Rabid | 1977 | Canada | David Cronenberg

An early effort from Canadian body horror maestro David Cronenberg, Rabid was able to predict the imminent AIDS crisis about to grip the world, as well as depict the idea of commercial plastic surgery that would become reality much later in the future. After a motorcycle crash, Rose requires an experimental skin surgery to save her life due to severe burning. Although the graft is successful, an unforeseen side effect is a physical mutation under her armpit that causes her to compulsively drain blood from others. Her victims however contract a rabies-like infection, which spreads like wildfire through the city with the clueless Rose smack dab in the middle of the panic. There’s a heavy sexual subtext to Rose’s condition and ‘feedings’, as well as the concept of STDs with the resultant infections so it may be the good old conflation of sex and violence that was too hot for the DPP to handle.