Rabid (1977)

Trailer:

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s This About: Marilyn Chambers goes around sucking people dry and they go crazy for it.

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

• Welcome to Pandemic Week! I honestly don’t recall why we decided to do this theme this year.
• I don’t understand why Marilyn Chambers didn’t go on to a more storied acting career. I guess studios thought she just sucked.
• Is this one of those pictures  that’s going to have a 20 minute motorcycle sequence in the opener to pad the runtime?
• Keloid Clinic? Isn’t that a scar predominate in African-Americans? Is that what they specialize in? Very specific if so.
• Ivan Reitman produced, David Cronenberg directing and writing, and Marilyn Chambers starring? This may not qualify as schlock at all!
• Hahaha! The motorcycle just ran off the road to avoid a stalled van and jumped high in the air for some reason and exploded on Marilyn Chambers also for some reason. Good stuff.
• The van driver is trying to put out the flames on Marilyn Chambers with a coat but it just looks like he’s beating her with it? Of course, she’s used to guys beating it over her. Wow that was a bad joke.
  
• The people at this plastic surgery clinic remind me of the freak demons in The Sentinel. 
• Marilyn Chambers’ boyfriend kind of looks like Christopher Walken’s younger brother that he hasn’t spoken to in a decade because he wouldn’t stop asking him for money and coke.
• Yeah, the Keloid Clinic doesn’t have any non-white people in it.
• It’s a real good thing Rose (Marilyn Chambers) crashed and burned right in front of a plastic surgery clinic that specializes in skin grafts. It’s like the time I burned my wiener on a hot tailpipe in front of a Dick’s Sporting Goods.
• So they give Rose some “experimental” skin grafts, which I’m going to go out on a huge limb and guess that it won’t work out so great.
• It’s weird how much time Marilyn Chambers is spending in a bed in this film.
• I can’t believe Cronenberg got Marilyn Chambers to do a topless scene! I wonder how this affected her career trajectory.
• So he hugs this guy and I guess there was an alien chestburster kind of situation. But I would have kept hugging her too.
• Oh he just has a bloody armpit. That happens every time I switch deodorants.
• Rose escapes the Keloids and goes to a barn. I think she’s going to fuck a cow? 
• Yep.
• I guess cow blood just doesn’t do it for the armpit worm.
• The drunken farmer comes in for some barn beaver. I’ve seen pornos that start this way.
• Rose’s boyfriend is in his garage listening to porno music. A lot of this is too sexually on the nose dick.
• Marilyn Chambers is pretty effective when she’s walking around staring maniacally at people, not so much when she has to speak, but overall she seems like a nice, wholesome lady.

• You know what I’d like to see? A horror version of the Blues Brothers epic car chase. Landis kind of did that with the crashes in An American Werewolf in London and it was great, but I want to see like a good 20 minutes of gory car carnage. Not like Joy Ride or Duel, I mean just constant chase and crash and decapitations. 
• This one doctor guy Murray with a voice like Andre the Giant is holding a baby even though he’s 67 and they’re watching a show about a humanoid potato holding hands with a humanoid tomato. He tells the baby that Potato Man loves Ketchup Man, even though the tomato is clearly supposed to be a woman. I don’t know, in a movie starring a porn actress about a bloodsucking armpit worm that was by far the weirdest part yet.

• The hole in Rose’s armpit is based on a hairless cat’s butthole.
• So basically this is kind of a vampire movie but with armpit butthole worms instead of fangs.
• You know, it’s starting to dawn on me that Marilyn Chambers is probably the best actor in this.
• The rapey farmer goes to a diner the next day and devours some other dude’s chicken, screaming, “I GOTTA EAT!!” I watched this movie nearly 25 years ago and that line is literally the only thing I remember because my friend Chris and I used to repeat it all the time. And it will likely be the most memorable thing I take away from it now.
• Christoper Walken’s brother is riding in a car with Andre the Giant Voice and just staring at him all the time like a total creep. Does he want to insert his underworm into his down-there armpit butthole? I just think he was zonked out on disco biscuits all through filming. 

• Dr. Keloid (now I know why this is called the Keloid Clinic) was wormed by Rose so then he cuts a nurse’s finger with scissors and licks her blood. That happens every time I get a colonoscopy.
• The radio just said the rapey farmer was 43. I’m 43 and if he was 43 I’m 13. And I am. Now you know.
• Christopher Walken’s brother makes Ron Jeremy look like Christopher Walken. Why didn’t they just cast Randy West? Of course, you can say that about every movie.
• Dr. Keloid is more of a zombie instead of a vampire. But Rose is totally normal when she’s not butthole armpit worm sucking.
• I thought this Marilyn Chambers movie was reaching its climax but it’s only half over. What a tease.
• This seems to be set in Canada which I did not know going in and I am NOT ok with… well, I used to make jokes like that but Canada is the Garden of Eden compared to the U.S. these days. Like most everywhere else.
• A jump scare coming from the back of the frame forward just doesn’t really work. You have to come from the sides or front. Speaking of which, I wonder if anyone else in this movie is a porn actor who isn’t as recognizable as Marilyn Chambers?
• So there’s a news program talking about how the butthole armpit worm (BAW) is like a plague, so I guess there’s the theme fit, even though I had totally forgotten about the theme until I heard the guy say “plague.”
• Marilyn Chambers goes to a porn theater. We’ve now reached peak meta status.
• Good movie…

