After watching 'Rabid' last week, I thought I'd also check out another early Cronenberg film that was also available on our 'on demand' cable menu. Not nearly as interesting or as artfully done as the other film. The low production values and poor acting are even more glaring in this one, although there are a few effective scenes. 60s scream queen Barbara Steele makes an appearance, but her talents are mostly wasted on a cheesy bathtub scene and a few other short embarrasing sequences ("make love to me, make love to me, kiss me, make love to me"). The sanitized industrial high rise setting is almost more horrifying than the parasitic worm that wreaks havoc among its inhabitants.
On the plus side, some interesting 'crawling skin' special effects are used years before they caused such a sensation on such films as 'Altered States' and 'An American Werewolf in London'.