Those rabies shots are killers. Think I'd rather take my chances on getting sick instead.

The attempted quarantine in Blindness reminded me of the barely-contained epidemic in another Canadian film -- David Cronenberg's Rabid. Released in 1977, it features porn star Marilyn Chambers as a motorcycle accident victim who receives an experimental skin graft at an exclusive plastic surgery resort and, when she comes out of her coma, finds that she craves blood, which she extracts from her victims with a phallic growth in her armpit. After a brief incubation period, her victims then start frothing at the mouth and violently attacking other people at random. As soon as this comes to light, martial law is declared in Montreal and "the crazies" as they're called (reminding one of the George A. Romero film of the same name) are rounded up and disposed of. If that seems faintly ludicrous to you, then you haven't seen enough Cronenberg films. Compared to what went on in his previous film, 1975's Shivers, this one verges on naturalistic.

Chambers carries the film and gives a credible performance for her first lead in a mainstream film, which is a good thing because Frank Moore (who had previously appeared in Cronenberg's telefilm The Italian Machine) is kind of weak and ineffectual as her boyfriend. That's mostly due to the way the character is written, though (Cronenberg contrives to keep the couple apart for most of the film's running time), so one can hardly fault Moore on that count. Other Cronenberg mainstays in the cast include businessman Joe Silver (who had previously starred in Shivers), insensitive patient Ronald Mlodzik (who had starred in Cronenberg's first two experimental features, Stereo and Crimes of the Future), truck driver Gary McKeehan (another carryover from The Italian Machine) and Robert A. Silverman (who was just beginning his long association with Cronenberg). One does have to wonder how the film would have turned out if Cronenberg had gotten his first pick for the lead -- Sissy Spacek. It would have been different, to say the least.