A David Cronenberg horror from 1979, the story is seemingly one of a severely mentally disturbed mother in psychiatric care, played by Samantha Egger, who is demanding to spend time at the facility with her daughter Candy (Cindy Hinds). Of course, this is a Cronenberg original, so naturally, as bad as all that sounds, there are definitely things that much WORSE going on.
First of all, we find out immediately that the man who is treating the wife, one Dr. Hal Ralgan (Oliver Reed), is a controversial psychiatrist running a facility called, in high Cronenbergest speak, "Pyscho Plasmics." Although Cronenberg wrote the screenplay in the aftermath of a messing divorce that involved an extended and painful custody battle, the underlying thread of the film flows directly from his earliest work and has continued through the screenplays ever since. Many of Cronenberg's films that he writes himself have a deep current that modernity, though seemingly helpful on the surface, creates horrors more often than it doesn't. Modernity with all it's new fangled technology creates mutants and monsters more potent and destructive that any of the classic horror genre.
Another aspect of many of Cronenberg's originals is that they tend to be set in wintery conditions. Cronenberg is Canadian and almost all of his originals are set there. The Brood is no exception. In this case, there a bunch of mutant killer children running around well wrapped up from the cold doing some very, very bad things to people in the cold. The movie is as much mystery as it is a Science Fiction Horror--with the viewer spending a good deal of time suspecting that the Doctor might be doing something....but what??
NOW THIS IS CREEPY!!
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