“R” movies Rabid and Ruby both come from 1977. I’m surprised “S” movies Star Wars and Saturday Night Fever stood a chance at the box office….
RABID
Before Dee Wallace got bit by a St. Bernard, there was Rabid. Before The Brood and beyond, David Cronenberg directed Rabid. In between making porns, Marilyn Chambers made Rabid. After Romero made Night of the Living Dead, David Cronenberg made a movie that’s about“infected,” not zombies.
In fact, the infection that’s spreading is a new form of rabies. And it’s all Marilyn’s fault. Marilyn makes a gorgeous scream queen. Wish she had done a whole lot more horror.
So Marilyn and her boyfriend are in a motorcycle accident. She lands in the hands of a mad doctor, who fixes her up with what looks like an anus under her armpit, and it gets what looks like a dog’s erection when she hugs people. She pierces them, sucks their blood, and they turn into the infected. Look at Marilyn’s Rabid hole….
Marilyn hits the road to score victims: her hospital bed, a hot tub, a Mack truck, a porno movie theater. How weird would it be if one of her flix was playing while she was inserting herself in the poor guy in the audience?
The virus spreads, so pale-faced infected people pop up in subways and malls. Even a poor mall Santa gets caught up in all the madness. Although the people Marilyn injects become like ravenous dogs, there is no real gut-munching going on. They go for the throat like vampires and come up with some blood on their mouths. And there are no “hordes,” just one infected person here and there. Really. It’s not a zombie movie.
The focus is on Marilyn as the monster…and the ending is a tragedy for her character. She’s the reason to watch Rabid. She’s awesome.
By the way, keep an eye out for the Carrie poster when Marilyn is walking the streets. No. Not as a streetwalker. But she will suck you dry for free.
RUBY
No time was wasted in casting Piper Laurie in another horror flick after Carrie. This time, it’s sort of a rip-off of The Exorcist.
Piper’s man was killed by the mob years ago, but not before getting her pregnant. Now, their teen daughter is acting very weird. But even when she gets in the spider walk position and talks like her father, she’s still not as weird as Piper Laurie, who is equally as psychotic in Ruby as she was when playing Margaret White.
The possession doesn’t really begin until much later on. But in the meantime, Piper runs a drive-in theater that is always showing Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. She has also employed all the mob guys who killed her man. The drive-in theater starts to kill these guys. I’m serious! They’re not safe from movie reels, soda machines, car speakers, the ticket booth, or the big screen.
Piper’s daughter has a couple of re-imagined The Exorcist moments before Piper is forced to confront her dead lover, who believes she was part of the plot to have him killed. What a soap opera. Piper was smart to avoid horror for a while after this.
