The Slightly More Definitive Rabid

So, Arrow had a little trouble with their release of David Cronenberg's commercial debut, Shivers, what with TIFF remastering a cut version of the film and David himself approving it without apparently looking at it. But they're fixing it (gotta love it when these companies do the right thing by their fans), and eventually they'll be reissuing their loaded special edition blu-ray with a proper uncut transfer which is finally here! In the meantime, they created a similarly packed special edition of Cronenberg's follow-up feature, Rabid, which happily is not cut or otherwise problematic. In fact, it's pretty great. So while we wait for that Shivers fix, let's take some time to appreciate Arrow's Rabid.

Update 5/8/15 - 12/23/25: It's a decade later, and Rabid's circled back around for another swipe at the crown, this time via Scream Factory's 2025 2-disc 4k UHD special edition.

Rabid is in a lot of ways very much like Shivers: a weirdly sexual, medically induced form of slimy body horror turns into a contagious disease that makes people lose control and become homicidal. But this one's bigger in scope - where Shivers was confined to one apartment building, the chaos in Rabid spreads throughout the entire city of Montreal. It also stands apart for being the one straight film by the quite famous model/ porn star Marilyn Chambers. And she's quite good here; it's a little surprising she didn't go on to more regular acting work. Anyway, the whole film is much more intelligent and gripping than its description makes it sound like it has any right to be. And it's thanks almost entirely to David Cronenberg who really knows how to tell this bizarre yet curiously relatable story.

So Rabid got a very healthy 2015 upgrade in the UK with this Arrow's blu-ray/ DVD combo pack, but we don't have to look at it in a vacuum. I've also got the 2004 US special edition DVD from Somerville House, which was the best release going for a long time.  Metrodome's disc in the UK, which I used to own, was a better, anamorphic picture, but it was cut - so forget that.  Heck, now in 2025, you can pretty much forget every past release, thanks to Scream Factory's new BD/ UHD film upping the film to 4k.  Well, maybe.

1) 2004 Somerville DVD; 2) 2015 Arrow DVD; 3) 2015 Arrow BD;
4) 2025 Scream Factory BD; 5) 2025 Scream Factory UHD.

Right off the bat, the Somerville disc isn't even anamorphic, plus it's interlaced; so the fact that it's standard def isn't even the worst part. It's also the same basic 1.78:1 framing, but zoomed in closer so there's less picture around all four edges. The colors are pretty different, too, though there it's hard to say which is better. The Somerville looks a little more natural, but Cronenberg doesn't always seem to prefer natural, so that's maybe a little up in the air.  But clearly Arrow's transfer, which was done by Lions Gate and the fine folks at TIFF, has blown the old DVD out of the water in all other respects: detail, naturally rendered film grain, compression (it's a dual-layer disc, of course).

But now Scream Factory has come to take the film to 4k, with a fresh scan of the CRI negative (color replacement... basically a generation in between the original camera negative and prints that would've been struck from it).  And interestingly, they've opened it up to 1.67:1, revealing another smidgen of additional picture.  The colors have been re-timed again - the second set of shots is most obviously cooler, but the colors have changed throughout.  In the first set of shots, it actually looks more like the Somerville (should his robe have blue or green spots?  I wish I knew).  Grain isn't super clearly captured, even on the UHD.  It's actually a more modest upgrade than I expected, which I guess is more to Arrow's credit.

All three discs offer the original English mono track, though the Arrow and SF are lossless (LPCM and DTS-HD respectively.  Somerville also has a French mono dub, but lacks subtitles, which Arrow and SF both do have.  Arrow also threw in an isolated music track, which Scream dropped.

Extras-wise, it's another big win. First of all, the DVD special edition already delivered the goods with Cronenberg's commentary, which is excellent, and his video interview, plus the theatrical trailer.

Then Arrow adds a bunch of new stuff, too. There's a second audio commentary, by William Beard, who wrote a book on Cronenberg. He's quite well prepared and has plenty to say, another very good commentary. Then there are interviews with producer Ivan Reitman and Don Carmody of Cinepix, both of which are fun and insightful. And there's another good interview with Joe Blasco, which is good but also rather short. David Cronenberg's episode of The Directors, a 50+ minute retrospective of his career with a lot of big name stars (including Chambers), is here too. It's turned up on a couple of Cronenberg's releases, so if you're like me, you've already got it on your Scanners DVD or something else - or maybe you've even got it on its stand-alone DVD, since it was originally released separately. But it's quite good, and a number of fans probably haven't already got it, so it's cool they gave us another opportunity.

Then there's another featurette on Rabid and Cinepix, which is mostly pretty redundant, where one woman tells us things we already heard on the other features... though we do get a bit more from Biasco as well. Really, my only complaint about the extras, which are otherwise excellent, is the redundancy. You'll hear certain anecdotes, like how Cinepix started in softcore porn or how Marilyn Chambers was the Ivory Snow soap girl, literally four or more times. It starts to feel like a bit of a chore by the third time they come around.

The DVD had a nice little 2-page insert with notes, but Arrow trumps that with a 40+ page booklet, including an interview with Marilyn Chambers. And for hardcore collectors, there's a steelbook edition available as well; but me, I like the reversible cover art with the original poster art, as you see above.

And now we have Scream Factory's edition, which both adds and subtracts.  All the DVD stuff is here, as is most of Arrow's.  They dropped The Directors, which isn't too surprising, as well as that short Biasco interview.  But they make up for it with new stuff.  First of all, I should point out that Scream released this on blu in 2016, so shortly after the Arrow but well before this.  And that edition had some unique extras, which have been carried over here, including an on-camera interview with Susan Roman, who played Chambers' best friend, a unique commentary with two pornography experts (focusing, naturally, on Chambers' career), as well as a critical visual essay.  Plus they added a photo gallery, a TV spot and a dew radio spots.

So those are nice additions if you're coming from the Arrow, but if you already had the 2016 Scream blu, they've only added two new things for 2025: a pair of expert interviews, which, eh, are okay; but they don't add much to the conversation that all the other extras didn't already.  I'm happy to take 'em, but these shouldn't be the reason you triple-dip.  It does also come in a nice slipcover.

So, yeah I'll go ahead and call Scream Factory's latest edition of Rabid the new definitive edition.  But it's not going to blow your mind.  And you'll still want to hang onto your Arrow discs.  Or not.  The extras we lost aren't that big a deal.  In fact, it's pretty minor if you already have The Directors on another disc, like many of us do.  It's all rather incremental.