Shivers 1976

The film features performances by Barbara Steele, Allan Kolman, Barry Baldaro, Camil Ducharme, Hanna Poznanska, Joe Silver, Lynn Lowry, Paul Hampton, Ronald Mlodzik, and Susan Petrie.

At Starliner Towers, a luxury apartment complex outside Montreal, a chilling sequence unfolds as Dr. Emil Hobbes murders a young woman named Annabelle. He slices open her stomach, pours acid into the wound, and then takes his own life. Nick Tudor, who has been plagued by stomach convulsions, discovers the scene but does not call the police. The two bodies are eventually found by resident doctor Roger St. Luc, who promptly informs the authorities. Hobbes’ medical partner, Rollo Linsky, reveals that the two had been working on a project to create “a parasite that can take over the function of a human organ.”

After another bout of convulsions, Nick leaves work early and vomits a parasite onto the balcony railing. The creature slithers back into the apartment and attacks a cleaning woman in the basement, attaching itself to her face. Nick’s wife Janine tries to care for him, but he grows distant, preferring to speak with the parasites undulating inside his abdomen. At the clinic, Roger meets a sexually active middle-aged resident who is also suffering from stomach convulsions, and he wonders if the illness could be an STD contracted from Annabelle.

Linsky calls Roger from Hobbes’ downtown office to explain that Hobbes had developed a parasite that was “a combination of aphrodisiac and venereal disease that will, hopefully, turn the world into one beautiful mindless orgy.” He warns Roger that Hobbes believed modern humans had become over-intellectual and estranged from their primal impulses, and that the parasite could be used to reassert humanity’s unbridled, sexual instincts. Linsky urges Roger to avoid anyone displaying odd behavior.

Nick tries to coerce his wife Janine into sex, but she recoils when one of the parasites crawls from his mouth. She flees to her friend Betts’ apartment, where Betts—already infected by a parasite—seduces Janine and passes a parasite to her as they kiss. Meanwhile, other residents—including a mother and her little girl in an elevator and a deliveryman who assaults a resident—become infected, spreading the parasite through the hallways and triggering a wave of attacks and frenzied behavior. Roger keeps searching the building for more parasites while Forsythe, his nurse and lover, tends to an elderly couple who were attacked.

Linsky eventually arrives at Starliner Towers and heads to Nick’s apartment, where Roger had suspected Annabelle’s infection might have reached. He finds Nick lying in bed with parasites crawling over his abdomen. When one parasite latches onto Linsky’s cheek, Nick kills him and swallows the parasite. Forsythe tries to escape in her car but is attacked by an infected security guard. Roger intervenes, kills the guard, and the two hide in the basement. Forsythe speaks of a dream that blends eroticism and death, then vomits up a parasite. Roger knocks her out and attempts to carry her to safety, but they are soon overwhelmed by a horde of infected sex maniacs.

Roger kills Nick in his own apartment, then makes a desperate bid to escape, only to face constant obstacles. He finally reaches the swimming pool area, where he finds Janine and Betts swimming fully clothed. The trio move toward the pool’s edge, smiling seductively at Roger as he searches for a way out, but the infected block his path. He is pulled into the water by Janine and Betts, while the rest of the infected—among them the little girl from the elevator—plunge into the pool and close in on him. Roger is eventually surrounded and infected by Forsythe.

In the aftermath, the trio, along with the other infected Starliner residents, drives out of the building’s garage. By early the next morning, news reports urge the public not to panic as police investigate an outbreak of sexual assaults in Montreal. The city awakens to the unsettling sense that something primal and dangerous has been unleashed within a supposedly safe, modern high-rise. The story lingers with a bleak reminder of how quickly civilization can give way to uncontrollable impulses, leaving the survivors to confront a world where human boundaries blur and danger hides in the most intimate spaces.