MovieChat Forums > Shivers Discussion > Two things I didn't understand

Two things I didn't understand

posted 20 years ago by lazarillo
8 replies | jump to latest

This is great horror movie, but it suffers from two great lapses in logic that are kind of hard to overlook. First, is the size of the parasites. While these trilobite-size parasites makes for some good gory scenes, it's not clear how they could have initially been sexually transferred (especially to men). Even John Holmes, the famously endowed porn star, couldn't have accomodated one of these things without feeling it. Even if they were orally transfered the first victims would definitely realized it. (Of course, maybe they only grew to that size after they incubated in a human body for awhile).

Also, the motives of the mad scientist seemed pretty off-the-wall. If there was a time that man was an "overrational" being that ignored his "animal instincts" it certainly wasn't the 1970's. Why did he feel he needed to create a parasite to make people have MORE sex in the swinging, disco-era 70's? I know the guy was a MAD scientist, but this is ridiculous!

[–] rumpelstiltskin-1 20 years ago

It's not always easy to come up with rational answers where Cronenberg is concerned, lol. I'm sure he had his reasons, however bizarre they may have seemed, but we'll probably never find out why he used parasites to make people have more sex. No doubt they are a metaphor, like almost all his films but what are their connotations? God knows.
According to the critics, it was meant to be an attack on the bourgeoisie, since they were believed to have a very conservative outlook on sex.

[–] 20 years ago

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[–] Gary-161 20 years ago

The scientist was thinking of the entire world. Islamic cultures wouldn't be very swinging, unless you were rich.

[–] makkabee 20 years ago

1) I was under the impression that the parasites got transmitted orally, since that's what we see in most of the film. After all, the girl's affairs with the men in the building probably involved kissing at some point.

2)As to the scientist's motivation, it's important to remember that the "swingers" didn't have it all their own way even in the west in the 70s. There was plenty of social conservative condemnation of the sexual revolution, homosexuality, etc. The power of the televangelists was growing in the US. Once you accept the mad scientist's premise that mankind needs to be more sexual and break down stifling conventions of society then his tactics make just as much sense in the 70s as they would in the 50s or today -- perhaps even more since the initial change would look like just part of an existing social trend and it could grow too much to stop before people realized that something more was going on.

[–] milescorn 19 years ago

NO, the parasite was to made to take the place of a bad or dying organ, such as a liver or kidney, but the parasite had a mind of it's own, and what it did was make a person overly sexual so the parasite could go from one body to the next through the mouth. It is all explaned when the older docotr tells the young guy from the building.

"Now, where were we?"

[–] 19 years ago

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[–] 19 years ago

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[–] ozz1121 18 years ago

Why assume they were tranferred in their largest state? They could have been transferred in saliva and later grew to their larger size.