The luxurious Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Wrigleyville on July 14, 2025, was the host for a Dead Walk Fest event. The movie that was being shown was Shivers, a 1975 classic body horror film from the mind of David Cronenberg, renowned auteur of this kind of horror. This event celebrated the 50th Anniversary of this essential horror staple.
The Alamo Drafthouse is right on the entertainment avenue of sports bars and restaurants that make up the baseball-loving enclave of the Wrigley Field area. This movie house has multiple screens with an optional food and drink menu, complete with servers who deliver orders during the movie. The lobby also has a bar made to look like a 1980s video store, complete with a table area called Video Vortex which looks like a scene directly from MTV. Vintage prints of foreign movie posters, mostly of horror and science fiction films, grace the hallways. There were well-known movies that had completely different titles to promote them in international markets.
Shivers was a wholly Canadian production and was also the debut film of David Cronenberg. The movie was graphic and very much like a nightmare unfolding on the silver screen. It was also highly erotic, covering some taboo subjects in that area. Despite being a Canadian production, this movie was censored in Canada and sometimes banned in areas there. Some people were so offended by the film in various spots in Canada at the time that it caused a debate about public funding for horror films. The “Starliner Towers” shown in the movie was actually Cronenberg’s apartment building in Montreal. Cronenberg has mentioned in interviews that this movie, in his opinion, inspired the parasitic facehuggers in Alien (1979) and seeing this movie, it is a plausible observation. There is not much room for doubt when you see the laundry room scene in Shivers in which the parasite jumps to the woman’s face.
The viewer, while watching Shivers, can tell that every scene, line, and shot was meticulously planned. The acting from the cast was superb, with nothing amateur about it. The movie was a strong dose of shock and made all the more disturbing because body horror is accessible. Utilization of the planar spaces of the movie screen was expertly planned. The movie was so daring for 1975 it is no wonder that it caused such dismay.
Body horror as a genre is instantly relatable since we all have experienced “body horror,” whether that be a bout of acne, a bruise, or the swelling of a body part. As a genre, it has been unabated since its inception and Cronenberg is a luminary and indeed a pioneer of it. The latest prominent body horror movie was the acclaimed The Substance (2024), a movie that was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, a rare feat for a horror film. Body horror often shows nudity and distorts parts of the anatomy.
Lynn Lowry, the lead actress of Shivers, was present all throughout the event, signing autographs, taking photos with fans, and watching the movie with fans in the theatre. Elfinlike in appearance and still ethereal today, she was engaging during the audience Q&A after the movie. She detailed that she was a cabaret performer for part of her career. The scene that was most memorable during filming in her thoughts was the concluding swimming pool scene in which she had some input for it. Lynn Lowry is a classically trained actress who unexpectedly found herself cast in a horror film. On screen she has a strange, otherworldly presence, which was what Cronenberg was looking for in casting Shivers. Before she landed her part in Shivers, she was offered a part in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre but she didn’t take the role because she felt that the script was too gory. She continued signing autographs and replicas of the Shivers parasite in the lobby after the movie screening.
It was a fantastic movie to watch and the event was a must for aficionados of Cronenberg. Be sure to look for the next event in the Dead Walk Fest series, combining a movie theater screening with stars from the movie on site.
Connect vith Count Gregula’s Crypt
Like us on Facebook.
Subscribe to us on YouTube.
