THE BROOD
A film review by Chuck Dowling
Copyright 1997 Chuck Dowling
The Brood (1979) **1/2 out of ***** - Cast: Oliver Reed, Samantha Eggar, Art Hindle. Written and Directed by: David Cronenberg. Running Time: 92 minutes.
Very rarely does reading a bad review inspire me to watch a movie. Usually it's the other way around. A bad review would normally convince me that I have no desire to see the particular film. But in the case of David Cronenberg's "The Brood", I just HAD to see it after reading Leonard Maltin's review of it in his film guide. (Note: I am going to quote the review now, please understand that I am quoting. This is NOT my opinion but the opinion of Leonard Maltin which I am using to prove a point. No scandals, please.)
"Eggar eats her own afterbirth while midget clones beat grandparents and lovely young schoolteachers to death with mallets. It's a big, wide, wonderful world we live in!"
Now, if you sometimes enjoy watching a really bad film just to make fun of it, this must sound like a dream come true! However, after seeing it, Maltin's description is sadly inappropriate (what he describes is no more than 3 minutes of the film). Luckily though, it's really not such a bad movie, and comes dangerously close to being a GOOD one.
I can see how Maltin had a hard time reviewing the film, because it is such a hard one to describe. But I'll give it a shot. Oliver Reed stars as a creepy psychologist who cares for mentally ill patients in a compound somewhere in the woods. One of his patients is a severly traumatized woman (Eggar) who has a husband (Hindle) and a young daughter. Amazingly, she also has the wonderful ability to produce an instant child, however a mutant one, based on her inner rage from her childhood trauma (I know, I know... but stay with me). These "children" then act upon the rage she feels, killing the people whom she hates.
Luckily, we don't find this out until the film's final, gruesome scenes. So until that point it's an intriguing little story about some murders being committed by "creatures" and it just so happens that the victims have some relation to Eggar. Her husband, seeking to protect their daughter, sets out to find the truth.
The horror genre is my least favorite of all genres, and within that genre, David Cronenberg is one of my least favorite directors. Now, having said that, you should understand that my rating of the film is EXTREMELY high. Reed gives an outstanding performance, and helped to make it a bearable, almost enjoyable experience. I found "The Brood" to be very similar in look and theme to Larry Cohen's "It's Alive" from 1974, a film that I happened to enjoy. A major drawback is an incredibly overblown (and therefore irritating) musical score by Howard Shore which tends to blare at you when nothing's really going on. And most importantly why I didn't give it a good rating: I would never want to watch it again. Still, I think I may have to start re-evaluating some of Cronenberg's other work. There just might actually be a little story-telling talent there. [R]
--Chuck Dowling
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