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Rabid
New Concorde // R // October 24, 2000
List Price: $19.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
Though I'm not a "rabid" Cronenberg fan (I'm so witty), I'd heard enough positive buzz about "Rabid" to find it worth snagging. The film was even selected by Total Movie in their first issue as one of the 20...err...19 scariest movies of all time, though a magazine that's dead and buried after a few issues isn't perhaps the most reliable source.
The inventively-titled "Rabid" is about an outbreak of a new strain of rabies that threatens to destroy the friendly folk of Montréal. I suppose it goes without saying that the source of this strain of rabies stems from a phallic vampire-organ that emerges from an orifice in a woman's armpit disturbingly reminsicent of Freud's vagina-dentata, created by experimental plastic surgery gone awry. Marilyn Chambers, no stranger to phallic body parts herself, is the lovely young woman at the center of this mess, spiffed up with mutagenic skin grafts after an explosive motorcycle accident. Our heroine Roxy feasts on her hapless victims, turning them into rabid, mindless people-munchers. In a way, "Rabid" is almost a proto-"Dawn of the Dead" -- the undead (well, according to the trailer) feast upon everyone in sight, including loved ones, transforming them as well, and there's even a lengthy scene in a mall. The difference, aside from 20 million other things, is that "Dawn of the Dead" doesn't suck.
I'm not overly familiar with the ouvre of Monsieur Cronenberg, but it's difficult from watching "Rabid" to believe that "The Brood" and "Scanners" were just a couple of years away. There's no hint of any directorial genius here -- "Rabid" looks and feels like an episode of "Quincy"...and about as terrifying. Actally, nothing in "Rabid" stands out as remarkable in any way -- the direction is strictly by-the-book, the effects are laughable, and the acting is almost unilaterally painful to watch. Although that describes a lot of movies I like, all of the above blended well with the sheer boredom that pervades "Rabid" isn't quite the recipe for the best way to pass 90 minutes.
Video: "Rabid" is presented full-frame, a disappointment considering that the film was released theatrically with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. One constant source of irritation was slight but frequent vertical jitter. Colors seem fairly accurate, having that same dull look most '70s movies seem to share, though blacks often seem more like a dark, muddy purple. Dust and specks appear throughout, but the part that struck me as odd there was that some dark spots stay on the frame for the entire length of many shots. Bizarre. The film occassionally takes on a hazy sort of look, and artifacting is much more common than I'm accustomed to seeing. So...yeah, not that great. I didn't have the highest expectations for "Rabid", shot 25 years ago for a few hundred thousand dollars, and I can't really say any of the flaws here surprised me. This disc still looks more like some UHF broadcast at 4 AM than a spiffy new transfer.
Audio: Just an uninteresting stereo mix. Heck, it's probably 2.0 mono labeled as stereo. The bassier parts of the score rumbled a lot more than I was expecting, but the high-end often sounds harsh. Dated.
Supplements: A trailer gallery, featuring a clip that shows the last scene in "Rabid", and cast/crew bios are the only extras.
Conclusion: I went in expecting a tense, brilliantly directed low-budget horror flick and come out wondering if my time would've been better spent watching "Pop Stars" on the WB. As much as I tend to enjoy these sorts of movies, "Rabid" is a clunker, dull and offering very little in the way of entertainment. If not for its notorious female lead or the name of the director, there's nothing setting "Rabid" apart from hundreds of similar, though more interesting, films from the same time period. "Rabid" isn't bad enough to be considered awful -- just too mediocre to recommend over much of anything else. For Cronenberg devotees only -- rent it.
The inventively-titled "Rabid" is about an outbreak of a new strain of rabies that threatens to destroy the friendly folk of Montréal. I suppose it goes without saying that the source of this strain of rabies stems from a phallic vampire-organ that emerges from an orifice in a woman's armpit disturbingly reminsicent of Freud's vagina-dentata, created by experimental plastic surgery gone awry. Marilyn Chambers, no stranger to phallic body parts herself, is the lovely young woman at the center of this mess, spiffed up with mutagenic skin grafts after an explosive motorcycle accident. Our heroine Roxy feasts on her hapless victims, turning them into rabid, mindless people-munchers. In a way, "Rabid" is almost a proto-"Dawn of the Dead" -- the undead (well, according to the trailer) feast upon everyone in sight, including loved ones, transforming them as well, and there's even a lengthy scene in a mall. The difference, aside from 20 million other things, is that "Dawn of the Dead" doesn't suck.
I'm not overly familiar with the ouvre of Monsieur Cronenberg, but it's difficult from watching "Rabid" to believe that "The Brood" and "Scanners" were just a couple of years away. There's no hint of any directorial genius here -- "Rabid" looks and feels like an episode of "Quincy"...and about as terrifying. Actally, nothing in "Rabid" stands out as remarkable in any way -- the direction is strictly by-the-book, the effects are laughable, and the acting is almost unilaterally painful to watch. Although that describes a lot of movies I like, all of the above blended well with the sheer boredom that pervades "Rabid" isn't quite the recipe for the best way to pass 90 minutes.
Video: "Rabid" is presented full-frame, a disappointment considering that the film was released theatrically with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. One constant source of irritation was slight but frequent vertical jitter. Colors seem fairly accurate, having that same dull look most '70s movies seem to share, though blacks often seem more like a dark, muddy purple. Dust and specks appear throughout, but the part that struck me as odd there was that some dark spots stay on the frame for the entire length of many shots. Bizarre. The film occassionally takes on a hazy sort of look, and artifacting is much more common than I'm accustomed to seeing. So...yeah, not that great. I didn't have the highest expectations for "Rabid", shot 25 years ago for a few hundred thousand dollars, and I can't really say any of the flaws here surprised me. This disc still looks more like some UHF broadcast at 4 AM than a spiffy new transfer.
Audio: Just an uninteresting stereo mix. Heck, it's probably 2.0 mono labeled as stereo. The bassier parts of the score rumbled a lot more than I was expecting, but the high-end often sounds harsh. Dated.
Supplements: A trailer gallery, featuring a clip that shows the last scene in "Rabid", and cast/crew bios are the only extras.
Conclusion: I went in expecting a tense, brilliantly directed low-budget horror flick and come out wondering if my time would've been better spent watching "Pop Stars" on the WB. As much as I tend to enjoy these sorts of movies, "Rabid" is a clunker, dull and offering very little in the way of entertainment. If not for its notorious female lead or the name of the director, there's nothing setting "Rabid" apart from hundreds of similar, though more interesting, films from the same time period. "Rabid" isn't bad enough to be considered awful -- just too mediocre to recommend over much of anything else. For Cronenberg devotees only -- rent it.
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