Savor a penetrating performance by legendary porn star Marilyn Chambers in a horror film that defies gender roles. 

Rose (Marylin Chambers) and her boyfriend are motorcycle enthusiasts in matching black leather gear who get into an accident that sends Rose to a nearby plastic surgery resort for skin grafts, leading to the growth of a new orifice with a phallic protrusion under her arm. In vampiric fashion, she uses her unique appendage to impale lovers mid embrace and suck their blood for sustenance. Her victims deteriorate into homicidal maniacs who spew green foam and attack everyone in sight to feed on their flesh. 

Rabid marks the first time Cronenberg imagines the growth of a new sex organ, and Marylin Chambers makes her character’s transformation intensely believable. At the time of Rabid’s release, Chambers was well-known for her groundbreaking pornographic films Behind the Green Door (1972), an early hardcore depiction of interracial sex, and Resurrection of Eve (1973), which daringly presented sex between men for a heterosexual audience. With Cronenberg’s guidance, Chambers shattered more taboos.