Rabid

The "freezer girl" is an odd image for posters and DVD covers of David Cronenberg's Rabid, as she only appears for one second, if that.  She isn't the girlfriend or the girlfriend's girlfriend (she looks like you).  In fact, we don't even get her name.  Eh, just something I thought was peculiar.  With this flick under my cummerbund, I've officially seen all of Croney's early feature-length titles.  It took way too long.  It's not as inviting as The Brood.  And that might be it as far as concrete opinions go.  Watching Rabid, my vitals didn't pendulate strongly toward either love or hate.  Can't say the same for my reproductive organs.  Girl, please!

If you didn't know, the girl in Rabid is porn starlet Marilyn Chambers. Surprisingly, she's the best thing about the film, at least in this ninnywit's opinion.  It's hard to fathom why she didn't have more luck going legit.  She had looks, charisma, looks, she could...remember lines.  I promise that I won't focus on her appearance, but I fancy a good 70's babe.  Chambers is the definition of a smokin' babe! Needless to say, she loses her top in an aggregation of scenes, although most of them are not provocative in a hibbity-bibbity way. Personally, I've never climaxed into an armpit vagina.  That's my cue to shed a few plot details.

Rose (Chambers) and her boyfriend (Frank Moore) are in a motorcycle accident, and while her main squeeze emerges with cracked ribs, she isn't quite as fortunate.  No, I'm afraid that Rose requires skin grafts.  Don't ask me how (and don't bother asking the movie), but the surgical procedure "infects" her with a rapacious form of rabies.  She is patient zero.  Oh, and this disease has turned her left armpit into a nasty monster with a needle tongue.  It drains blood from Rose's victims.  Is she a vampire?  A succubus?  A walking metaphor?  A combination of all three, it seems.  Shades of The Crazies, I Drink Your Blood, Dawn of the Dead, and a grain of Species.  Naked Marilyn Chambers is a dead ringer (Cronenberg reference, for the win!) for naked Natasha Henstridge.

Plot holes aside, Rabid is entertaining enough.  I intimated that I was on the fence earlier, but truth be written, I enjoyed it more than I didn't.  I've developed a taste for Croney's clinical dialogue.  The pace is hectic without feeling rushed and the characters resemble real people.  Did I mention that Chambers is hawt?  I hate to do it, but I must detract Z'Darrage for the porous script.  Do cops exist in this universe?  Rose is siphoning deadbeats in public, and I didn't spot a single goddamn member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.  I'm trying so hard not to drop a WWF joke right now.  You have no idea.

On the Cronenberg scale of body horror, Rabid ranks above Despicable Me.