infected host to go out looking, like a vampire looking for blood to survive, for new victims and strikes out at anyone uninfected in a wild sexual frenzy. This ends up with the infected person implanting the parasite in his or her victims body to start the whole cycle, person to person transmission, all over again.

The film is a lot like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" in that nobody knows who's been infected, like the people who's bodies were taken over by the body snatchers, by the parasite until it's too late.

The resident doctor at the apartment complex Dr.Roger St Luc, Paul Hampton, gets the lowdown to what exactly is going on there from his colleague Dr. Rollo Linsky, Joe Silver. Rollo had been working with the late Dr. Hobbs before he completely cracked up and killed, along with Annabelle, himself. It's later that Rollo himself falls victim to the deadly parasite when he's attacked by Nicholas Tudor, Allan Kolman, a resident at the apartment complex. Tudor had been infected by the parasite when, cheating behind his wife' Janine's (Susan Petie) back, he had a sexual tryst with Annabelle.

Trapped in the complex with its sex-crazed residents trying to both rape as well has induct Roger into their ranks has him make an desperate attempt to escape the fate that awaits him there. Roger tries to cross the causeway, connecting Starliner Island to the mainland, making a wild dash to both freedom safety.

*****SPOILERS****** It's then that Roger realizes just how helpless his both escape attempt and him warning the general public is! The cat, or parasite, is out of the bag, or plumbing system! And with it being able to greatly intensify man's most darkest and suppressed, through laws and religion, thoughts and taboos there's nothing on God's green earth, military medically or psychologically, that can stop it!

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6 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
competent debut, given the circumstances and time period, 25 July 2001

Author: BlackBalloon

Cronenberg's directorial feature film debut is built around a now-familiar amalgamation of sex, technology, and medicine gone mad. The Canadian "Shivers" (original American release title "They Came From Within", aka "The Parasite Murders") opens with a slide show advertising a creepily perfect-sounding high-rise apartment building isolated on an island but just minutes away from downtown Montreal. We are told that the complex contains practically everything necessary to maintain a comfortable life- medical and dental practices, clothing stores, a gift shop, a deli, recreation, etc. Ideally, it would seem, the only reasons a resident would leave would be to work, socialize with non-residents, or take a vacation, if that wasn't too redundant. But of course, something terrible is just under the polished surface.

Cronenberg's direction is obviously not as polished as in later features, but we begin to see his signature style translated well into a full-length format.

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8 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
Fascinating and Disturbing, 5 April 2004

Author: dispet from Melbourne, Australia

An early piece from David Cronenberg, this is his first cinematic exploration of themes which he would continually come back to throughout his career in films such as eXistenZ, Videodrome, The Fly and Crash. to best explain these themes, i must qoute the man himself, "I was saying, I love sex, but I love it as a veneral disease. I am Syphilis. I am Enthusiastic about it, but in a very different way from you." and while that doesnt shed a whole lot of light on the film, it sure is a hell of a qoute :) the plot of Shivers, aka The Parasite Murders, revolves around a parasite which has been bred to heighten sexual desire and other primal instincts while dampening our mental awareness. this parasite has been let lose within a high-tech high rise block thanks to the experiments upon a young girl by an older scientist. the horror begins immediately, as do the social metaphors and ideas of sex and death. it is interesting to note this film was produced before the outbreak of AIDs, but is entirely applicable in our modern world. in some ways this is a tale of warning, of what can go wrong and how we can destroy ourselves. but above all, cronenberg delights in sinking us into the flesh, so the film can also be seen as fable of a world gone mad with life and freedom, which many would not consider so horrific. it defies simple catergorisation, it is not just a story about rampantly sexually active teenagers like so many of its kind. it is a story about every person's desire for safety, and the darker desires which hide behind it. wonderfully directed, intriguingly written, there is little that i can fault this film for, except perhaps its little to obvious reference to Romero's Night Of The Living Dead. while it is obviously partly inspired by that film, and brilliantly reinterprets it for a new age and a new social strata, the tiresome zombies that stagger about like slugs are a little out of place, but fortunately it does not let the film down. a must see.

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Decent Cronenburg Film, 18 October 2005

Author: EVOL666 from St. John's Abortion Clinic

SHIVERS (aka THEY CAME FROM WITHIN) is another pretty twisted outing from freak-o Canadian director David Cronenburg. SHIVERS is not nearly as memorable as some of Cronenburg's other works (VIDEODROME, THE FLY or my personal favorite - THE BROOD...) but it is still worth a look for anyone that is into Cronenburg's strange cinema.

SHIVERS is about parasites that enter their human hosts and cause them to do all kinds of strange sexual and violent things. Pretty cool concept that is handled well, and the film is both weird and entertaining as only Cronenburg can do it. Again, not the best of his films by any means, but still solid. Give it a shot - 7.5/10

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6 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
bad but fascinating, 26 April 2001
Author: Mbira314 from inside your washing machine

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

If nothing else, this film offers proof that the brilliant and sick director David Cronenberg wasn't always brilliant, but he sure was sick from the get-go. This low-budget classic is awash in bad acting, awful dialogue, poor visual effects, and Ed Woodian continuity errors (a doctor is eating a pickle; he takes one bite, and by the time he takes a second bite, another doctor has met with several patients and a businessman has gone to and from his office). The appearance of the parasitic creatures is particularly amusing (but probably not on purpose).

What's astonishing is that, despite all the plot holes, technical problems, and general unintentional hilarity, Cronenberg manages to sneak in a few truly disturbing moments that rival anything he'd do later. The opening slide-show with its unnaturally chipper voice-over is chilling, vaguely recalling "The Shining" and "The Stepford Wives" (neither of which were made yet). Lynn Lowry's monologue about "the flesh" (a recurring Cronenberg theme, whatever it means) is extraordinarily creepy. The Cronenberg feel can be felt throughout: basically, the contrast of a shiny, high-tech surface with an unspeakably nasty primal evil lurking just underneath. Many scenes go on for too long, but this would become a big part of his style; keeping the cameras running long after most directors would have cut away from the gore and weirdness. And how can you completely hate a movie that ends with Montreal being destroyed in a mindless orgy of sex and violence?

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Good for a debut, pretty average any other way., 23 July 2008

Author: ElijahCSkuggs from Happy Land, who lives in a Gumdrop House on Lolly Pop Lane

So I hear this is Cronenberg's first flick.

Like many other directors who've had the pleasure of enjoying a successful debut, Croney's results were the same. Shivers was a pretty decent debut, but overall, for this guy, it just didn't do anything that well.

Shivers revolves around this parasitic worm thing taking over people to force it's inhabitants to have sex and turn into this zombified-type state. Toss in some mediocre characters and some nice special effects and you basically have the flick.

Where Shivers goes wrong is it's acting. No surprise there for early Cronenberg flicks. It's just a bunch of actors who do almost nothing to make you care for their state of being in the film. Don't get me wrong, there are a few likable characters, but the ones on screen the majority of the time are pretty damn weak.

The film also drags when the parasitic-related scenes aren't on screen. You're supposed to be given this sense of doom where you feel trapped, but this feeling is actually not very intense and you're left just watching this "horror" flick with barely any emotion/tension/dread etc. etc.

Shivers isn't a stinker though. It has a very cool idea, some good effects and it's a rather short flick. Though, I still thought it dragged quite a bit. Nevertheless, Shivers delivered enough for a passable horror flick. And for a debut film, it's actually quite an accomplishment.

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