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Shivers (1975)

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Overall Rating 61%
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Ranked #3,369
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A scientist living in an apartment complex kills a girl and uses acid to destroy her internal organs, and then kills himself. While investigating, a doctor discovers that the scientist was doing experiments on the use of genetically engineered parasites as organ transplants. Soon, other people in the complex begin showing signs of carrying the parasites, spreading the things through wanton orgiastic abandon, and the complex begins suffering an attrition problem. --IMDb
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Review by Christopher
Added: February 17, 2005
Starliner Hotels is a very well known apartment complex that holds a little more than just tenants. Doctors, dentists, and convenient stores, just to name a few. One day at the complex, a research scientist by the name of Dr. Hobbes visits a young girl he's been seeing for several years. He starts to attack the girl for an unknown reason. After killing her, he sets her on a table and begins slicing open her stomach. Her pours acid in her stomach, then slits his own throat. At the Tudor residence just a few floors down, Nicholas and Janine don't seem to be connecting eye to eye. Nicholas leaves for work, but not before stopping by the apartment of the young girl who he finds dead. He quickly leaves the apartment and heads into work.

Dr. St. Luc, Starliner's personal doctor, finds Hobbes and his dead girlfriend later in the afternoon as he was going to meet someone. Dr. Linski is eventually met by St. Luc. The two discuss matters about teaming up on a project Linski has been working on. St. Luc declines and heads back to Starliner, where he's met by Janine. She informs him about the stomach problems that Nicholas has been having. St. Luc agrees to visit their apartment later in the evening to look into the problem. Nicholas returns home from work early due to his stomach problems. He starts coughing up blood in the bath tub which sooths his pain for a while longer.

Linski gives St. Luc a call later that evening to tell him about some things he found out about Hobbes. It seems as if he was using the girl as a guinea pig to test a parasite he had created that would reduce sexual inhibitions. The test went bad and that's why he had to kill the female. The girl was no stranger around the complex, which explains the pains Nicholas has been having, along with a few other of St. Luc's patients. St. Luc and Linski take it upon themselves to rid the hotel of the parasites. With Linski on his way to the hotel, St. Luc discovers a large amount of the tenants are already being effected by the parasite which is turning them all into sex maniacs.

Very poor acting from a cast that has little to no experience with the science fiction and/or horror genre. The actress playing Janine was an actress for comedy films and only took the roll to prove that she could play an emotional character, which ended up not being that bright of an idea. The actor playing her husband, Nicholas, was a tad better than herself, but not by much. Special effects were well done for their time. Especially when the parasites would move around in a persons stomach or throat. An exceptional amount of blood was shown which turned out to help the film. Except for one scene that blood was used for comedic purposes. Nicholas is on the balcony of his apartment and throws up one of the parasites and a large amount of blood on an old womans umbrella.

An exceptionally unique story, also for its time. One of the writers for the movie Alien actually took a few ideas from the script and put them into his. For example, the parasites coming out of the stomachs of people. The parasites leeching on to a persons face. Starliner ended up being the name of the space ship. All in which came from Cronenberg sitting in his apartment writing. The film itself didn't turn out too bad, but definitely not one of Cronenberg's best due to him still learning the film business as he was shooting this, his first full length feature film. A fan or the Alien films would most likely enjoy this film more than an average horror or science fiction fan.

Final Conclusion: 6/10
grain of sand #1: grain of sand - added January 7, 2008 at 6:46pm
dude, i loved this movie when i was a kid, still so creepy 8/10
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