I really enjoyed this 70's grimy shocker Horror,Cronenberg is an excellent Horror director & like most his early movies are the best as they are much more darker & daring!!! Rabid (1977) was very similar & also directed by Cronenberg. The little slimey slug like parasites are really well made & scary & such good practical FX for a very old movie & still better than c.g.i fx used today. I really liked the big building setting that was very cool & creepy too it gave an almost lost abandoned atmosphere that worked great,none of the acting was very good but i didn't expect it to be excellent as Shivers is just a well thought out sick Shocker Horror flick & it really was good fun & very rewatchable!!! Would make a great double bill with Rabid,that's how i watched it

Shivers (1975)** 1/2 (out of 4)A futuristic high rise is the setting for this David Cronenberg shocker, which has the people of this complex catching some sort of disease that turns them into sex crazy maniacs.SHIVERS was the first film that Cronenberg directed that was meant for a large audience. After doing a couple experimental films and some made for Canadian television, SHIVERS was meant to put the director on the map and it certainly did that. The film was praised in some circles. It was hated in others. Some people were downright disgusted by what they saw in the picture. It was released in American theaters as THEY CAME FROM WITHIN but no matter the title it's certainly worth watching.What I liked most about the film is that very little is actually explained. The movie starts with the disease already in full force and most movies would have started with a lot of character development before getting to the disease but that's not the case here. I liked how the weirdness starts right off and Cronenberg cuts from a couple happily moving into the complex to a bizarre murder-suicide sequence. Cronenberg certainly handles the material extremely well and once again he builds up an utterly bizarre atmosphere that continues to get stranger with each new scene.The film also benefits from some good performances including Paul Hampton and Joe Silver. Scream Queen Barbara Steele appears in the film and she's always a pleasure to watch. SHIVERS does have some flaws include some at times awful death sequences as well as some pacing problems. There are also some bad performances in some of the smaller roles. However, with all that being said, this is a unique and rather disturbing horror film.

The film begins with a sinister looking and sounding advertisement for a luxurious urban high rise interspersed with scenes of a teenager being chased and her stomach cut open by an old man. It is later revealed in pain staking detail over a phone call (Cronenberg could not think of a more interesting way to reveal the old man's intentions?) between the hero and another character that the old man was trying to create a parasite that would help humans to get in touch with their base sexual urges. This would turn the high rise into a place for a mass sex orgy. The old man believed humans spend too much time contemplating and rationalizing. Turning them into mindless zombies who crave sex would be an antidote to sadness and urban alienation. The teenage girl was a guinea pig for the old man's experiments which turned out badly.The apartments in the high rise (where the whole film takes place) come across as sterile and tasteless. They engender human alienation from each other. Barbara Steele's (who looks beautiful) character, a tenant in the high rise, is a lonely single woman. Susan Petrie and Alan Tudor are a couple with problems.It is a great premise for a movie. But the characters and plot developments are ill conceived. After a point, it turns into your average mindless zombie blood fest with cheesy acting. A promising first 40 minutes is followed by lots of silly blood letting. An opportunity to provide some interesting insights into the state of modern life is wasted for the compulsions of making a generic zombie-horror flick.The special effects (involving mostly the parasite which usually tears itself out of the infected person's stomach) are gross and make you ill. That is probably Cronenberg's intention. He has this obsession with mutations of the human body (like in The Brood, Videodrome, The Fly etc). There are also many images of hairy and ugly male chests.Paul Hampton, like many other early Cronenberg leading men (Stephen Lack in Scanners and Art Hindle in The Brood) is plain awful. Did Cronenberg simply cast the most pasty faced actor who turned up for the audition? The foxy Lynn Lowry is quite good as the nurse who covets him.So what was Cronenberg's message? Was he echoing what Bukowski wrote about free love in "Tales of Ordinary Madness"? - ".....doldrums of mechanical people in a mechanical act, trying to tickle their cement souls back into life with a spurt of come".I think so.Whatever his intention, this was a great opportunity wasted. Maybe he should remake this film now.

Shivers. now called They Came from Within (1975) Very odd title change! Anyway, This was re-watch, I had not seen this movie for really long time, I did enjoyed it a lot back then.I thought it had Very strange story but a good plot apartment building are being infected by a strain of parasites that turn them into mindless, sex-crazed fiends out to infect others by the slightest sexual contact.and there weer good moment in this movie, This dose feel a bit out dated now and could done a bit more with the attack scenes in this movie. I didn't mind looked really really, some decent effect and some odd effect in the movie, which made me laugh,The acting was okay in this movie in this movie, I did enjoy how the movie endedIt's was not as good as I remember it! 5 out of 10