13 Nights of Shocktober: The Brood (1979)

by A.J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 6: Cronenberg Night

“These thing have a way of expressing themselves.”

The Brood (1979)

The Brood is a strong contender for being David Cronenberg’s most polarizing film—Crash (1996) would be the reigning champion. Roger Ebert called The Brood “a particularly nasty little number” and “an el sleazo exploitation film.” He ended his review wondering, “Are there really people who want to see reprehensible trash like this?” In its theatrical run, The Brood failed to be a hit at the box office, but it developed a cult following over time after it was released on home video. Carrie Rickey, in her essay “The Brood: Separation Trials,” included with the film’s Criterion video release, called The Brood, “an emotionally realistic horror movie.” She also writes about how differently she perceived the film before and after having children. Cronenberg himself said that “The Brood is my version of Kramer vs. Kramer, but more realistic.” This statement seems like a wry blurb for his own film, which it is, but it is also true to some extent. The Brood shows through horror movie violence how the nastiness of a bad divorce can radiate out and effect more than just the spouses. He wrote The Brood while going through a very difficult divorce and custody battle. His soon to be ex-wife allegedly absconded with their daughter to a cult in California. It’s safe to assume that Cronenberg did not relate to the divorce in Kramer vs Kramer.

When The Brood begins Frank and his wife Nola are already estranged and out of regular contact. Nola is staying at an institute and undergoing an extreme version of a radical new therapy called psychoplasmics. It involves the therapist role playing as a patient’s abusive parent and belittling and berating them to bring out and confront their own rage. The creator of the bizarre therapy, Dr. Raglan, played by Oliver Reed, has Nola in isolation, but allows visits from Candy, Frank and Nola’s 5-year-old daughter. When Frank picks up Candy from the institute one day, he notices scratches and bruises on Candy’s back. He assumes that Nola must have abused Candy, and the truth is something close to but not exactly that. There is an unintended and dangerous side effect to psychoplasmics: the rage that is released through the therapy manifests itself physically in the body.

Dr. Raglan is praised as a genius. Nola is a devote follower and believer. Frank thinks that Raglan is a quack and his method is a sham. This can be seen as a take on the cliché of a spouse feeling that their therapist has sided with the other spouse and they are united against him/her. Frank meets with a former patient of Raglan’s that is suing Raglan for physiological damage to his body that lead to cancer. He believes Raglan turned his body against him. Frank seeks sole custody of Candy but his lawyer tells him that even with the evidence he has of abuse he doesn’t have a strong case because “the law believes in motherhood.” Meanwhile, people close to Frank and Candy begin to die. The effect psychoplasmics has on Nola is to manifest her rage in a brood of murderous children that carry out violent attacks on the objects of her rage. Subconsciously, Nola is responsible for the abuse of Candy and murder of friends and family members. The murderous dwarf wearing a child’s red coat can’t help but bring to mind Nicholas Roeg’s marital drama/thriller film Don’t Look Now. The detective in charge of the murder investigation thinks that the culprit is someone’s deformed child that they kept locked up in an attic. “It wouldn’t be the first time,” he says.

I find that Cronenberg’s horror films have a pro-science perspective though they are about wild and fantastic stuff. Generally in films the scientist character, when not mad from the start, is the last to believe whatever paranormal event is occurring or continues to deny it even in the face of it. The scientific method is not about shouting down new claims. It is about evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as Carl Sagan would say. In Cronenberg’s films the extraordinary events of the story leave behind tangible evidence and the doctor or scientist and the other characters accept the claim as fact when presented with the evidence. In The Brood, one of the dwarf creatures is killed and an autopsy is done. The pathologist, the detective, and Frank are there to witness that the dwarf creature has no sexual organs or navel and is not entirely human. The evidence presented is met with acceptance not skepticism or hesitation. This is also true in Shivers, Rabid, The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, The Dead Zone, and The Fly.

The controversy surrounding The Brood stems from claims that it is a misogynist film, and it is not difficult at all to read the film as such. With lines like, “You got involved with a woman that married you for your sanity, hoping it would rub off. It worked the other way,” and the fact that Nola is the source of all marital discord and conflict, it is understandable why the film could be viewed this way. I, and certain female fans of this film (yes they exist), view The Brood differently. The horror in The Brood stems from how psychoplasmics transformed Nola’s body. This is Cronenberg’s second film in which the female body transforms and becomes monstrous. In The Brood, Rabid, and Shivers the female body only becomes dangerous or monstrous and the site of horror after it has been tampered with by a male scientist seeking to improve the woman. In his first film, Shivers, the female body is the source of an infectious parasite that spreads to the tenants of a high rise building. What separates The Brood from Rabid (in which after surgery gone wrong a woman becomes a type of vampire), is that Raglan is trying to heal and improve Nola’s mind, not her body, and to some extent succeeds but unintentionally causes physiological damage to Nola. The mad scientist is to blame for unleashing horror through a female in Shivers, Rabid, and The Brood. Dr. Raglan certainly is a mad psychotherapist; he even has a faithful assistant like all mad scientists.

While the murderous brood are carrying out Nola’s subconscious desires, she is neglecting her child born from her marriage for her children born of her rage. One of the most horrific and gross images in the movie is when Nola licks the blood off of one of her newborn offspring. It was actress Samantha Eggar’s idea for her to lick the blood off of her offspring, the way a mother dog does, and was pleased that she was able to disgust the male crew. From a scholarly angle, you can view this as a maternal instinct being presented as horrific, or as the male perception of a maternal instinct being horrific. 

Samantha Eggar gives a great performance as Nola and is convincingly creepy as a true believer and fanatic of Dr. Raglan. She is not quite as over the top as Piper Laurie as Mrs. White, Carrie’s mom, in Carrie, but she is close. Oliver Reed is also good as the eccentric Dr. Raglan who becomes an uneasy ally of Frank, played by Art Hindle. The Brood has a great string based score by Howard Shore, reminiscent of Bernard Herman’s score for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. The special effects and make up effects hold up very well and look great, or gross depending on your sensibility. Despite what Roger Ebert says in his review, The Brood is not just a geek show. Yes, it will likely make you squirm and shift in your seat, but it also uses suspense to put you ill at ease. In particular, the scene in which Dr. Raglan tries to get Candy out of the secret room where the brood has taken her is evocative of a similar scene with Rod Taylor in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. The Brood, like Cronenberg’s previous horror movies, is an elevated exploitation film. This film has violence and scares and is shocking and even disgusting, but it is also a film of substance and troubling ideas. The Brood is quality horror that works on many levels.