Description: From famed writer-director David Cronenberg (The Dead Zone, The Fly, Scanners)comes a chillingly twisted masterpiece of psychological horror. Oliver Reed (Gladiator) and Samantha Eggar (The Astronaut's Wife) star in this shocking, intense thriller about how misdirected rage can literally take on a life of its own. Behind the walls of his secluded Somafree Institute, Dr. Hal Raglan (Reed) experiments with "Psychoplasmics," a controversial therapy designed to help release pent-up emotions in his patients. He keeps his star patient Nola (Eggar) in isolation, but as she vents her fury during their sessions, brutal murders befall the people she's angry with outside the institute. What is the connection between Raglan's methods and these monstrous killings? The answer will unleash a whole new breed of terror!
Amazon.com: Arguably the best and most personal of director David Cronenberg's early films, The Brood is an extremely unsettling horror film about familial disintegration and emotional trauma taken to a monstrous extreme. Art Hindle (Black Christmas) stars as a man embroiled in a bitter custody struggle with his estranged wife (Samantha Eggar), who is undergoing therapy at psychiatrist Oliver Reed's controversial institute. Reed's treatment causes his patients to give form to their inner conflicts, and Eggar--whose psyche is at the boiling point from childhood abuse as well as the custody trial--creates a horde of homicidal humanoid children who enact bloody revenge on anyone who has threatened their "mother." Cronenberg's first feature with name actors and composer Howard Shore has its share of gruesome moments, but the film's subtext--how emotional violence impacts a family--is its most chilling aspect. --Paul Gaita
A ridiculous (and ridiculously-bad) horror film rife with plot holes, poor characterization, and ludicrous scenes, The Brood represents Cronenberg at his absolute worst; really pretty terrible, this is a film recommended to no one except people who want insight inside the Canadian horror master's twisted psyche.
Très Bon This actually may be my favorite Cronenberg film, and I'm a huge fan of his.
If you're looking for something more involving than typical horror bilge, here you have it. If you're familiar with Cronenberg, you'll recognize every second of it.
However I try I can't really do this film any favors by explaining it. All I can say is I love it. Recommended.
David... Cronenberg, the "King of Venereal Horror" did it again; This movie is one more classic reflection of this director's style of nightmarish atmosphere with the very good special effects of it's time involving mutation, which is usually in some type of medical horror plot. You can expect the unexpected again though...this one also features it's own originality and twisted ending. These are rarities these days.
Not that good just watched it a couple nights ago. aside from a couple decent performances, a few intriguing ideas and sufficient blood during the death scenes, this film was barely watchable.
i'm not a huge Cronenberg fan, but like some of his movies. i rank The Brood towards the bottom of his catalog.
D
Don't Make Me Angry. You Wouldn't Like My Children When I'm Angry. Too bad Bill Bixby isn't alive anymore. This film could have used some "mean green" excitement in it. Not that I don't appreciate Cronenberg's work, but this film is just too boring. Oh, I can hear it from "Brood" fans now; "You don't know what your talking about you shallow, simple minded ignoramus putts!!" they might say. Well, let's just see how little I know...
-CRAZY PEOPLE; IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE. Of course that's the opposite of true. Crazy people are usually the last to know. However, Cronenberg could put an argument together. Most of us "normal" people (and I say that with the greatest suspicion) have very deep dark thoughts of violence, perversion and debauchery that we usually keep down in the deep dark places of our minds. We rarely visit these places except when we're watching some wacked-out horror film or reading something of similar genre. Otherwise, we keep the place locked and the lights out. Cronenberg's dark place is much deeper and darker than ours but he keeps the lights on and is a frequent shopper. This man can truly bring nightmares to life. This film definitely explores the darkness of the mind but doesn't make much of a nightmare.
-PSYCHOS BABBLE PSYCHOBABBLE. Rubber baby buggy bumpers (it just seamed the natural thing to do, sorry)! This is precisely why some people like this film and others, like me, found it over-long. "The Brood" spends about 70% of its length exploring family violence and it's affects on how anger manifests itself as it is related to that violence. As we plod along, we are given hints of what is at the heart of mysterious beating deaths. I would never say we didn't need to hear this stuff or that it can't be interesting; it's just not necessary or interesting when it's repeated over and over for 60 minutes. I actually understood the concept the first 3 times you told me!! The time spent on this subject as it related to the films story could have been cut to 20 minutes with no ill affect at all in my opinion.
-HEY LETS GO FOR A DRIVE... ...AGAIN!! I thought this film killed too much time with psychobabble, but you should see how much meaningless time we spend on the road; UGH!!!
-AT 40 MINUTES THIS IS A GOOD MOVIE. Honestly, I'm ready to chop more than half this movie away. But far be it from me to not argue with myself. What if we actually chopped away all that extra serious talk of anger's manifestation and the lovely car drives? I suspect the consequence would be that what remained would appear more comical than intended. I would probably enjoy it though because there's some pretty creepy stuff going on here and it's professionally executed. The actors (whose names I will avoid to save space) were seasoned professionals and lent credibility to the film. I don't want to hear any excuses of low budget; this film had all the budget it needed.
-YOU SAY PLAUSIBLE, I SAY PLAUSIBLAH!!(spoilage) Honestly, if you argue about the plausibility of a horror film's premise, then you should just go away. That said; the premise of this film has huge plausibility problems. This is why it would be comical if you cut what I suggested. So, Cronenberg's deep psychological study would become a semi-campy B-movie. I don't mind serious horror films but this really isn't one at its heart, though it wants you to believe it is. The entire concept of birthin' bludgeoning anger babies who kill people with little toy hammers is just too ludicrous to take seriously. Yet, if more time was spent with the uber-creepy anger-babies and their toy hammers, I might not have gotten so bored. I will admit that it's almost worth enduring the elongated redundancies of this film just to get to the juicy ending; a serious peek at Cronenberg's dark mind.
-DIAGNOSIS "The Brood" is a film that won't appeal to everyone. If you enjoy a very slow reveal of a killer's psychological "makeup" then this will do it for you. There are seriously creepy moments (too few and far between for me) and very little gore (though some nice fake blood is smeared around). The ending is a shocker though it really brings into question why this film took itself so seriously to begin with. I thought the story was well thought out and original but did not enjoy it very much due to what I see as padding of the story with overwrought psychobabble and driving in cars with serious faces. The acting and production values were first rate. The DVD is good enough with no extras worth talking about. I would never call this a bad movie. If you've seen this and think you like it, I would challenge you to watch it again without interruption or distraction and see how much you enjoy it then. I don't know if I ever will watch this in its entirety again. I'll just skip to the anger-babies.
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