- Year
- 1975
- Country
- Canada
- Runtime
- 88 min
- Director
- David Cronenberg
- Updated
- 9 Aug 2026
- Obscurity
- known (23/100)
- Also known as
- They Came from Within · The Parasite Murders · David Cronenberg's Shivers
Shivers
Cronenberg's debut. A phallic parasite turns a luxury apartment tower into an orgy of the infected.
David Cronenberg's first commercial feature, and his obsessions arrive fully formed. A parasite engineered as a combined aphrodisiac and organ replacement escapes in a self-contained luxury apartment complex, spreading as a sexually transmitted infection that turns the residents into sex-crazed carriers.
It is clinical, unhysterical and unsettling, using the outbreak to attack the sterile modern living it is set in. Made with Canadian tax money, it caused a parliamentary scandal. Everything Cronenberg would later refine is here in raw form.
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