Until the last act, in which it becomes a fairly rote sex-zombie horror film, Shivers is a masterful satire of bourgeois living and sexuality, not to mention a startlingly perverse exploration of surgical anxiety. Cronenberg’s selection of actors — surely the homeliest collection of people available in Canada (plus one Barbara Steele) — is another of the film’s many points of fascination, as are the subversive obsessions with over-sexualized tweens, ducts and pipes, and flat ’70s interior design. If all of this amounts to what is essentially a cheesy movie, its idiosyncratic preoccupations and matter-of-fact staging nonetheless indicate a type of genius whose provenance (given this film’s odd concordances with both Salò The Shining) is utterly mystifying.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Image Entertainment DVD
05 Apr 2006 1:03 PM | Submit Comment