Unless you have a strong stomach, steer well clear of 'David Cronenberg's The Brood'. The Canadian 'venereal horror' director's 1979 horrorshow is - as is typical of this truly unique filmic visionary - brilliantly cerebral, graphically violent, and deeply disturbing. This psychological horror film focuses upon the bizarre work of Doctor Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed) who practices a controversial new psychotherapy named psychoplasmics, at a clinic named the Somafree Institute (note the Aldous Huxley reference).
Raglan's star pupil is the distinctly off-message Nola Carveth (Samantha Eggar), whose rage at her abusive mother and estranged husband literally gives birth to homicidal midgets who enact Nola's violent inclinations with tragic results. Her bewildered husband, Frank (Art Hindle), becomes increasingly troubled by the clinic's highly unconventional methods and suspicious insistence upon secrecy. As the body count piles up, Frank becomes irreversibly drawn into Nola's strange new world, and soon realises that there may be no turning back.
Man, Cronenberg is so relentlessly original; his brood of bedlam is so unlike anything else except, well, his other work. Reed is excellent as Raglan; he exudes an air of quiet menace, and his naturally commanding screen presence works wonderfully here. He immerses himself in the role; there is no trace of the 'What have I gotten myself into?' flavour to his performance. And this serves to make his character all the more believable.
And Robert A. Silverman (credited as Robert Silverman) also appears as the unpleasantly afflicted Jan Hartog; Silverman can be seen in another Cronenberg classic, 'Scanners', which arrived two years after 'The Brood'.
For fans of horror, 'The Brood' is highly recommended viewing. To anyone else, images of a maniacal midget with a meat mallet 'tenderising' a woman to death, and another woman licking lovingly at her own afterbirth, may cause offence. For some reason.
Raglan's star pupil is the distinctly off-message Nola Carveth (Samantha Eggar), whose rage at her abusive mother and estranged husband literally gives birth to homicidal midgets who enact Nola's violent inclinations with tragic results. Her bewildered husband, Frank (Art Hindle), becomes increasingly troubled by the clinic's highly unconventional methods and suspicious insistence upon secrecy. As the body count piles up, Frank becomes irreversibly drawn into Nola's strange new world, and soon realises that there may be no turning back.
Man, Cronenberg is so relentlessly original; his brood of bedlam is so unlike anything else except, well, his other work. Reed is excellent as Raglan; he exudes an air of quiet menace, and his naturally commanding screen presence works wonderfully here. He immerses himself in the role; there is no trace of the 'What have I gotten myself into?' flavour to his performance. And this serves to make his character all the more believable.
And Robert A. Silverman (credited as Robert Silverman) also appears as the unpleasantly afflicted Jan Hartog; Silverman can be seen in another Cronenberg classic, 'Scanners', which arrived two years after 'The Brood'.
For fans of horror, 'The Brood' is highly recommended viewing. To anyone else, images of a maniacal midget with a meat mallet 'tenderising' a woman to death, and another woman licking lovingly at her own afterbirth, may cause offence. For some reason.