Podcast: Rabid
Talking Cronenberg with guest Halle Kiefer of Ruined
Bring Me The Axe! Horror Podcast
Episode 79: Rabid w/guest Halle Kiefer
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Bring Me the Axe! is a comedy podcast celebrating the best (and worst) horror from a time when the video store ruled the night. Every other week, brothers Bryan and Dave White (and the occasional guest) heed the call of nostalgia and evaluate the classic 70s and 80s horror movies they loved in their childhood to determine whether the movies are still relevant today or should be allowed to fade into obscurity.
This week we're joined by Halle Kiefer, comedy writer and co-host of the podcast Ruined for another trip north to Canada for a look at the formative years of David Cronenberg. We're watching Rabid, starring Marilyn Chambers, famous for her appearance in the 70's adult film hit, Behind The Green Door. Here Cronenberg runs up against a minor moral panic when a film critic questions the government's willingness to fund his films. Marilyn Chambers pushes back against a studio system that can't find the courage to cast an actress from adult films in a major studio release. A woman receives an emergency skin graft that somehow transforms into a phallic proboscis in her armpit that feeds her like a vampire and spreads a new form of rabies which turns its victims into enraged zombies that will stop at nothing to kill everything that moves.
Cronenberg is still figuring it out in this movie which despite its outrageous premise and lurid stunt-casting, could be seen as a meditation on the rise of second-wave feminism, his place in that world, and his impact on that movement as a man trying to navigate the changing world.
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