The Brood [DVD] [1980]

'The Brood' was the first film David Cronenberg made with a decent budget, cast and score. The result was his first film to gain an audience beyond horror fans.

It's essentially a divorce psychodrama (the director described it at the time with typical deadpan humour as 'my version of Kramer vs. Kramer') that proceeds from a simple premise: what if it were possible for violent emotions to be given embodiment? Samantha Eggar and Art Hindle play a couple whose marriage is breaking up. He is looking after their young daughter; she is in therapy with a psychiatrist (Oliver Reed) whose controversial experimental method - 'psychoplasmatics' - may or may not be helping her to come to terms with her relationship with her parents and husband.

Cronenberg has admitted that the film is personal and autobiographical. He also described it as 'humourless' - but by this he simply appears to have meant that there are few moments of relief from the intensity of the feelings on display. 'The Brood' is certainly intense, but also a rather chilly and repressed film that bursts out in brief episodes of violence before the climactic confrontation. The characteristic feel of a Cronenberg film is fully present.

Some viewers may find the 60s/70s pop psychology that underlies 'The Brood' hard to take. It's also hard to avoid the conclusion that there's a strain of unexamined misogyny that runs through the whole film. Nonetheless, good performances from Reed and Eggar - who approach their roles with proper professional seriousness - and a strong supporting cast carry 'The Brood' along with conviction.

This 2005 Anchor Bay double-disc set contains both the 88-minute UK release and, for the first time in the UK, the 'uncut' 92-minute version as released in the US, albeit in an NTSC-to-PAL transfer. This second version is important mainly because it restores nearly thirty seconds of cuts made to the climactic sequence, whose omission Cronenberg insists significantly distorts the audience's understanding of what is happening (hard to be more explicit without introducing spoilers).

Essential for fans of Cronenberg and fans of 70s horror cinema.

David Cronenberg's the brood is a film about the concept of violence within a family and how it later affects the child's life, it also tells us how frustrating it is when separated parents have to fight for the custody of their own child as Cronenberg himself was going through a divorce. Frank Carveth (Art Hindle)starts to question the treatment his wife Nola played by Samantha Eggar is receiving at the clinic of Dr. hal Raglan (Oliver Reed). Horrible things begin to happen as his daughter returns from a visit to her mother only to have some scars and bruises on her back. While Nola is in intensive care and is locked up at the clinic it seems that all her frustrations and rage manifest into these deformed creatures that act as a revenge from Nola towards her own mother and anyone that stands in her way. The film wasn't as gory as Cronenberg's other films but it definitely had a creepy and unsettling feeling that I had from watching it, it also had an intelligent storyline and it seemed more like a personal horror film then the sort of weird mixture of science fiction and horror that Cronenberg usually does so I definitely think that you should check it out as I thought it was great but not one of my favorites, my favorite of his would be Scanners. Note:- this region 2 anchor bay edition has both the U.S. uncut film and the U.K. cut version (this was useless) and the documentary The Directors: The Films of David Cronenberg Featurette, if you had to choose which version to get then I suggest you get this one over the inferior MGM edition.

I like Cronenbergs early movies (The Brood, Scanners) better than his later. The Brood is a very disturbing tale about psychoanalysis, rage and families. A mother is involved in isolated psychotherapy ("Psychoplasmic") and her husband is trying to reach her. The setting feels very 1970s. As in Scanners and Videodrome the relation between mind and body is explored in a scary way.

The film iself is 5 stars, but the packaging is not. The transfer is not very good, it seems a little out of focus (but the colors are ok and there is no dirt/scratches) and is probably better on smaller TVs (I watched it on a projector). Also, I can't understand why some labels refuse to state the year of production!? The Brood is (I think) fråm 1979 (the DVD cover only states that the DVD was made 2005... And the cover art...looks too silly). Anyway, recommended, but maybe we will see a better edition sometime.