FILM GUTTER REVIEWS: RABID (1977)

FILM GUTTER REVIEWS: RABID (1977) BY ALEX DAVIS 

Dir. David Cronenberg,
91 mins

Welcome back to Cronenberg month – because why the hell shouldn't May be Cronenberg month? - with a step back in time from our series opener, where we took a look at 1979's The Brood. Today we move on to the director's second feature length movie (perhaps third if you want to include 1970's Crimes of the Future) in Rabid. This story could be seen as something of an alternative zombie outbreak movie, although as I'm writing this review with a pandemic still sort of rumbling on there's elements here that do feel like they hit a bit too close to home. Anyway, I've done my damnedest not to hold that against it. I'm positively foaming at the mouth to watch it, so let's get stuck in!

The story begins with a bang – quite literally – with young Hart and Rose driving on their motorcycle when they have a high-speed crash. Rose is almost gone, but Hart gives permission for her to undergo a highly experimental plastic surgery. This sort of thing may sound a little familiar to  regular Cronenberg viewers, but I suppose at this point this core concept was relatively new. However the surgery has rather unexpected effects in turning young Rose into patient zero for a new sort of zombie plague, one where the victims still look relatively normal but still have the same burning desire to spread the plague to more and more people. It's not long until the whole local area is under lockdown, with martial law being enforced, and oh boy does it feel uncomfortable with some of the context that is fresh in the collective memory of 2020. The strange virus continues to spread while Hart tries to reconnect with Rose in a city rapidly falling into disorder, but will the two lovers be able to find each other once again?

I've watched most of Cronenberg's work by now, and honestly I have to say this one really feels like one of the weakest. It almost feels like it can't quite decide what it is – you couldn't call it a zombie film in the way that would satisfy fans of that particular subgenre, and while there are some bloody scenes there's probably not enough here for any of you serious gorehounds out there. Equally I don't feel like the emotional and personal story of Hart and Rose is really that well done to invest me in them as characters, and the many side characters we meet along the way just feel kind of like collateral damage waiting to happen rather than anything that integral to the story. I couldn't really make any connection to the finale, which made limited sense to me. Even the pandemic side of it just feels like background noise, and never really coming to fruition as a full element of the story. It occurs to me this actually bears a lot in common with Paul Tremblay's newest book Survivor Song, which I think pulls off the balance significantly better. There's nothing stinkingly wrong with it, but I did just find it a bit overlong and boring and a little hard to really invest in significantly as a viewer. Like I say, there are a handful of holes in the Cronenberg watch history, but this feels like it could well be the poorest.

RATING: 5/10. It's unlikely a director like this would ever score anything horribly bad, and even this one – which I have criticised above – has enough panache and flair and sufficient decent moments to be in the ballpark of being average. It just feels like it wanders and meanders a little, and can't quite decide what sort of film it ultimately wants to be, so more focus could have helped this one climb significantly higher. I've not seen the remake – I do tend to avoid that sort of thing on the whole – but if it maybe looked at one element a little more strongly than some of the others it could be an interesting watch. I'll mark that one down for some point in the future, but for now Rabid doesn't really get me into any kind of frenzy at 5/10.

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