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

- Year
- 1977 · 1970s films
- Runtime
- 87 min
- Director
- David Cronenberg
- Updated
- 29 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- known (25/100)
- Also known as
- Mosquitoes · Rage
- Banned in
- UK
Defined in the glossary: Body horror
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.
Trailer
The numbers
Nobody has rated this yet. Be the first to make a claim you'll have to defend.
Your call
Where to watch
Legal options in USA
Links open in a new tab (↗). Availability data via TMDB and changes constantly, so confirm on the service. Legal options only. Checked 8 Nov 2026. All options ↗
Discuss with AI
Open a chatbot with a question about this film already typed out. Useful for a second opinion, plot detail, or where to find a copy.
Filed alongside
Basket Case
$35,000, shot on 42nd Street, and completely charming. The best kind of cheap.
Tetsuo: The Iron Man
Sixty-seven minutes of industrial nightmare. Nothing else looks like it.
From Beyond
Stuart Gordon and Jeffrey Combs do Lovecraft again. A machine that lets you see what should stay unseen.
Shivers
Cronenberg's debut. A phallic parasite turns a luxury apartment tower into an orgy of the infected.
The Brood
Cronenberg turns a divorce into monsters. Rage made flesh, and it is about his own custody battle.
Society
A teen suspects his rich family are not human. The finale proves it, wetly.
Cemetery Man
A cemetery caretaker shoots the returning dead and falls in love repeatedly. Beautiful and deranged.
Frankenhooker
A man rebuilds his dead girlfriend from the parts of exploded sex workers. Exactly that stupid, and great.
Scanners
The exploding head made Cronenberg bankable. The film around it is smarter than that scene.
Videodrome
Long live the new flesh. Cronenberg's prophecy about media, the body, and a chest that opens.
Tokyo Gore Police
The Japanese splatter movement at full arterial pressure, from the man who built it.
Brain Damage
A parasite gives a young man euphoric highs in exchange for feeding it brains. Addiction as horror.