I guess you have to get something this gross out of your system before making ‘Meatballs.’
The Big Picture
- Unlikely artistic collaborations can produce fruitful results, like David Cronenberg and Ivan Reitman’s partnership for
Shivers
. -
Shivers
marked Cronenberg’s first true foray into body horror, showcasing his unique vision with graphic violence and disturbing themes. - The partnership between Cronenberg and Reitman for
Shivers
and
Rabid
shows how diverse filmmakers can come together to create impactful work.
Filmmaking partnerships are some of the most interesting anomalies of the entire movie industry. Two or more artists are positioned to come together beyond the typical collaborations of directors, producers, writers, etc., and are forced to create a new middle ground in which both of their creative voices can shine through. There have been a number of successful instances in which this sort of thing has occurred. Most famously, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas united under the same umbrella to bring audiences Raiders of the Lost Ark (as well as its first three sequels), just after both of their names became the biggest in Hollywood. In the mid ’90s, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino came together to bring a kick ass, revisionist, vampiric bloodbath with From Dusk Till Dawn. That partnership went so well that they joined forces once more in the mid 2000s for their exploitation love letter Grindhouse. This double feature consisted of their individual pictures, Planet Terror (Rodriguez) and Death Proof (Tarantino), but both directors had a heavy hand in each other’s movie. These are the sorts of joint efforts that we wish happened more often, but for whatever reason, they’re fewer and farther between than most would prefer.
While the partnerships of Spielberg and Lucas or Tarantino and Rodriguez makes perfect sense, not every cinematic union is so obvious. As a matter of fact, these unpredictable artistic efforts often turn out to be the most fruitful. 1975’s Shivers (or They Came from Within, if you’re fancy) isn’t David Cronenberg‘s best movie, but it is a reliably disgusting venture into body horror. As a matter of fact, it was his first true dive into his specialty subgenre! It wasn’t so easy getting this movie made, though. If it weren’t for producer Ivan Reitman, Shivers might never have seen the light of day. Reitman wasn’t quite the comedy movie force of nature that he would become just yet. The Ghostbusters director was similarly busy trying to break into the movie business. Reitman was already a somewhat experienced producer, so he took a bet on Cronenberg by producing the young filmmaker’s long-gestating third feature. This gave the latter leverage to make the exact movie that he wanted. Shivers is absolutely that — the byproduct of a filmmaker’s honest, grotesque vision.
Shivers
The residents of a suburban high-rise apartment building are being infected by a strain of parasites that turn them into mindless, sex-crazed fiends out to infect others by the slightest sexual contact.
- Release Date
- October 10, 1975
- Director
- David Cronenberg
- Cast
- Paul Hampton , Joe Silver , Lynn Lowry , Allan Kolman , Susan Petrie , Barbara Steele
- Runtime
- 87
- Writers
- David Cronenberg
- Tagline
- Going MAD is just the beginning…
David Cronenberg Was Not Always the Beloved Master of Body Horror
David Cronenberg didn’t have the easiest road to horror superstardom. These days, everyone knows him as the king of body horror — a title that he has more than earned. After all, he’s spent the last five decades repulsing audiences with classics like The Fly, Videodrome, and Naked Lunch. Whether he’s been making zombie vampire hybrids or blowing apart the heads of his characters, Cronenberg has found more ways to get gory than almost any other horror filmmaker. He’s much more than just a shock artist, though. Cronenberg is the best kind of genre filmmaker — one who fills his images with layers of deeper meaning. If you wanted to get a little crafty, you might say that some of his horror pictures were actually divorce dramas, studies of how disease racks one’s life, or political prophesies. There’s a reason that people consider him a master, and it’s not just because he’s the best at making us queasy.
David Cronenberg’s ‘American Psycho’ Adaptation We Never Got To See
We almost saw Patrick Bateman’s dark journey end in a big musical number.
That still doesn’t change the fact that it took a while for Cronenberg’s career to get going. After making two bizarre, no-budget, independent features with Stereo (Tile 3B of a CAEE Educational Mosaic) and Crimes of the Future (the 1970 original), he decided that it was time to reach a wider commercial audience. Cerebral, experimental science fiction movies just weren’t raking in the big bucks! He went ahead and began writing the screenplay for what would eventually become Shivers. Despite having a solid game plan for his next film, it would take five years for his third feature to hit theaters.
Ivan Reitman Saved David Cronenberg’s ‘Shivers’ From Never Being Made
During this time, he also made the jump to working with the Canadian studio Cinépix. This was an intimidating pivot for the young filmmaker. Cinépix initially rejected moving forward with Shivers, particularly if Cronenberg was going to be in the director’s chair. Cronenberg held his ground, though, so the studio caved. To ensure a smooth production, they surrounded him with his first professional crew, as well as a producer who Cronenberg could trust — Ivan Reitman. This was the former’s first commercially viable and crafted movie, so during production meetings, the young filmmaker was thrown for a loop.
In the book Cronenberg on Cronenberg, the titular artist stated, “My first production meeting was a model of bluff. I sat there nodding and didn’t know what the fuck was going on. I didn’t know who anyone was.” However, with Reitman on board, he could rest assured that things would be okay. Cronenberg also said, “Ivan was invaluable. He’d been the low-budget route and knew what we had to do, knew the craziness… he was nothing but astonishing, and always knew what he wanted.”
‘Shivers’ Is David Cronenberg’s First True Jump Into Body Horror
Reitman’s mainstream intuition would prove to be invaluable. Shivers might not have been Cronenberg’s big break, but it was a huge leap in comparison to Stereo and Crimes of the Future. Those movies are fascinating pieces of true art. Shivers, on the other hand, is a breakneck piece of horror exploitation. Instead of telling a story through inspired, kaleidoscopic visuals like his first two films, Cronenberg’s third would pave the way for the kind of movies that he would most often come back to. It’s full of blood, gore, and upsetting sexual metaphors (and sometimes overt images), all while finding new ways to approach classic subgenres.
Shivers feels a lot like a zombie movie, with the tenants of a high rise apartment building being infected into mindless killers, one after another. This picture puts its own spin on zombies by having nasty little slugs burrow their way into their victims. It’s as gross as it sounds. Between murders, people amble around the frame, picking at their stomachs, throwing up blood, and groaning in discomfort. Shivers is both fun and a total nightmare to watch. It’s the best kind of body horror movie, one that feels like a dare to watch — you just can’t look away. Reitman’s comedic sensibilities seem to shine every now and then, cutting back on our gag reflexes with repulsive, pitch-black jokes. The best of these bits involves a man who vomits blood off of his balcony, only for it to land on an old lady’s umbrella, far below. This could have been a choice by Cronenberg himself, but given that he hasn’t ever really gone on to show his silly side again, it’s safe to assume that this was a note from his producer.
Cronenberg and Reitman would only team up once more, that being 1977’s Rabid, one in which they shared a similar partnership to the one they established for Shivers. From there, the former filmmaker would continue paving a legendary career of body horror films, erotic dramas, and psychological thrillers. The latter would pivot hard from his days of exploitation filmmaking to lead a life as a comedy juggernaut, directing movies like Ghostbusters, Meatballs, and Stripes. Both men are hallowed figures in their respective fields, but if we are to take one lesson from their shared time on Shivers and Rabid, it’s that there is more common ground to be found between polar opposite artists than we might expect.
Shivers is available to stream on Tubi in the U.S.
This article was originally published on collider.com