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Shivers

Shivers is a 1975 film from Canada, directed by David Cronenberg, running 87 minutes. reelscum files it under body horror.

Poster for Shivers
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Year
1975 · 1970s films
Country
Canada
Runtime
87 min
Updated
29 Oct 2026
Obscurity
known (23/100)
Also known as
They Came from Within · The Parasite Murders · David Cronenberg's Shivers

Defined in the glossary: Body horror

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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