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Rabid

Rabid is a 1977 film from Canada and the USA, directed by David Cronenberg, running 87 minutes. reelscum files it under body horror.

Poster for Rabid
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Year
1977 · 1970s films
Country
Canada · USA
Runtime
87 min
Updated
29 Oct 2026
Obscurity
known (25/100)
Also known as
Mosquitoes · Rage
Banned in
UK

Defined in the glossary: Body horror

⊘ Banned in UK

Cronenberg's film was listed under Section 3 as liable to seizure.

Cronenberg gives Marilyn Chambers a blood-feeding stinger. Montreal falls apart around her.

Cronenberg's follow-up to Shivers, casting adult-film star Marilyn Chambers as a woman who, after experimental surgery, develops a phallic stinger in her armpit that feeds on blood and turns its victims into rabid, plague-spreading maniacs. The infection consumes Montreal.

It is a step up in scale and control, and Chambers is surprisingly affecting as a woman horrified by what she has become. Cronenberg treats the epidemic with the same detached precision that makes his body horror colder and more disturbing than gore alone.

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