Rabid

A motorcycle accident leaves Rose badly burned and near death. She is taken to a private cosmetic surgery clinic, where an experimental skin graft saves her life but leaves her changed. A strange orifice develops beneath her arm, and through it she feeds on the blood of others. Her hunger is uncontrollable, and the people she attacks later fall into a violent frenzy that spreads through the city.

David Cronenberg wrote and directed the film, his third feature, following Shivers in 1975 and preceding The Brood in 1979. Marilyn Chambers plays Rose, with Frank Moore as her boyfriend Hart Read and Howard Ryshpan and Patricia Gage as the doctors who treat her. The cast and crew together number well over a hundred credited people, and the production was Canadian.

Released in April 1977 and running ninety-one minutes, the film sits early in Cronenberg's career, when he was establishing the body-horror concerns that recur in his later work. On IMDb the film holds a 6.3 rating from roughly 24,000 votes, and on TMDB it also stands at 6.3, from around 581 votes. A critics' rating of 6.5 from twenty-seven reviews places it close to those audience scores, indicating a comparable reception on both sides.