I watched The Brood as soon as I finished M the other night. Apparently, I went from Fritz Lang to David Cronenberg for some reason. Honestly, it was probably related to run time and not wanting to be up all night, but also wanting to knock a couple movies off a Watchlist or two. Oddly enough, even though the two movies would at first glance have nothing to do with each other, both are apparently part of the Criterion Collection. I did not see that coming.
With that in mind, what did I think about the movie with murderous creatures that looked like children?
Dr. Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed, reminding me of Richard Burton for some reason) has a somewhat controversial method for helping people with mental disturbances. Said method involves doing physical alterations to his patients. That, on the surface, may be controversial, but the problem is one of his patients is one Nola Carveth (Samantha Eggar). Nola is in a custody battle with her estranged husband Frank (Art Hindle) over their five year old daughter Candice (Cindy Hinds). Nola already had some issues before she even met Frank. Her father (Henry Beckman) was a physically abusive alcoholic while her mother (Nuala Fitzgerald) did nothing to stop that. But something strange is happening. One night, while Frank left Candice with Nola’s mother, the older woman was viciously attacked and killed by what looked like a blonde-headed moppet dressed for winter. Whatever that thing was, it disappeared and Candice was more or less left alone.
For his part, Frank is certain Raglan’s facility is somehow responsible for all this, but he can’t seem to get in there to look around. So, while people who seemed to be standing in the way of Nola and her daughter are dying at the hands of sneaky, and seemingly superstrong, creatures, Frank will need to investigate this whole thing himself. Candice’s life may depend on it.
And since this is Cronenberg, you know there’s going to be some sort of horrifying body horror at the bottom of all this. And there is. It wasn’t as bad as I might have thought, but it does involve the origin of those things, and since this is a 40+ year old movie, I don’t think saying that much counts as a spoiler.
However, as a movie, it works quite well. Cronenberg’s work, from what I have seen so far, tends to be as much symbolic as anything else. Here, we see a woman literally give birth to her rage, and all of her victims are seen as obstacles to her self-fulfillment. Her parents and Candice’s teacher (as a possible replacement mother?) are all violently killed by those murderous ragamuffins. If anything, it was a little surprising that Frank was never really a target. Shouldn’t the man she’s in a custody battle with would be high on her personal hit list? It’s something of a weakness of the movie that what little we get on their relationship comes from Frank, and he still seems to care for Nola. Granted, Nola’s condition means what she’s doing is supposed to be a mystery, but there’s a part of me that really wonders how different this movie could have been had she been the main character and not just someone who pops up once in a while who may or may not know what’s going on.
Grade: B+
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