Shivers

Screenplay by

David Cronenberg

SHOOTING DRAFT

1975

EXT. STARLINER TOWERS APARTMENT COMPLEX -- MORNING

Starliner Towers is seen in LS through the windshield of a moving car. The car approaches the complex and stops near the main doors of the West Tower.

Out of the car climb Kresimir and Benda Sviben, a gawky newly wed young couple. Kresimir elaborately opens the door for Benda, his new wife, and they walk with hands intertwined up the steps of the West Tower.

INT. LOBBY -- MORNING

As the Svibens approach the main doors, the doorman leaps up from his chair beside the intercom switchboard and opens the door for them. The doorman, like most security guards, does not look capable of handling a serious crisis. He is about fifty, of average height but slightly built, wears thick glasses and seems almost embarrassed by the revolver on his hip.

The doorman presses a button on the intercom board. As he turns back to the Svibens, he catches his holster on the board.

INT. ANNABELLE'S APARTMENT -- MORNING

Dr. Emil Hobbes, a huge, florid, bearded man, is strangling Annabelle Horsefield. Despite the difference in their sizes -- Annabelle is tall and slender, about seventeen -- Hobbes is not having an easy time of it. Hobbes is wearing overlarge blue jeans and a red plaid shirt; Annabelle is in a private girls' school outfit -- white blouse, dark blue tie, blue knee socks, pleated gray skirt.

Annabelle fights back fiercely; Hobbes has tears in his eyes. The struggle takes them all over her apartment, which, although sparsely furnished, presents enough objects in their way to cause a lot of crashing around. At one point Annabelle breaks loose and Hobbes has to chase her.

Annabelle slips and Hobbes manages to pin her to the ground, where he has the advantage of leverage. He strangles her quickly and with tremendous, crazy energy. Blood oozes from her mouth. Hobbes places his hand over her mouth as though trying to prevent her from speaking, or to prevent something from leaving her body.

He reaches over to his leather doctor's bag, which has spilled some of its contents on to the floor, finds a surgical clamp, and clamps Annabelle's lips together. He then picks up her body, carries it over to the dining-room table and sweeps the few cups and bottles on it off on to the floor. He then places her body with great tenderness on the table and begins to undress it.

INT. LOBBY -- MORNING

The doorman leaves the Svibens to open the door for the Spergazzis, an elderly Italian couple who both use aluminum, four-pronged canes to help them walk. The Svibens watch the old couple as they enter and then glance at each other significantly -- 'We'll be together when we're as old as they are.'

Mr. Spergazzi tips his hat to the doorman, who opens the inner door for him.

As the Spergazzis make their way shakily toward the elevators, Mr. Merrick, the rental agent, appears from around a corner. He is slick, mustachioed, and wears a wide paisley tie. He extends his hand for a handshake even though he is still fifty feet from the inner doors. The doorman keeps the door open for him.

The three disappear around a corner.

The doorman pulls a Harlequin Nurse Romance out of his jacket and sits down to continue reading it.

INT. ANNABELLE'S APARTMENT -- MORNING

Hobbes ties a green surgical mask over his mouth and nose, snaps on rubber gloves.

He turns to Annabelle's corpse on the dining-room table, legs hanging over the edge, now naked -- the private girls' school clothes in a heap on the floor. Hobbes takes a scalpel from the top of the radiator where he has laid out his surgical instruments. He feels Annabelle's stomach until he has found what he wants, then cuts her open with one smooth, confident stroke of the scalpel.

He then quickly douses the inside of her abdomen with some clear fluid in a squeeze bottle, lights a wooden match, and drops it into her abdominal cavity. The corpse bursts into flame.

Hobbes steps back to watch. Tears spring into his eyes. He picks up another scalpel and perfunctorily sticks it into his neck. Blood spurts into his mask and soaks through to the other side. Hobbes sinks to his knees before the blazing corpse and struggles to draw the scalpel through the tendons of his neck.

INT. RENTAL OFFICE -- MORNING

Merrick and the Svibens sit across from each other at a long table strewn with floor plans and maps. The river which surrounds the complex can be seen through the glass walls of the office. Merrick taps one plan with his finger and slides it over to Benda.