• This Canadian porno seems very nice and clean, so on brand.
• A creep sits next to Rose and this scene goes on 69 times longer than it needs to.
• The title of this porno on the marquee is Party Swapers (sic).
• I’m still not clear if the BAW is sucking blood or injecting something into the victims. Is it spitting or swallowing??
• I guess if this is supposed to e an infection thing it’s spitting, but why? This movie doesn’t really seem to be going anywhere, it’s just Rose going around spitting juice into people, and then we see a couple of them go nuts.
• Ah, this is Montreal. Ooh la la.
• The World Health Organization is now getting involved, even though it seems like only 6 or 7 people are infected, not a widespread thing. 
• There’s a vaccine already? I’m pretty sure vaccines aren’t developed that quickly. Maybe it’s an election year.
  
• “Those shots won’t protect you from the crazies.” Wow this is prescient. We even have our own dangerous butthole armpit worm in the White House.
• Even though this “plague” is occurring nobody is taking any sort of precautions whatsoever. Rose goes to a completely packed mall, and a cop shoots an infected guy with a machine gun. Not all that prescient, since the infected guy was white. But he also shot the mall Santa at least. I though Canadian police only carried loafs of French bread to hit criminals with?
• Military in the streets during a pandemic! Now this is just too far-fetched.
• It’s weird the movie doesn’t really seem to be building toward any kind of conclusion. Like things are kind of ramping up in the public but the plot still isn’t really moving forward. Maybe there isn’t a plot, unlike Ms. Chambers’ previous films.

• Andre the Giant has probably the ugliest goddamn house I’ve ever seen in a movie or in the squared circle.
• Andre the Giant finds blood in his baby’s room, then follows a trail and lifts a lid in a table and it’s full of bloody water. Ok, but what the hell is that table? Some kind of bathing basin? Why? Do they not have a tub? Or a sink? Or a garden hose? 
• Ok so Rose is the only one with a BAW? She’s just infecting everyone but can’t get infected herself. How are others getting infected? By bites or something? Maybe they went over this and I missed it because there’s also so much porn.
• Typhoid Mary would’ve been a good name for my dog.
• Walken’s brother barges in on Rose BAWing her friend.She says she needs to eat blood. So I guess it’s both swallowing blood and spitting infection? 
• She accidentally throws him down the stairs. Good.
• $100 Canadian says this movie will end on a freeze frame. Likely with Rose’s hair whipping around while she’s screaming.
• This movie probably would’ve worked better without the infection stuff. If it was just Rose going around seducing and BAWing men and her boyfriend and the cops have to track her down it may have been tighter and better and maybe told more of a socially conscious story. The infections just make things messy.
• So after Walken’s brother falls down the stairs Rose goes to seduce another guy then Walken’s brother wakes up and goes to his apartment (or her friend’s?) and Rose calls him there. That was some precise timing.
• Rose sucked some blood from that guy and locked herself in a room with him to prove she wasn’t the one who started it all or something when she clearly was. So he does turn out to be infected and kills her and Walken’s brother smashes the phone on the ground just like he used to when Walken wouldn’t give him $40 for booger sugar.
• Pandemic scientist guys find Rose’s body in the trash the next day. That was nice of the crazed infected guy to place her out there.
• Not a freeze frame but slow motion of the pandemic scientist guys putting Rose in the back of a garbage truck. Close enough. Is that really the best way to deal with the infected dead?

 

Was it Entertaining:

Any Good Gore: Just some blood from the BAWings, nothing to get too crazy about.

Any Nudity: Marilyn Chambers in her comfort zone. We salute you.

Best Quote: “I GOTTA EAT!!”

Best Scene: Most definitely the motorcycle accident. It was like an amazing comedy of errors that should have been set to zany slide whistle music.

Worst Part: Rose’s plan to prove that she wasn’t the patient zero character made no sense in any way. Why she thought she might now be the carrier when she very clearly was and there’s no way she couldn’t have realized that, plus why she thought dying horribly was a good test for it, is ball-boggling.

How Pandemicky Was It?: There is talk of this sickness being a global phenomenon but people are still going about their daily lives for the most part. It was kind of hard to grasp exactly how Rose got it in the first place and how others spread it.

Final Thoughts: Weird movie (well, it’s Cronenberg, but still) that doesn’t really go anywhere and has one likable character who is killed by a rabid maniac at the end. Again, like a lot of the movies I’m watching this year it’s not horrible or anything but you can skip it and move on just fine with your life as long as your health insurance covers pre-existing rabid conditions.

Score: 4.75 Butthole Armpit Worms (out of 10)