Inspiration from Shivers?

leading from

Alien Afterworlds

a) Questioning Dan O'Bannon's inspiration
David Cronenberg made the film Shivers in which there appeared a parasitic creature that lived in the bod, it would leap onto the victims face and enter through the mouth and be seen bulging through the skin. For Cronenberg that was enough to suggest something of the Facehugger's method of impregnation and how the chestburster gets out in Alien, Also what is seen at the beginning of the movie is a man is seen cutting open the body of a young woman to get at the parasite within and kill it with acid. And the setting of the film was the Starliner Towers hi-rise complex that perhaps was begging to be reimagined aboard a space ship. Of course he didn't actually know Dan O'Bannon or anything about his personal body horrors that Dan seemed to have been relating through the idea of the chestburster and indeed Dan had admitted being inspired by Tim Boxell's comic book story Defiled which came out in 1972 which showed other creature growing in a human being and coming out of the body, but whether Shivers remains another guiding vision for Dan O'Bannon's Alien remains a question..

b) Incident in Germany 
At a film festival in German when they had shown several of his early films, someone from that country in the audience stood up and said "how dare you show this film, you have so obviously stolen from the movie Alien! There is parasite that comes out of the mouth and there is acid that burns a face,  just like Alien!"

Cronenberg replied "you know, but this movie was made three years before Alien,"

The German man said "What?"

Cronenberg replied "Yes".

The German man responded "Ah , now we know who the thief is"

c) Cronenberg's Inquiries
Cronenberg realised that over time he was having a strange sort of a non-relationship with Dan O'Bannon because he never met him and he knew a lot of people who knew him and worked with him. For instance he knew John Landis and he told Cronenberg that Dan knew very well what he called the "Canadian films" by which he meant Shivers and Rabid, when he wrote Alien.  And in Cronenberg's mind that meant that he must have stolen all the parasite stuff from Shivers. He found himself talking to Ron Shusett because he had been given Dan and Ron's Total Recall script to take a look at and Ron Shusett told him, "He never saw those movies, knows nothing about them and I believe him," So Dan O'Bannon later denied having those movies while John Landis swore that Dan talked about about them all the time and knew them very well.

d) Synchronicity / Idea Paralleism
However David Cronenberg had seen enough similarities between films that he was making and suddenly the idea would come out in another form , maybe in a capsule summery of another movie or a review of the movie, no matter how obscure or personal you idea might be, it might sudden;y share ideas with another movie that would take away it's impact. In a Jungian sense once can see this as synchronicity.

When Cronenberg made The Brood, he found out that the film Manitou shared something similar when he read about a birth of a weird creature coming out of a woman's back and then when he made Scanner, he found out about Altered States that shared some things that were similar. Also while he made the 1983 film Videodrome released in that featured a gun that fused to the hand with ribbed piping creating the biomechanic look associated with the work of HR Giger and it dealt with the merging of human consciousness and machinery such as the guns and video  and one of the stars of that film was Debbie Harry who had been in a music video directed by H R Giger earlier that year, and she was the one who pointed out the coincidence there.

Dan O'Bannon would use the term "Idea Parallelism", and this frustrated him as he would be working on his original ideas and several other writers all working on their original ideas independent of one another might well find that they're all working on the same idea. It was down to the one who could get the idea past the starting gate first and Dan O'Bannon had found that many of his projects had evaporated because others had had the power to realise the same idea first.

However despite the emotions invested in the whole fiasco about Dan O'Bannon borrowing from Alien for the Shivers, Cronenberg talked about the time that he went to see Alien himself, he was disappointed in the film because he didn't see any metaphysics or philosophy in the way that he would want to in a film of his own. For him it was a creature that turns out to be a man dressed in a crocodile suit who chases people around a room. He thought that his own films touched a deeper seared nerve than the idea that you don't want a crocodile to eat you. To him, Alien was a $300,000 'B' movie on a $10,000,000 budget. He saw no metaphor behind the way Alien's parasite was used, it didn't evoke anything for him.  He saw only that when John Hurt had the parasite within him, he was going abut his business as usual. But in Shivers, the parasite stays inside the people and changes their behaviour and their motives, which uses the thing for more than simple shock value.