INT. TUDOR'S APARTMENT -- MORNING

In his bathroom, Nicholas Tudor is cleaning his teeth with microscopic attention to detail using an elaborate compressed- water device called a water-pick. Tudor is thirty-nine, not happy with his work as an insurance appraiser, and has recently adopted a general air of terse, sullen desperation as his primary mood.

His wife, Janine, calls to him from the kitchen, where she is just putting the finishing touches on breakfast.

Tudor pointedly doesn't answer, but continues with the water- pick until he is completely satisfied. He carefully packs the machine away, then leaves the bathroom.

In the dining room, Janine is putting breakfast on the table. Tudor sits down without a word and begins to eat. Janine returns to the kitchen and comes back with a cup of coffee in each hand. She puts one cup in front of Tudor, sits down, starts to drink the other one. After a pause, she speaks.

Janine continues to toy with the food in her plate. She shrugs once, as if to say, 'Big deal, so what?' Tudor ignores her and finishes breakfast.

INT. A HALLWAY -- MORNING

Tudor leaves his apartment, closing the door behind him (we see the number clearly).

He walks down the hallway on automatic pilot, obviously preoccupied, turning the corner leading to the elevators without perceiving what he is seeing.

At the elevators he hesitates for a moment, then presses the UP button. When the door opens, he steps in.

INT. ELEVATOR -- MORNING

In the elevator are Merrick, the rental agent, and the Svibens.

Nobody says another word until the doors spring open and Merrick, after a wink at Tudor, hustles the Svibens out of the elevator.

As the doors close, Merrick's voice floats back to Tudor.

Once the door has closed, Tudor presses the button for the top floor. As the elevator ascends, he takes out his wallet and removes a key from a zippered compartment.

INT. HALLWAY -- MORNING

Tudor fits the key into the lock of Annabelle's apartment. He knocks gently and then opens the door. After a pause he steps in and closes the door behind him, not wanting to be seen by anyone who might know him.

INT. ANNABELLE'S APARTMENT -- MORNING

As soon as he is inside the apartment, Tudor knows that something is seriously wrong. Smoke hangs in the air and the smell of burned flesh attacks Tudor's nostrils. He is on his way to the bedroom when he sees Hobbes's foot around the corner of the dining room.

Tudor approaches the dining room with his hand over his nose and mouth.

Annabelle's corpse is still smoking where it lies on the dining-room table. Hobbes's body is twisted into the fetal position at the foot of the table, one hand still clutching the scalpel stuck in its neck, the floor beneath it bright with blood.

Tudor winces as though stuck with a pin. Blinking rapidly, he edges around the room until his angle of vision is such that he can see the head of the corpse on the table. It is definitely Annabelle, eyes still staring, surgical clip still attached to her lips, purple bruises on her neck.

Tudor turns, his body contracting around the pit of his stomach. After a moment he manages to straighten up and stagger from the apartment, having at least enough presence of mind to take his attaché case, which he left by the door, and to close the door behind him.

INT. ANNABELLE'S APARTMENT -- AFTERNOON

Dr. Roger St. Luc, tall, thin, dark, not bad-looking, stands over the table staring at the corpse of Annabelle. As he watches, two ambulance men throw a sheet over her and begin to lift her down on to a stretcher on the floor. The voice of the superintendent of the building drifts over to him from the other end of the apartment.

The super, a small, unshaven, harassed little man with a lot of energy, is talking to a large beefy detective who writes everything down in a notebook.

The detective now turns to St. Luc, who is crouched on the floor examining the chalk outline around where Hobbes's body had lain.

The detective walks over to St. Luc and the super follows. St. Luc rises to meet him. He is wearing very informal summer clothes, a bit rumpled.

St. Luc begins to pace about as he talks.

The telephone rings. The super, who has been fiddling with a window with a cracked pane of glass, grabs the phone instinctively without looking at the detective, who probably would have answered it himself.

The detective looks suspiciously at St. Luc, who simply looks dazed.

