David Cronenberg is the undoubted godfather of Canadian nightmare movies and one of the genre's genuine auteurs. Shivers was the first significant exposure of his signature disturbed and deformed venereal horror style and as such represents a true original whose influence is important both in Canada itself and beyond. Cronenberg, whose previous two films had been barely seen arthouse efforts Stereo and Crimes Of The Future, was famously kicked out of his Toronto apartment for violating his lease's "morality clause" after critics became disgusted that his grotesque sexual horror was funded by taxpayer dollars (principle funding came from the government backed Canadian Film Development Corporation). There were even debates in the Canadian parliament about the negative effects Cronenberg's twisted parasite picture might have on its audience. The director sets out his stall right from the start as he crosscuts between the hard sell given to prospective tenants at a bland, sterile residential tower block and a creepy scientist strangling a schoolgirl, slicing her open and pouring acid in her stomach before killing himself. From then on, the film traces the collapse of a community of smug, repressed young professionals as they are increasingly possessed by the parasites that give them a voracious sexual appetite. Cronenberg is at his happiest when the normal rules of society turn chaotic and, with Shivers, he established that structure for many of the best films in his, and many followers', careers.