On Starliner Island, you have luxury high-rise living with deluxe accommodations, including a delicatessen, a boutique, a doctor and a dentist, dry cleaning, and parasitic sexually transmitted slugs that are taking over the population. What more could you ask for? Now, I realize that this is made in 1974, but I don't exactly buy the "luxury" apartment living thing, for this high-rise is the epitome of tackiness, and most of it seems to be furnished in ultra-modern poor taste.<br /><br />But enough of that, on to the important stuff, as the film opens and an excited young couple come to view apartments. This is interspersed with scenes of an elderly man as he chases a woman in a school-girl uniform around one of these lovely dwellings, eventually captures her, and cuts her open on the dining table and pours acid inside of her. And then, he cuts his own throat. How's that for an opening scene? Well, it seems that this man is a doctor, and he was experimenting with a sort of parasite that was part aphrodisiac and part something else. And Anabelle Brown, she of the school-girl uniform, was his test subject. The problem is, that Annabelle was rather well known (and liked, apparently) by many men within this complex and had frequent visits from them, and therefore she has shared this little parasite with them.<br /><br />The resident doctor, Roger St. Luc, has visited with an old college professor of his, Rollo (played by Cronenberg regular, Joe Silver), and has found out more of the deceased man's background and what he was up to. And that gives him a bit of insight as to what's going on at Starliner Island, although, not quite enough to deal with the problem. Dr. St. Luc as a rather interesting hairstyle, too, kind of an extreme wind-blown look, perhaps achieved by applying spray after coming in out of a gale.<br /><br />At any rate, the parasites are moving from person to person & also can survive outside of the body, but are always looking for new bodies to host them, so they aren't outside for long. And pretty soon the whole complex is full of sex-crazed murderous lunatics. Our intrepid doctor is determined not to become one of them and it does seem he's one of the last holdouts, but unfortunately not for long.<br /><br />And then, after all the fun is over at home, why not take a drive to Montreal? It is, after all, only minutes away.<br /><br />This is an impressive debut and definitely different and original for the time in which it was made. Cronenberg is rather a master at incorporating the creepy and nasty into "everyday life" and this was just a taste of things to come.<br /><br />8 out of 10.