Made two years after The Parasite Murders (shown in Britain as Shivers), this horror film by cult Canadian director David Cronenberg marked the non-hardcore porn film debut of Marilyn Chambers, who still takes her clothes off many times. She's the victim of a motorbike accident who is given an experimental skin graft, which results in a disgusting growth developing under her armpit. This thing has a taste for blood, leaving its vampirised victims suffering from ferocious rabid fits and a rabies epidemic sweeping through the city. Cronenberg has often been credited as the first director to deal with adult horror as opposed to childhood fears. But this pseudo-intellectual exercise in sexual horror is often revolting rather than frightening; even so, Chambers is rather good, catching especially well the nastier and inwardly compelling aspects of the heroine's inward desires. There's one riotous scene where a TV interviewer asks the city's medical chief if he has any advice for the terrified populace. 'Yes,' replies the chief sagely, 'don't let anyone bite you.'

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