INT. ROLLO LINSKY'S LABORATORY -- AFTERNOON

Next to a shallow porcelain tray full of immense and grotesque marine worm specimens lies a large parcel wrapped in brown paper. Rollo's plump fingers eagerly open the package to reveal a large variety of delicatessen sandwiches and accessories.

Rollo offers some to St. Luc while stuffing one in his own mouth. There are Cokes and old coffees everywhere, plus mustard, relish, and ketchup dispensers of all kinds. Rollo and St. Luc sit around Rollo's desk, a very sleek metal affair.

Rollo's lab itself is a combination of modern office and biology room in a museum of natural history. Specimens of all kinds, in bottles and cases, mounted on glass and wood, floating in preservative baths, are everywhere. There are also a few cages of living insects, moldy aquaria and lab cultures in various stages of neglect.

There are also clippings from magazines and newspapers sporting furious underlinings and circlings in red ink which are stuck to walls, doors, bookshelves.

Despite the potential for chaos, however, there is an underlying order which reflects Rollo's own real discipline, which is not always immediately apparent. And the microscopes and glass slides, the stainless-steel gynecological table complete with stirrups, metal drug and instrument cabinet, etc., are spotless and in good shape.

Rollo is rotund, soft-faced, and a manic-depressive. In his manic phase he is a joker and an elbow-nudger, and his general style, even when discussing medical matters in medical jargon, is broad North-American Jewish. In his depressive phase, he becomes a sullen kid who has an oddly sinister aspect to his character.

Rollo detaches himself from his baby beef in order to comment on the food that, not so secretly, he loves best of all.

He jams a final piece of sandwich into his mouth and jumps to his feet, smiling broadly.

He pulls a book off a shelf with a bookmark in it. He opens the book at the marked page and hands it to St. Luc. As St. Luc looks at the picture of a satyr with his tongue hanging out and reads the brief note on how medieval alchemists thought the ground-up tongue of the satyr could cure any disease, Rollo continues to talk.

As Rollo speaks, he walks all over the place, picking up and discarding various charts, specimens, bottled and diseased human organs, etc.

As he moves around, we catch glimpses of Letrasetted signs that Rollo has tacked up: 'Sex is the invention of a clever venereal disease -- Hobbes'; 'Dr. Hobbes's prescription: starve a fever, feed an obsession'; 'The road of excess leads to knowledge'; plus several pictures of satyrs with their tongues sticking out, being cut off by alchemists, etc.

He is now in full flight. He leans over St. Luc and begins to demonstrate what he says by drawing things on St. Luc's stomach with his fingers. St. Luc can't hide his amusement.

Rollo throws himself back into his chair and grabs a pickle.

St. Luc is about to say something, but Rollo answers his own rhetorical question with a flip of the hand, effectively silencing St. Luc.

He leaps up again and pulls a sheaf of reprints from medical journals like the Journal of Venereal Disease, etc. He shoves them under St. Luc's nose, then grabs a jar with a disintegrating octopus-like creature in it and a sandwich at the same time. He smacks down the sandwich in front of St. Luc by mistake, then retrieves it and substitutes the jar with the specimen.

St. Luc sifts through the papers and glances at the specimen.

As St. Luc looks at the papers, Rollo breathes heavily down his neck and points out things of interest.

He walks away from the desk. His manner is now more subdued and reflective. It seems as though everything he says provokes a dozen unspoken thoughts. His depressive phase is beginning.

Rollo sighs heavily. St. Luc gently shoves all the papers aside.

Rollo toys with the gynecological examination table, sliding the stirrups in and out on their adjustment bars.

He now gets close to St. Luc, putting an arm around his shoulder.

He starts to run down like a spring-wound toy at the end of its run. He glances at a picture of Annabelle stuck in a corner, which St. Luc just notices for the first time.

St. Luc looks at his watch and gets up out of his chair for the first time.

He moves toward the door. Rollo trails after him, head down, obviously dejected.

They shake hands. St. Luc has to open the door himself -- Rollo is really preoccupied. Finally he looks St. Luc in the eye.

Rollo manages a smile. St. Luc leaves, closing the door behind him.

INT. TUDOR'S APARTMENT -- MORNING