THE BROOD

While I'm waiting for the October 3rd release of Lucky McKee's The Woods (which goes straight to DVD while we get to throw popcorn at derivative drivel like The Covenant), a film that stars my beloved Angela Bettis and one which I'm greatly looking forward to reviewing, I thought I would reach back a few decades and see if I could pluck an interesting gem from those halcyon days of horror, otherwise known as "The 70's". There have been a few mind-scratching discussions in the forums lately involving the craft of horror filmmaking during the age of disco, and a few members have lauded the freedom filmmakers had back then to take their time creating the appropriate mental atmosphere and draw the viewer in, slowly peeling the onion and gently fostering the kind of dread that would make the payoff scenes really powerful and affecting. Horror films of that era seemed more about the impassioned, flawed heroes and the details of their disturbing peril than the terrifying technicolor manner in which they were dispatched. Of course, these were the days before MTV began rewiring our attention spans, and I would argue the advent of the Star Wars saga, where one-upmanship on "too much as fast as you can" cinema became the box office Pavlov bell. As the short cuts of technology surpassed the need to patiently sow the seed, scripts such as those that begat some of the most memorable films of today have long disappeared. I half expect to see a few of these treasures unearthed on a late night Discovery special, entitled "When Real Characters Roamed the Earth".

However, that's not to say there haven't been a slew of milestone moments in horror in the ensuing years that can pretty much name their convention memorabilia prices. The line around the block at a recent Robert Englund signing tells me that sometimes a guy in a striped shirt, a floppy fedora, and a goofy sense of humor may be exactly what you need to scare audiences these days. Of course, horror has branched out into a Benetton array of flavors and colors ever since Mary Shelly pulled the original May, and even a few directors of the classics many of us love have withstood the rigors of time and bottom line industry practices to continue to explore the themes in which their personal terrors have been mired all their professional lives. These are usually those men and women that may not necessarily be the most talented of the bunch (although many of them clearly are), but those with singular visions that are revisited in fresh new ways, and somehow probe our subconscious to the extent that we understand their demons, and dare I say, seek to revel in their torment. One such visionary is the master of "body horror", David Cronenberg.

Personally, my sensibilities run hot and cold with the man behind such iconic nightmares as Rabid, Shivers, Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, and eXistenZ to name but a few. But a Cronenberg film never fails to move me in some way – even if its closer to the bathroom. Canadian in national origin, David's the kind of filmmaker who loves the inside-out nature of broken skin so much he shoots it like he's lighting a leading lady. He has no interest in disguising his lust for bodily fluids (he cites William Borroughs as a major influence, and even directed the screen version of Naked Lunch – a fact which nearly pops the light bulb over my head) and would seriously make me take pause if I was ever at his house for dinner and faced with the dilemma of having to ask him to "pass the gravy". I want to scrub off a layer of skin after one of his films and get tested for things I've never even heard of before, and I imagine that's why he's been as prolific and successful as he has been. Certainly it isn't because he's the easiest to please, or all that eager to do the same. Shivers was Cronenberg's first full length feature, and the most profitable Canadian film ever to that date, but sent the Canadian parliament into a "tsk, tsk" tizzy after a review attacked it's sexual and violent content. He was considered and passed to helm Return of the Jedi, and backed out of Total Recall after almost a year due to creative differences with its producers. He's also made no secret of his annoyance concerning Paul Haggis' use of the title Crash for his Academy award-winning film, finding it unethical to appropriate the moniker after his 1996 film of the same name. However, that didn't stop him from going on to make the hugely successful A History of Violence, although he says he did so in order to defer some of his salary on a low-budget film he was working on at the same time called Spider. It has to be said, the guy's got guts...even if he does like to see them spilling from an otherworldly infection like a slow, sloppy kiss.

Cronenberg says that he shoots his films from the "point of view of the disease", and that the malicious malady in question is not so much something to overcome, but a vehicle of transformation. And this angle is certainly at play in his 1979 film The Brood. I originally thought I chose this film because there are elements in the story that have similarities to a screenplay I'm currently working on, but after seeing it again, I'm not so sure – for reasons I'll explain in a bit. The story centers around an unconventional psychotherapist named Dr. Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed, Tommy, Burnt Offerings, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Gladiator) who has developed a technique he calls, and I love this, "psychoplasmics". The concept behind the method is for patients to delve deeply into their negative emotions which in turn will bring about actual physical changes in their bodies. We first see this happen in what I consider to be one of the most intriguing and thoroughly acted opening scenes of any horror movie of the last thirty years. Raglan is sitting on a stage in a theater setting with a patient, and they're engaged in a role-playing exercise where the doctor takes the part of a mentally abusive father opposite the patient's humiliated boy. Reed plays this with every wicked, wet breath he can muster, and instantly we develop a taste for the hysterically sadistic that will serve us well through the next hour and a half. In fact, its terrific fun to watch Reed lather his whispered malice over every one of his lines in the film, and the depth he brings to the clinically executed, but nonetheless unexplainably pointless and overwrought premise is akin to popping an extremely tart candy into your mouth: it hurts so good.