The Biomechanic Hand Gun from Cronenberg's Videodrome

Source Quote

1. David Cronenberg: And I had a funny non-relationship with Dan O'Bannon, because I never met him but I know tons of people who know him and have worked with him. John Landis to me that he knew very well what he called 'the Canadian films' by which he meant Shivers and Rabid, when he wrote Alien. And so I know he stole all the parasite stuff from Shivers. And Ron Shusett said "He never saw those movies and knows nothing about it and I believe him" Dan O'Bannon later denied that he had ever seen those movies, but John Landis swears that he talked about them all the time and knew them very well. (David Cronenberg, Interviews with Serge Grunberg, p78-79)
2. David Cronenberg: You know, the interesting thing was that I went to a film festival years later in Germany and we showed Shivers, and a man stood up and said, "How can you show this? This is stolen from Alien! There is parasite that comes out of the mouth and there is acid that burns a face,  just like Alien!" I said "Yes, but Shivers was made four years before," to which he said, " Ah! Now we know who the thief is!" As is turns out, one of the writers of Alien did know my films very well.
   Fangoria: Dan O'Bannon.
   Cronenberg: Yes, Dan O'Bannon. He confessed to John Landis that he particularly like the Canadian horror films, so anyway, who knows.( Fangoria Legends and tiff. present David Cronenberg, p10)
3. David Cronenberg So I remember at the film festival in Hof in Germany I had a little retrospective there and we showed Shivers. This was many years ago, maybe Shivers and Rabid were all I had to show with Stereo and Crimes Of The Future. Anyway, afterwards, when I was talking to the audience, this man stood up and said "how dare you show this movie, when it is so obvious that you have stolen from Alien!". And I said, "Well,  this movie was made three years before Alien," He said, "What?" I said "Yes". Then he said, "Now we know who the thief is". So that was my vindication, somebody knew then. I had a chance to say that. So it was odd for me to read a script from Dan O'Bannon. Not that I minded, I mean everybody steals from everybody else, but he was apparently a very aggressive sort of hostile character. I don't know, I've never met him. (David Cronenberg, Interviews with Serge Grunberg, p79)
4. David Cronenberg: I was at a film festival in Germany called the Hof Film Festival. Someone stood up , they had showed several of my early films, and he said "how dare you show this film, you have so obviously stolen from the movie Alien!". And I said, "you know, but this movie was made five years before Alien," and he said, "Ah , now we know who the thief is". (Interview with Film Four, 2001)
5. E.C.McMullen Jr: When Cronenberg pointed out that SHIVERS was made years before ALIEN (1975 vs. 1979) and that Dan O'Bannon admitted that he saw SHIVERS before he wrote ALIEN, the German said, "Ah. So now we know who the thief was." ( Feomante http://www.feoamante.com 2002) 
6. David Cronenberg: So for me to invent some phantasmagoria, to create metaphors for the body and the things that happen in the body and have part of the body outside the body so we can look at it and deal with it, brings me into the genre of body horror.. Which perhaps was not so directly recognised here, but in the context of what I did later I think it becomes pretty obvious. In fact I have to say that some of my images like this ended up in things like Alien, which was more popular than any of the films I've ever made. But the writer of Alien has definitely seen these movies, Dan O'Bannon. The idea of parasites that burst out of your body and uses a fluid and leaps on your face, that's all in Shivers. So it obviously touched a nerve in the public in general, the imagery, and for me it's natural to pursue it. (Interviews with Serge Grünberg, p39)
7. David Cronenberg: I have to say that Dan O'Bannon definitely knew my movies and he wrote the script for Alien. The whole idea of a parasite bursting out of a chest and jumping onto the face was all in Shivers. The idea of parasites living in your body was of course the basic idea of Shivers (Interviews with Serge Grünberg, p43)
8. David Cronenberg: It's a common thing that happens and I found that amongst directors and other artists, it's fairly universal. The instant that you do something, you start finding all of these capsule summaries and reviews of things that sound like your movie!  No matter how bizarre, obscure, strange, arcane or personal, you can find something that even if it's not exactly your movie, sounds close enough to what you're doing to destroy its impact. With The Brood, I do remember, it was the Manitou, I read that it had the birth of a weird creature out of a woman's back. With Scanners, it was Altered States, which in fact did have some things that were similar. (Videodrome, Tim Lucas p31)
9. Debbie Harrie:  David's concept here is very biomechanical, like the work of H R Giger who I worked with earlier this year. It's very much like that in that the brain is taking over and your reality is switching into video, you're seeing and your vision is taking on that video look; and you've got a gun that's an extension of your hand and shooting something because it offends you.... This is all biomechanical.(Videodrome, Tim Lucas, p71)
   
