Zombie movies go back a long way. All the way to 1932’s White Zombie. But David Cronenberg’s 1977 horror thriller Rabid, along with The Plague of Zombies, Night of the Living Dead and a few other films, was a precursor to all the zombie apocalypse movies and television shows of today. The bizarre Italian promo poster you see above certainly gets across one element of the movie—its grim violence. As you can see, it was retitled Rabid sete di sangue when it played there. It originally premiered in the U.S. in 1977, but didn’t reach Italy until today in 1979.
The concept is weird: a woman played by Marilyn Chambers receives an experimental skin graft and as a side effect develops a stinger in her armpit and an insatiable (see what we just did there?) appetite for human blood. When we later glimpse this stinger, it’s ensconced in an anus-like cavity of a type that filmgoers would see again and again in Cronenberg’s movies. Yeah, that stinger is freaky, and this flick hits on other levels of horror. There’s dread, such as when doctors make ready to slice skin off Chambers’ thighs with some sort of electric peeler. There’s revulsion, which Cronenberg specializes in with his lingering takes on physical deformities. And there’s pure terror when infected victims run amok.
Chambers is pretty good in this, with her acting holding up as well as that of the other performers. She also looks quite beautiful, a requirement for the role, since she’s essentially a vampiress, using her looks to attract prey. Of special note is a snippet of her classic disco song, “Benihana,” which has aged well for dance music from that period. We should also mention that though this is a pure horror film, the plot also has a disease vs. vaccine element, perfect for the COVID era. We‘ve written superficially about Rabid a few times in the past, and if you’re interested you can see those mentions here, here, and here.