Eventually we're introduced to our hero, Frank Carveth (Art Hindle of the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and a few TV horror series such as "Poltergeist: The Legacy" and "Total Recall 2070") who, in the loving interest of his young daughter Candy (no doubt an ode to my earlier analogy) is handling the parenting duties alone as his wife Nola (Samantha Egger, The Astronauts Wife) undergoes rigorous sessions with the good Dr. Raglan. Frank's not allowed to see his wife when he storms the clinic for some answers as to why his daughter is covered in bruises (she's been staying there for scheduled sessions with mom), as he is told it is too dangerous given the stage of Nola's treatment. That doesn't make things any easier when members of his extended family begin turning up dead at the hands of what can only be described as the best role either of the Olsen twins never played. It seems Nola's psychological demons concerning her mother, her father and eventually everyone she has blessed with making her acquaintance physically manifest into an ever-growing collection of hideously deformed, terrible towheads. When one of the creatures is discovered dead, it is brought to a coroner for examination where it is discovered that these "dwarf killers" have no navel or sex organs (although they have the appearance of little girls, looking not unlike Candy herself). In other words, they're being born, but not in any way that can be explained by modern science. We learn after a few more bloody murders (one in which two of the girls beat a teacher with lightweight, wooden mallets before a classroom of traumatized children) that these vicious attacks are connected with the head-shrunken objects of Nola's inner rage. And while I wasn't overly eager to have modern science, or the police for that matter (who never think its worth sticking around for some reason), catch up to an explanation for these oddities, I was terribly interested in discovering where the little head cases got their brightly colored, hooded tracksuits. I guessed they were manifest through some subconscious recollection of her daughter, however it's just as likely that Nola worked in the junior section of JC Penny.

A lot of The Brood is blatantly unconcerned with the mechanisms through which the story fabricates its physical conflicts, and I was okay with that. Sure, our hero is always alone without a policeman in sight despite widespread murders linked directly to him, and its apparently not just legal, but downright copasetic for a doctor to imprison a patient indefinitely while she undergoes some mysterious psychological treatment. Does the fact that there is never any real attempt at uncovering the purpose of these treatments outside of scientific curiosity (no one gets better, but in fact, everyone seems to get much worse) cause the film to fall apart at its unseemly seams? Yes and no. First of all, it helps to watch all of these dusty classics with a contextual understanding in terms of the time period in which they were born. Horror is especially unique in that way, as the act of rendering us horrified can so easily go all silly many years later, forcing us to slip into an over reliance of sudden starts and vivid effects to enjoy them all over again. And while The Brood is a basketful of the wrong kind of screams, it still works on some of the basic, and arguably, most important levels.

For one, it has its scary moments. I'd be lying if I said that the attacks, especially the moments leading up to them and the vicious and enraged nature in which they are perpetrated, didn't have me a bit skittish well after the final credits rolled. I don't know if it was my unnatural fear of trick-or-treaters working at my resolve, but as ridiculous as these little demonic critters looked and behaved, they still gave me the occasional creeps. As does the more than serviceable score by Howard Shore, a longtime collaborator of the filmmaker. And as mentioned, Oliver Reed is priceless in this role, staring into his patients' eyes, embracing the various identities of their torment, and muttering his staccato suggestions with an unwavering, even-keel sincerity. Of course, there's a gorgeously grotesque Cronenberg climax that includes footage that was cut from the originally released version (something that incensed the director) that may seem somewhat tame by today's standards, yet conversely, tidbits that might not be deemed appropriate for contemporary conservative censors are sprinkled throughout. Several scenes of the young girl bathing and having her picture taken topless (to introduce and document the strange bruising), a subtly casual attitude towards drunk driving, unspeakable violence witnessed by a classroom of small children, implication of multiple abortions, all challenge in unusually new ways. Well, it is Cronenberg we're talking about here, bless his gelatinous soul.

But back to my reason for choosing The Brood to review in the first place. For one, the director is an interesting character, one that can be discussed for the hopefully long life of the site, and this movie finds him in top form relatively early in his career. Two, its a fun film, not to be taken too seriously, but with moments of inspired acting, direction and gore that assure us that enough passion behind any film, as queer as it might be, can keep it timeless. And lastly, I'm starting to believe I was meant to choose The Brood. With its themes of rage, custody battles, evil little girls, children in danger, and perversely sexual imagery mirroring my last two reviews, perhaps something in the cosmos is trying to send me a message. Maybe I'm being shined a new direction for my work? Who knows? If I borrow cleverly enough, with enough attention to the festering sores of our physical and psychological conditions, maybe I can turn my story into the masterpiece my subconscious has been trying to write all along. At the very least, I may after all pay homage to the labor pains that Cronenberg went through to birth this macabre member of his own, personal brood. That would be fine by me, as long as he doesn't ask me to babysit.

- Scott Norton

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Taglines

• The ultimate experience in inner terror.
• If they get their hands on you...you're better off dead!
• They're Waiting for You

Trivia

• The climactic scene in which Eggar gives birth to one of the monsters and starts tenderly licking it clean was
• In interviews, Cronenberg has said that this film was partially inspired by a painful custody battle with his ex-wife for their daughter Cassandra, who has since worked as an assistant director on several films, including her father's eXistenZ.

Also Known As

Chromosome 3

DIRECTOR

David Cronenberg

CAST

Art Hindle
Oliver Reed
Samantha Eggar
Robert Silverman
Nicolas Campbell
Harry Beckman

RELEASE DATE

1979

REVIEWER

Scott Norton

REVIEW DATE

22nd September 2006 - 1:47PM