Susan Petrie in Shivers (1975)

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No basic venereal disease has ever been so severely debilitating as the sexually transmitted malady known as Shivers (1975). The plot of this first feature film by acclaimed/reviled Canadian shock director David Cronenberg combines the most frightening elements of AIDS and the movie Alien (1979) and predates them both by enough years to be prescient as well as creepier than hell. A whacked-out scientist breeds a pet parasite that when introduced to a human host heightens that person's libido and jumps from victim to victim through the act of sexual congress. The renegade inventor is appalled at the voracity of his pet and attempts to bring it to heel by slicing open an infected woman’s abdomen and pouring acid inside. A for effort, but the little buggers will not be stopped. The ensuing eroticized desolation takes place in a high-rise apartment complex isolated upon an island, creating an atmosphere of inescapable claustrophobia that is likely to last after the movie has ended.