The Brood. (18.)
Directed by David Cronenberg.
Starring Art Hindle, Oliver Reed and Samantha Eggar. 88 mins. Released on Blu-ray from Arrow Films.
David Cronenberg made his name as a horror movie director, and did so without ever really making horror films. Getting its first release on Blu-ray, The Brood is a typical example of that. It takes half of the film for anything grisly to occur and its tension is delivered in fairly abstract forms. Venereal disease and sex were the baddies in his first two horror outings, Shivers and Rabid, but The Brood takes on reproduction itself.
Frank Carveth (Hindle) is increasingly concerned about his wife (Eggar) who has been taken in under the protection of psychologist Dr Raglan (a softly spoken Reed) who wont let him have any contact with her. His daughter (Cindy Hinds) can see her, but comes back with bruises on her body. As he tries to find out more, people around him start to get murdered.
None of this makes a great deal of sense. The menace seems to have been stolen from Don’t Look Now and when the big reveal comes at the end it is plenty disturbing but does rather spring straight out of thin air. It has that distinctive Cronenberg touch, an intensity that is so focused that his film seem to take place in an empty world devoid of passerbys or any extraneous detail. Perhaps the true horror are the interiors which are all minimalist log and stone.
It is oddly restrained but does contain a gruesome murder that takes place in an infant school classroom in front of some very young children - that must have been an eye opening day on a film set for the young extras.
So overall a bit of a disappointment though perhaps the young master's last misstep. He would quickly move on with his next two films: Scanners and Videodrome.
The extras are an assortment of talking heads, including Cronenberg himself. They do a good job of explaining the unique conditions Cronenberg came out of making films in Canada, a country which had no tradition of genre filmmaking but whose government were pumping in production money in their efforts to support the arts. They are less informative on the real life inspiration for the Brood where Cronenberg had to go to California to rescue his own child from the cult his mother had entered.
Directed by David Cronenberg.
Starring Art Hindle, Oliver Reed and Samantha Eggar. 88 mins. Released on Blu-ray from Arrow Films.
David Cronenberg made his name as a horror movie director, and did so without ever really making horror films. Getting its first release on Blu-ray, The Brood is a typical example of that. It takes half of the film for anything grisly to occur and its tension is delivered in fairly abstract forms. Venereal disease and sex were the baddies in his first two horror outings, Shivers and Rabid, but The Brood takes on reproduction itself.
Frank Carveth (Hindle) is increasingly concerned about his wife (Eggar) who has been taken in under the protection of psychologist Dr Raglan (a softly spoken Reed) who wont let him have any contact with her. His daughter (Cindy Hinds) can see her, but comes back with bruises on her body. As he tries to find out more, people around him start to get murdered.
None of this makes a great deal of sense. The menace seems to have been stolen from Don’t Look Now and when the big reveal comes at the end it is plenty disturbing but does rather spring straight out of thin air. It has that distinctive Cronenberg touch, an intensity that is so focused that his film seem to take place in an empty world devoid of passerbys or any extraneous detail. Perhaps the true horror are the interiors which are all minimalist log and stone.
It is oddly restrained but does contain a gruesome murder that takes place in an infant school classroom in front of some very young children - that must have been an eye opening day on a film set for the young extras.
So overall a bit of a disappointment though perhaps the young master's last misstep. He would quickly move on with his next two films: Scanners and Videodrome.
The extras are an assortment of talking heads, including Cronenberg himself. They do a good job of explaining the unique conditions Cronenberg came out of making films in Canada, a country which had no tradition of genre filmmaking but whose government were pumping in production money in their efforts to support the arts. They are less informative on the real life inspiration for the Brood where Cronenberg had to go to California to rescue his own child from the cult his mother had entered.
