On Screen!: Shivers (2008)

• 57%
• 2008
• Tristan Orchard
• David Cronenberg
• Joe Blasco
• Ivan Reitman

The debut feature from Canada's most celebrated filmmaker, David Cronenberg, Shivers provided the young director with a crash course in feature filmmaking and established many of the unsettling themes explored in his later work. In the film, medical professor Dr. Hobbes (Fred Doederlein) creates a genetically-engineered organism he plans to use to bring about a more sensually aware society, but his experiments turn deadly when the aphrodisiac-producing parasite gets out of control and spreads throughout a swinging Montreal apartment complex. Despite the film's success on both sides of the border, the critical backlash against the film was used to launch a cultural attack on Canada's film funding. Since then, Shivers has outlasted its detractors and won over a significant cult following for its effective, low-budget chills and stark social allegories. Producers Ivan Reitman and John Dunning, stars Sue Helen Petrie, Paul Frampton, and makeup effects artist Joe Blasco (Members of the films cast and crew) are on hand to talk about the debut feature of Canada's most prolific and shocking auteur.