Rabid is an intensely beautiful and nihilistic film that belongs truly to the place and time it is from. David Cronenberg had previiously responded to the sexual revolution and the reckless hedonism of the 1970's in It Came From Within/Shivers, previsioning an age of vapidity and rot, where our sexuality is perverted in a lack of any meaningful social relationship. Where contagions determine desire. Rabid has stunted growth in late Fall, early Winter, in a place outside a city where wealthy vain people hide out at a high tech clinic while getting their ears tucked. The first victim is there again, jogging endlessly by as his ears heal. Beautiful young Rose is brought there, the nearest hospital, after a motorcycle accident. The head doctor uses his experimental skin graft technique on the burns under her arms. She lays unconscious for months as her boyfriends broken bones heal. After he goes back to the city, she wakes up screaming and mr.jogging comes to her side. her breasts are revealed and she says she's cold. she used to be a porn star. she embraces him, pulling him to her in a tight embrace, thrusting herself into him orgasmicaly. then she rests, postcoital, as he is unconscious. we catch a glimpse of a vaginalike opening under her arm, from which potrudes a fleshy knob.

she wanders out to a rainy farm and tries to do it to a cow, laying herself across it in the hay. but it makes her vomit. the first of the men who try to have sex with her, a drunk farmer walks in and tries to rape her. she pokes him in the eye with her bloodsucking penis/clitoris. rose goes back to the clinic renewed. her next victim is a young plasticsurgery patient in a jacuzzi. rose walks into the water with arms wide open, still in her dress. the girl goes under in a sensuous slowmotion Roseembrace. Rose is unaware that she is spreading a deadly disease, each victim waking up with the same bloodhunger.

Another victim is in a porno theater back in the city, which is under martial law because of the contagion. rose sits by herself but a man comes on to her. though she seems pissed at first, rose invites him to her and, as he puts his hand over her breast, she plunges into it. In a mall Rose is approached by another sexual predator who offers her a cigarette. Rose is played by Marilyn Chambers, a famous pornstar at the time who starred in the infamous BehindTheGreenDoor. her role here is either underplayed or poorlyacted. either way it works perfectly as rose is but an object for us to fix our gaze and our fear on... she flits through the film charming with a perfect smile and farrah fawcett hair. when she realizes that she is the one causing all the tragedy she despairs and emotes and finally sets herself up for a death at the hands of one of her victims, the ultimate victim herself, as woman, as beautiful young girl. the final scene shows a dog scrounging through trash in an alley. it finds rose, oddly intact and as beautiful as ever. the garbagemen in hazmet suits throw her stiff body into the back of a garbage truck as the credits roll.