Shivers

Toronto International Film Festival Program Book
September 2013

Shivers
David Cronenberg
Canada, 1975
English
87 minutes
Colour/DcP (D-Cinema)
Producer: Ivan Reitman
Screenplay: David Cronenberg
Cinematographer: Robert Saad
Editor: Patrick Dodd
Sound: Michael Higgs
Music: Ivan Reitman
Principal Cast: Joe Silver, Ronald Mlodzik, Susan Petrie, Paul Hampton, Lynn Lowry, Alan Migicovsky, Barbara Steele, Fred Doederlein

In support of our major fall exhibition, David Cronenberg: Evolution, TIFF has restored and re-struck many 35mm prints from this notable Canadian filmmaker’s library. Among the most complex projects was Shivers, his first feature film. The story of a homemade science experiment gone awry, it features a greedy, remarkably large, and rapidly reproducing parasite that infects the residents of an apartment complex in Montreal, creating sex-crazed, zombie-like creatures that face off against a sad-sack doctor and terrified nurse.

The film brought Cronenberg to the attention of the international genre community, winning him a Best Director prize at the Sitges Film Festival, and announced him as the master of “body horror.” Back home, it created intense controversy—including a debate in Parliament—after being denounced by then-editor of Saturday Night magazine Robert Fulford and soon after that by leading film scholar Robin Wood.

Shivers’s standing has seen a continuous upswing since, with critics identifying within it key founding principles of Cronenberg’s work, including a wariness of and attraction to science, an embrace of polymorphous perversity, and a deep interest in recherché transformations of the human body.

Our digital restoration was assembled from various elements archived at the Cinémathéque Québécoise, principally from a 35mm print of They Came from Within, the US-release version. At David Cronenberg’s urging, we have rebuilt the Canadian title card to return the film to its proper name, Shivers.
—Noah Cowan

A TIFF digital restoration in Partnership with Technicolor Creative Services Toronto. Colour Correction was supervised by David Cronenberg.

David Cronenberg was born in Toronto and studied at the University of Toronto. He has won Genie Awards for best director for Videodrome (83), Dead Ringers (88), Naked Lunch (91), Crash (96) and Spider (02). Many of his films have screened at the Festival, including M. Butterfly (92) A History of Violence (05), Eastern Promises (07), and A Dangerous Method (11). His other films include Shivers (75), Rabid (77), The Brood (79), Scanners (81), The Dead Zone (83), The Fly (86), eXistenZ (99), and Cosmopolis (12).