9 Horror Movies That Were Ahead Of Their Time

It didn’t take long for the horror business to catch up with David Cronenberg, whose version of The Fly is among the best films of the 1980s. In 1975, though, he was just finding his feet after a few self-produced features. It didn’t take him long.

Working for the first time with a budget (albeit a seriously small one), with Shivers, Cronenberg set the template for the irresistibly disgusting and shocking pictures that would cement his legacy.

The plot is typically Cronenberg - a seriously out-there mad scientist creates a parasite that sends its hosts into irresistible orgies of sex and violence, and releases it into a Montreal apartment block, basically for a laugh. The script writes itself from there. Cronenberg’s eye for gore is without peer, and the film, very much a cult affair, made back its money and then some.

Shivers wasn’t well received by critics, who didn’t want to be seen supporting this kind of schlock, but Hollywood clearly saw something in the director, who’d go on to spend the next decade exploding heads, tearing off fingernails, and any other disgusting thing he could imagine.