10. Debbie Harrie: I don't think my work with Giger made me want to do Videodrome any more or less, but I thought it was a very strong coincidence. I think that it's interesting how things often run in pairs or threes, and it seemed there that it was happening to me. (Videodrome, Tim Lucas, p71)
11. I was going to do Total Recall. Like with a lot of Philip Dick stuff the concept of Total Recall was incredible. The beginning was great. It didn’t quite have an ending that was satisfying and that was always the thing; what’s the third act? How’s it going to end? But I felt a great connection with Philip Dick. He’s such an interesting guy. A brilliant guy. A lot of his writing is very shoddy and not good because he wrote so fast and so constantly and he would be taking speed and would write for 48 hours straight which of course is ultimately what killed him. So I was working on it. At the time it was for Dino De Laurentiis and Ron Shusett, the producer, who’d had a lot of success with Alien, which, I have to say, took a lot of stuff from Shivers. There’s a parasite that lives inside you? Burns its way out? Jumps on your face and goes down your throat? I did all that before Alien and Dan O’Bannon (who wrote Alien) certainly knew my work. But that’s another thing. So anyway, I wanted to cast William Hurt for the lead, and it ended up being Arnold Schwarzenegger so there’s the difference. Once again I thought it could be sci-fi and entertaining, but heavy duty, you know? This was heavy duty. And ultimately what happened was, after doing a year’s worth of work — writing ten to twelve drafts myself, I finally handed the last draft to Ron Shusett and I said, “here, I think we have it, this is it.” And he said, “well, you know what you’ve done?” And I said, ”what?” And he said, “you’ve done the Philip K. Dick version.” And I said, “well isn’t that what we wanted?“ And he said, “no, we wanted Raiders of the Lost Ark Go to Mars.” And I said, “well it’s too bad we didn’t talk about that earlier because we could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble!” - See more at: http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/post/16638057207/cronenberg#sthash.r0erCIV8.dpuf
    David Cronemberg: I was going to do Total Recall. Like with a lot of Philip Dick stuff the concept of Total Recall was incredible. The beginning was great. It didn’t quite have an ending that was satisfying and that was always the thing; what’s the third act? How’s it going to end? But I felt a great connection with Philip Dick. He’s such an interesting guy. A brilliant guy. A lot of his writing is very shoddy and not good because he wrote so fast and so constantly and he would be taking speed and would write for 48 hours straight which of course is ultimately what killed him. So I was working on it. At the time it was for Dino De Laurentiis and Ron Shusett, the producer, who’d had a lot of success with Alien, which, I have to say, took a lot of stuff from Shivers. There’s a parasite that lives inside you? Burns its way out? Jumps on your face and goes down your throat? I did all that before Alien and Dan O’Bannon (who wrote Alien) certainly knew my work. But that’s another thing. So anyway, I wanted to cast William Hurt for the lead, and it ended up being Arnold Schwarzenegger so there’s the difference. Once again I thought it could be sci-fi and entertaining, but heavy duty, you know? This was heavy duty. And ultimately what happened was, after doing a year’s worth of work — writing ten to twelve drafts myself, I finally handed the last draft to Ron Shusett and I said, “here, I think we have it, this is it.” And he said, “well, you know what you’ve done?” And I said, ”what?” And he said, “you’ve done the Philip K. Dick version.” And I said, “well isn’t that what we wanted?“ And he said, “no, we wanted Raiders of the Lost Ark Go to Mars.” And I said, “well it’s too bad we didn’t talk about that earlier because we could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble!”  (source: http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/
    28th Jan 2012
    28th Jan, 2012)
12. David Cronenberg: Even with Alien. My movie Shivers I have a parasite that lives in you and burns its way out of your body and jumps on your face and and jumps on your face and goes down your throat. I know Dan O'Bannon knew my movie. In a case like that you wouldn't mind a little credit for it. But beyond that, if you are influential -- and I've had many young filmmakers say that I was a big influence and sometimes their movies do remind me of my old movies -- you take it as a compliment. You obviously touched a nerve. It's nice to have people be aware of that. But beyond that it's inevitable; things become communal understandings, let's say. The whole parasite thing. I mean there are movies called Parasite. But I did it first but, you know, whatever.  (thefilmexperience.net/blog/2011/12/1)
13. David Cronenberg: It was then , dare I say, stolen for Alien. Here is a parasite that lives inside your body and burns its way out with corrosive fluid and jumps on your face and goes down your throat. The timeline is very suspicious. It's very similar in the later film. But obviously this was done with a much bigger budget. Yet this was an idea that was so horrifying and scary that it worked despite the limitations that I would say are obvious when you look at this effect. (Empire, November 2013, p108)
14. The Face : On his own admission, Dan O'Bannon runs off at the mouth, - when he knows he should keep his own counsel. The frustration  that he feels over what he calls "idea parallelism" is not uncommon with creative writers working on original ideas as it is possible for several people to have the same idea, simultaneously totally independent of each other. Call it synchronicity, what you will. It is down to the one who can get the idea past the starting gate first, and O'Bannon has seen many of his projects evaporate because others had had the power to realise the same idea before him. (The Face, April 1986, p52)
15. David Cronenberg: A lot of people have pointed out a similarity between the parasite of Alien and the parasite of shivers. I was very disappointed with Alien, it as no metaphysics, no philosophy.  The creature winds up as a man in a crocodile suit who chases a bunch of people around a room. I think that my own films do a lot more in touching a deep seated nerve, more than the simple reaction that you don't want a crocodile to eat you. (Fangoria #3, December 1979, p13)
16. David Cronenberg: Alien was just a $300,00 'B' movie with a $ 10-million budget. The parasite device isn't used in a metaphorical way, it wasn't used to evoke anything. In Alien, John Hurt has the parasite in him, he goes about his business as usual. In Shivers, the parasite stays inside the people and changes their behaviour and their motives. It's used for something more than simple shock value.(Fangoria #3, December 1979,p13)