狂犬病

加拿大导演戴维．克罗南伯格执导的本片，主要描写骇人听闻的疯狗病，受传染的人会口吐绿液，双眼发光，并且见人乱咬，几个小时后即不治而亡。美国著名的“性”星玛里琳．查姆伯丝扮演的罗丝小姐幼时曾患过疯狗病，因车祸受伤引起病毒复发，腋下竟然不可思议地长出一个嘴巴，而且内有一个可伸缩自如的肉刺，专用来插到别人身上吸血。于是，她在一个接一个吸别人血的同时，也把疯狗病迅速传播，使城市瞬间成为疯人满布的人间地狱……影片评价仅仅就身体变异而言，克隆伯格的独特之处在于处处不忘对色情幻想进行扭曲，无论是《狂犬病》（Rabid）中女主角必须由腋下长出一只阴茎来对其阴道作出支撑，还是《录像带谋杀案》（Videodrome）中男主角长出阴道般的裂口，都是这种扭曲的必然，连录像带的转子，都像双乳一样扭动。《录像带谋杀案》其实还有一个原来设想的结局，就是一男（男主角麦克斯）两女（尼基和卞卡）合体，同时以各自的变异性器官相互绞缠吞噬。在《赤裸的午餐》(Nakedlunch)中，那个最终撕开男性外皮露出女体乳房的总裁如果还不够刺激，等你意识到她的装束是女同施虐的标准配备，就会有格外的颤栗。

RABID rehashes SHIVERS’ idea of infectious transformation, our super-spreader is a young woman called Rose (famed porn star Chambers’ foray into mainstream acting), after a motorcycle accident, she is undergone an innovative skin graft operation, claimed by Dr. Keloid (Ryshpan), whose name is such a wacky pun itself, to save her life (a plot device is not at all intelligible), anyway, when she awakes from her month-long coma (her skin recovers immaculately from the horrific burn as Chambers isn’t the type who will refuse to bare it all in front of a camera), a small orifice is left below her armpit and inside grows a sentient jutting thingy, that is blood-thirst.

Consequentially, Rose starts a series of assaults on those she encounters (ranging from soft-headed milquetoasts, predatory horndogs, erotic cinema habitués, occasionally, just an average male or a nubile female), in the wake of which the victims turn into zombie-like, foam-oozing, flesh-biting assailants, before soon a pandemic spreads to Montreal, where martial law is imposed, and that becomes eerily relatable to earthling’s current Corvid-19 disaster. At first the authority pronounces it is a new strain of rabies, but with the attacks escalate and rabies treatment proves unavailing, a shoot-to-kill policy is the last defense (even Santa Claus is succumbed to the rampant potshot). That is a too bleak and depressing worst-case scenario for us frail mortals.

The scale can go epic, but for a psychotronic gore-fest, Cronenberg sticks with Rose, the story begins and finishes with her, and all the set pieces are expediently arranged, though few could startle today’s hardened genre spectators. As the sole carrier who can co-exists relatively normal with the unknown virus, Rose’s final experiment is an inane decision, which reflects the auteur’s fatalistic archness, deliberately nips the prospect of hope in the bud, Cronenberg’s RABID is prescient, salacious, and a slap on the face of our society’s macho depravity.