Editorials
Happy 40th Anniversary to David Cronenberg’s ‘Shivers!’
October 10th marked the 40th anniversary of Shivers (also known as They Came From Within), David Cronenberg’s classic body snatcher film. Shivers was Cronenberg’s first feature film (he had previously directed two short films), but it’s remarkable solid for such a relatively new director. While it isn’t known as one of Cronenberg’s best films, it has stood the test of time and remains a remarkably creepy (and gross) little movie.
***SPOILERS of a 40-year-old film to follow***
The films takes place in a Montreal apartment block as a scientist develops a parasite that causes uncontrollable sexual desire in its host and can only be spread through sexual contact. His reasoning for this isn’t exactly convincing (he thinks humanity has lost touch with its primal instincts), but nevertheless he implants the parasite into his teenaged mistress, who just so happens to be the complex slut. She sleeps with many people and parasite begins to spread among the residents of the apartment block.
Surprisingly for Cronenberg, Shivers suggests a lot of graphic violence but doesn’t show a lot of it. For example, when the scientist cuts open his mistress’s stomach and pours acid in it to dissolve the parasites before slitting his own throat, the audience doesn’t really get to see it. We know it’s happening though, and it makes the sequence all the more frightening.
Shivers went on to inspire countless films, including James Gunn’s brilliant horror-comedy Slither with its bathtub scene (featuring scream queen Barbara Steele):
Acting as a metaphor for the downfall of society, Shivers brings to mind the new Ben Wheatley (Kill List) film High-Rise, which also juxtaposes the crumbling of a microcosm inside an apartment building (I hated the film, Kalyn liked it). Whereas Wheatley’s film (and the novel it’s based on) take a satirical approach to the subject matter, Cronenberg goes for abject terror.
Normal life is lampooned (and exaggerated) through the boring, stuffy white collar residents of the apartment block that make up most of its population. It isn’t until they become infected that they are able to let loose and partake in their carnal desires. Weirdly enough, Cronenberg said that he related to the residents more after they had become infected. Cronenberg must have though Canada was having issues with sexual repression in the 70s.
While Shivers is first and foremost a horror film, it has plenty of moments of dark humor as well. Whether this is intentional, I cannot say, but it’s difficult to view the below scene and not find it kind of funny.
Finally, you’ve got the climax in the swimming pool. Arguably one of the most disturbing scenes in horror cinema, lead character Roger St. Luc (Paul Hampton) is the only uninfected person left in the building. He makes his way to the swimming pool, where is is surrounded by the other residents and is eventually infected in a mass orgy. The final shot of the film shows all of the infected residents making their way to their cars to infect other people and take over the world.
In terms of bleak endings, Shivers really takes the cake, and the orgy in the swimming pool is a truly haunting image. There aren’t many films that can say the world ended because of a mass orgy. Interestingly enough, Shivers was was partially financed by the taxpayer-funded Canadian Film Development Corporation. Journalist Robert Fulford felt the good people of Canada should know what they paid for. He wrote a scathing review of the film, stating it was “the most repulsive movie he had ever seen” (due in large part to the film’s reliance on sexual themes and imagery), but ironically this only made more people want to see the film, and it became a box office success. A mildly positive review from Roger Ebert didn’t hurt either.
Shivers is a fantastic film, and it’s hard to believe its already turning 40! If you’ve never had a chance to see Cronenberg’s first film, definitely seek this one out. It has that 70s porno vibe to it, which is part of its charm, and it will undoubtedly get under your skin. That may be a cliché phrase, but there isn’t a film more apt to use it on than Cronenberg’s Shivers.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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