The Brood (1979) After "Shivers", his 'apartment sex parasite' shocker,(see our post of 6/16/21), David Cronenberg truly cemented his growing reputation with this gruesome little gem...... we're talking about his reputation as the unequaled master of ooey-gooey-slimy-slippery body horror.......
Apparently, Cronenberg used this film to work out the wrenching traumas he suffered as he went through a take-no-prisoners divorce and custody battle with his ex-wife.
So you can bet your bloody boots that things will go from bad to worse for the divorced couple depicted here, played by Samantha Eggar and Art Hindle.
While sharing custody of their young daughter (Cindy Hinds), Eggar's under the care of a dubious psychologist (Oliver Reed, working at a relative low boil for a change.) Reed practices something called 'psychoplasmic therapy' which leads to patients producing actual physical manifestations of their mental torments.
Hindle suspects that Reed's loony-toon treatments have caused Eggar to abuse their little girl.....and he's correct, but in a far more horrific way than he could ever imagine.
As a result of Reed's therapy to release her inner rage, Eggar starts literally birthing a pile of midget mutants out of a bloated sac stuck on her belly. And then the mute little trolls, which look like half-formed, grotesque caricatures of her daughter, go about their business of slaughtering whoever pissed off mommy.....starting with Eggar's parents, whom the film implies abused her as a child.
Cronenberg's ongoing obsession with the corruption and mutation of human flesh went on full display here, with the 'things you can't unsee' sight of Eggar licking the bloody slime off of one of the newly hatched gremlins who derive from and feed off her fury. In that regard, her terrible tykes aren't much different from Walter Pidgeon's invisible Id in "Forbidden Planet". They're put on earth only to go on the hunt and kick ass.
And we can only imagine what audiences made of the sequence where the Id kids bludgeon a teacher to death in full view of her terrified class of small children......(we ourselves could only imagine how toxic Cronenberg's divorce must have been to create this entire film....)
While "The Brood" may not stand as the most remembered and celebrated in Cronenberg's filmography, you couldn't ask for a better example of this director's art and artistry in action. That makes it a 4 star (****) essential for all cinema buffs and horror lovers. Watch out....these kids aren't alright.....
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