On Screen Shivers

The debut feature from Canadas most celebrated filmmaker David Cronenberg Shivers provided the young director with a crash course in feature filmmaking and established many of the unsettling themes explored in his later work In the film medical professor Dr Hobbes Fred Doederlein creates a geneticallyengineered organism he plans to use to bring about a more sensually aware society but his experiments turn deadly when the aphrodisiacproducing parasite gets out of control and spreads throughout a swinging Montreal apartment complex Despite the films success on both sides of the border the critical backlash against the film was used to launch a cultural attack on Canadas film funding