Shivers (1975) on Netflix
At a high-rise complex near Montreal, Dr. Emil Hobbes kills a young woman and himself. Resident doctor Roger St. Luc learns Hobbes built a parasite that can replace a human organ.
- Watch on NetflixThis title is not on Netflix right now. Please check back later for updates.
- Watch on Prime
- Watch on NordVPN
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb6.3/1026,543 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes85%
Trailer
Plot summary
Dr. Emil Hobbes strangles a young woman, Annabelle, in her apartment at Starliner Towers, the apartment complex outside Montreal where he lives; he cuts open her stomach and kills himself. Nick Tudor, a resident troubled by stomach convulsions, finds the bodies and leaves without telling anyone. The building's physician, Roger St. Luc, calls the police, and Hobbes's medical partner, Rollo Linsky, explains that the two men had been developing a parasite able to replace a human organ. Hobbes's notes go further: he wanted a creature joining an aphrodisiac to venereal disease and turning the world into a mindless orgy, with Annabelle as his test subject. Nick later vomits a parasite over his balcony railing, and it crawls back into the building and clamps onto a cleaning woman's face.
Cast
- Camil Ducharmeas Mr. Guilbault
- Hanna Poznanskaas Mrs. Guilbault
- Wally Martinas Doorman
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Shivers (1975)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Writing in Saturday Night as Marshall Delaney, the journalist Fulford attacked Shivers, part-financed by the taxpayer-funded CFDC, under the headline "You should know how bad this film is. After all, you paid for it," and called it the most repulsive movie he had ever seen.
- David Cronenberg said the attack on Shivers made it harder for him to get funding for later films and got him kicked out of his Toronto apartment, his landlord citing a "morality clause" in the lease; the controversy grew until the Parliament of Canada debated the film's social and artistic value and effect on society.
- According to Cronenberg, Shivers was the first film funded by the CFDC to earn a profit; making $1 million in Canada, it was more profitable than any previous Canadian film.
- While making Shivers, the actor Lynn Lowry accidentally struck the director, David Cronenberg, in the shoulder with a cooking fork.
- David Cronenberg said he had fifteen days to learn how to make a movie before directing Shivers, and that he did not know what was going on at his first production meeting.
- The British horror movie magazine Shivers, published between 1992 and 2008, was named in tribute to Cronenberg's film.
