I was reading The Onion and took a peek at my horoscope. It said “You will make medical history this week as the first person to recover from smallpox only to die from a never-before-seen strain of enormouspox.” My actual fate was not so dire, but that printed and malignant prophecy did manage to land in the ballpark of my reality. Last Friday several doctors confirmed that what I thought was a cluster of spider bites along my neck, cheek, and head was, in fact, shingles; a painful rash of blisters that can flare up in anyone who’s ever had chickenpox. At the moment, I feel like a sparkler on the 4th of July, all dancing pinpoints of fire and itchiness. I’m trying not to scratch at anything as I type, and had to cancel plans to attend both a birthday party and a Fruit Bats concert. As I pose a risk to anyone who has either never had chickenpox or is pregnant, I’m under self-quarantine and feeling very much like a freak. And as I try to think of cinematic comparisons to describe my state, I’m surprised to realize that only a few titles come to mind.

Using the keyword search on IMDB if you type in the word “virus” you’ll find 266 titles that fit the bill. There are several recognizable films that populate the list: Twelve Monkeys, Children of Men, 28 Days Later…, Panic in the Streets, Cabin Fever, The Andromeda Strain, The Crazies, and many more. But the only one on that list that I feel does justice to my situation is Cabin Fever. Obviously I can’t speak for everything on there, having only seen a fraction, but I feel it’s safe to say that most of these “virus” films have the audience empathizing with the uninfected survivors. Cabin Fever on the other hand, and thanks to its “And Then There Were None” approach to the characters, really made the infection itself seem like a leading protagonist. The “small handful of kids in a cabin” formula helps keep it intimate, ergo making it easier to get engrossed by the grossness.

I’m tempted to digress onto the topic of werewolves, vampires, and zombies, since they all tap into the fear of contamination in different ways. And they certainly make a freak of you, by any standard of a polite society. But they don’t really fit my bill because both werewolves and vampires are imbued with exotic powers. Even zombies are keeping true death at bay and show more dogged determination in their brain-eating ways than any poor working Joe in the grip of something so nasty that it saps them of either strength or will – nevermind dignity.  So what does come to mind for the sickly pariah who can still think clearly?

The Fly – either version. Let’s face it (and nobody wants to, because it has a sh*t-eating grin surrounded by wiggly things resting below big, sticky, googly eyes): no goth kids will be following you around trying to emulate you, and your bodily form shall also entertain no primal fantasies of howling at the moon, half-naked, and in ripped-up-monster-pants as you chase damsels in distress. No. You’re just gross. Vincent Price was right to want to keep the door closed. And Jeff Goldblum might have enjoyed some extreme arm-wrestling, but the minute his own fingernails start falling into the sink you know Cronenberg will utilize all his passions and talents for depicting a virus at play to up the ick factor. At the same time, and this is important, in both cases we admire the minds within the changing bodies, thus introducing a genuine pathos to a plight that is front-and-center to the story.

The Incredible Melting Man – This seventies horror flick about an astronaut who “is transformed into a murderous gelatinous mass after returning from an ill-fated space voyage” may fare poorly among IMDB viewers (who gave it an astonishingly low score of 2.9 stars out of 10) – but I remember the TV ad alone gave me nightmares as a kid. Speaking of which; last night I dreamt that most of my hair and scalp fell off, leaving only gleaming, white skull behind. Fortunately, I was so distracted by the swarm of bees that were attacking me that the whole “losing my hair”-thing hardly had time to register. Although The Incredible Melting Man eventually goes into the flesh-eating zombie realm, the scenes of bodily disintegration into a gloppy mess are indelible ones (these brought to us courtesy of Rick Baker).  The fact that The Incredible Melting Man becomes a huge risk to his buddies pregnant wife makes this a perfect film for any singles-with-shingles movie-night mixer.

Speaking of bone-exposing, gruesome face-peeling scenes, how can we forget the stand-out, gross-out moment in Poltergeist where the paranormal investigator looks in a mirror and peels his face down to his skull? In my book, Spielberg handles this with far more aplomb than his more famous moment in Raiders of the Lost Ark when the Nazi’s open the ark of the covenant. That last one had a few too many distracting wispy ghosts flying around to create a visceral impact – plus, not many of us will (hopefully) be empathizing with Nazi’s, while most of us can easily empathize with “a bad day looking into a mirror” (especially when your skin is covered with blistering pustules).

The Elephant Man – I soon as I say “I’ve got shingles, so if you’ve never had chickenpox stay back,” I’m quickly finding out two things. 1) Everyone I’ve talked to so far has had chickenpox and 2) this doesn’t matter and it’s easy to figure out which friends are total germaphobes. Those in the latter category shriek as if though they’ve seen a fly-headed paranormal investigator ripping his incredible melting-man face into little chunks, and then they make eyes for the door. It is, of course, these moments that make one think of the oft-repeated and famous line from David Lynch’s The Elephant Man – and this even though that had nothing to do with any kind of a communicable disease (an important distinction). No, that involved a case of either neurofibromatosis type 1, or Proteus syndrome. Either way, Joseph Merrick’s short and tragic life led to various books, a Tony Award-winning play, and more. All of which contributed to one of the most often quoted lines spoken by freaks such as myself when we feel ourselves spurned by those who are easily frightened: “I am not an animal! I am a human being! I am a man!”

I feel that there are some obvious films and/or famous (or infamous) scenes that I am forgetting about. To include television shows would up the ante significantly (with a Star Trek or Outer Limits episode certainly at the fore). But, as it’s time for my medication, I’ll end with an image from Creepshow. It’s from the second story, The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verril (originally titled Weeds and adapted from a previously published short story by Stephen King). King plays the titular character who discovers a meteorite with a plant-like or algae-ish organism that quickly takes over his body. It’s a comical image, one that resonates with me in a not-so-funny way as I let myself grow a beard since the blisters on my face make it impossible to shave.