Shivers starts by introducing us, the viewer that is, to Starline Tower a luxury high rise apartment complex situated on an island. The only access is a bridge connecting the island to the nearest city which happens to be Montreal. Starline Tower is almost totally self contained with it's own shops, swimming pool, golf course & even it's own medical clinic manned by Dr. Roger St. Luc (Paul Hampton) & Nurse Forsythe (Lynn Lowry). On a seemingly ordinary day like any other something terrible is happening in Starline Tower, a university professor named Dr. Emil Hobbes (Fred Doederlein) has just brutally killed a young girl whom he was both having an affair with & using as a guinea pig for his bizarre experiments & he slits his own throat shortly after. Since he knew Dr. Hobbes Dr. St. Luc decides to do a little investigating himself & talks to Hobbes partner Rollo Linski (Joe Silver) who says that they were working on breeding a parasite that can take over the function of a diseased or damaged human organ. Meanwhile back at Starline Tower a resident named Janine Tudor (Susan Petrie) is worried about her husband Nicholas (Allan Kolman) as he seems 'very ill' which he is. Nicholas begins to vomit up leech like creatures that then start to bite & infect the other residents of Starline Tower who in turn go on a violent, sexual deviant rampage as the strange disease carried by these grotesque parasites spreads rapidly through Starline Tower. Dr. St. Luc & Nurse Forsythe discover the truth but while it may already be too late for Starline Tower & it's unfortunate residents they must stop the parasites from escaping the island & into the city where they will be all but impossible to stop...<br /><br />This Canadian produced film also known as The Parasite Murders & They Came from Within, both Orgy of the Blood Parasites which would have been a fantastic name for a film & The Parasite Complex were apparently working titles, was written & directed by David Cronenberg. Shivers is considered to be his first proper film & I personally liked Shivers much more than the rest of Cronenberg's early films like The Brood (1979) & Scanners (1981) for instance. The script moves along at a nice pace & I never found it became boring unlike the Cronenberg films I've mentioned. I must also give Cronenberg credit for giving credibility & substance to a somewhat silly premise as he directs with deadly seriousness. Cronenberg throws in all sorts of everyday metaphors & messages as you would expect, the perils of sleeping around (you may get a parasite which will then possibly go on to infect the entire population of Earth!), modern scientific techniques, human isolation & the dangers of taking a bath & not noticing a large slug like creature crawling towards your privates! All of the characters are interesting & well flesh out so we actually care for them which helps the film enormously. Shivers doesn't contain much blood or gore, a few slimy parasites crawling around, the parasites themselves poking around around inside people causing their skin to bulge & a bit of blood is about as graphic as Shivers gets. Technically Shivers is a little on the rough side but this is to be expected since it was Cronenberg's first film, having said that it's not badly made but it's just not as polished as maybe you might expect from Cronenberg. Shivers was obviously a low budget film but Cronenberg managed to create a film better in style, atmosphere, substance & originality than the means & tools he had at his disposal would have suggested he could. The acting is pretty good & I suspect we have Cronenberg to thank for that, Joe Silver as Rollo Linski stands out in particular & dominates every scene he's in. Overall I enjoyed Shivers more than much of Cronenebrg's early films & I'd say definitely worth watching for both fans of Cronenberg & horror in general.