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Shivers (1975 film)

1975 film by David Cronenberg

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 8, 2026
Entity authorityQ1520388 ↗
Source-derived summary

Shivers, also known as The Parasite Murders and They Came from Within, and, for Canadian distribution in French, Frissons (IPA: free-SOHN; 'chills' or 'shivers'), is a 1975 Canadian science fiction body horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg and starring Paul Hampton, Lynn Lowry, and Barbara Steele.

Plot

At Starliner Towers, a luxury apartment complex outside Montreal, Dr. Emil Hobbes murders a young woman named Annabelle. He slices open her stomach, pours acid into the wound and then kills himself. Nick Tudor, who has been suffering from stomach convulsions, finds their bodies but leaves without calling the police. The two bodies are found by resident doctor Roger St. Luc, who calls the police. Hobbes' medical partner, Rollo Linsky, tells St. Luc that he and Hobbes had been working on a project to create "a parasite that can take over the function of a human organ."

After suffering more convulsions, Nick leaves work early. He vomits a parasite over the railing of his balcony.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Shivers (1975 film)” is 1975 film by David Cronenberg. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Shivers, film and David, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1975—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1975-09, 1975-09-26, 1975-10, 1975-10-10—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. For this dossier, Shivers, film and David is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “1975 film by David Cronenberg” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1520388. VIAF identifies the subject as 183629556. 17 of 17 selected statements include explicit references; 16 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1975.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Shivers (1975 film)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Shivers (1975 film) primary sources, Shivers (1975 film) archive and Shivers research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Shivers (1975 film)”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Shivers (1975 film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.