Leave it to David Cronenberg to make a bloodsucking horror epic, yet defang his femme fatale in favor of his own bizarro innovation -- ARMPIT VAMPIRISM -- and turn the whole thing into a biting comment on such seemingly disparate subjects as pay-as-you-go vanity to mankind's general proclivity to go absolutely ape poopie in a crisis.
Pornstar-next-door Marilyn Chambers had just slinked into a luscious little leather number before a backwoods joyride with her biker beau suddenly became a fiery disaster. Pinned and horribly burned beneath the wreckage, she's whisked three pastures over to sort of a Club Med for plastic surgery enthusiasts where she's an opportune subject for Dr. Keloid (Howard Ryshpan) and his experimental skin grafting procedure.
Works like a charm!
Trouble is, Ms. Marilyn wakes mighty hungry and with a consuming urge to strip nekkid and give every man, woman and barn animal she sees a great, big HUG!!! Not because she's gone all flower child on us, no, because she's sprouted an auxiliary orifice resembling a cat's ass from which a razor-sharp, plasma-slurping phallus darts out during amorous entanglements.
Doesn't get more Cronenbergian than that!
Worse, her suitors are then turned into RABID CANNIBALS who can't quite emulate the latter-day Typhoid Mary's silky bedside manner. Wholesale Canadian chaos naturally ensues and a tragic love story is born.
(Referencing 2004 DVD release) CineSchlockers should prepare to bask amid the near Criterion-quality presentation thanks to a particularly enthralling commentary AND a half-hour sit-down with Mr. Cronenberg whose professorly insights are refreshingly peppered with wry giggles.
Notable: Two breasts. 20 corpses. Ear munching. Machine gun Santacide. Finger carving. Multiple diddling. Puking. Gratuitous breathalyzer test.
Quotable: Doc Keloid practices foaming at the mouth: "I sure as hell don't want to become the Colonel Sanders of plastic surgery!"
