Dr. Squid's B-Movie Reviews: Review: The Brood

(these reviews are reprinted from the Dr. Squid zine, originally published in the late 1990s through the early 2000s)

I had heard about the Brood as being one of David Cronenberg's earlier films and since I am a fan of many of his works, I tracked it down and rented it. It is an odd mix of classic Cronenberg and hokey monster movie. The eerie, psychological stuff comes from the set up of a new-age clinic out in a big, nifty-looking cabin the woods in Canada. Run by the imposing and secretive Dr. Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed), the clinic uses intense forms of therapy, usually involving some type of hypnosis, regression and acting out of past experiences. This intensity results in a physical manifestation of some sort, most notibly a bunch of scars and wounds appearing on a patient during a demonstration of the therapy. Frank's wife, Nola, has been holed up at the Doc's clinic for awhile and he and her daughter miss her very much. But when Nola's mother is killed, the Doc won't let her out for the funeral claiming that to break the therapy process would cause too much damage. Slowly, the movie's tension builds as more killings occur. Each time we get to see more and more of the killer(s). They first appear as little jumpsuited munchkins - not very scary if you ask me. Later we get to see that they are mutant little girls. After some more investigation, Frank discovers that his wife, through the whacked-out therapy, has manifested her little problems with little mutant kids that have gone out and done away with those that have caused her pain in her past. It's a nifty little plotline and there's a pretty disgusting "birthing" scene, but I just couldn't get scared by the little girls. Here's a bit of obscurity - one of the mutants is played by Felix Silla, who played that annoying little robot, Twiki on the Buck Rogers in the Twenty-Fifth Century TV show.

Biddi-biddi-biddi!

The movie had what I feel is the Cronenburg spookiness about it and some intense performances, but when the actual "monsters" came on screen it seemed a little silly. Not a bad flick, kind of talky and a little slow at times, but more of an interesting look at the guy who would freak us out with Scanners and The Fly.