The second half of Grimm Up North’s recent David Cronenberg
double bill was 1979’s The Brood.
Creepier and less funny than Scanners,
the first film on the bill, The Brood
stars a late period Oliver Reed as a Psychotherapist who specialises in the
field of ‘Psychoplasmics’, a method in which patients let go of suppressed
emotions through physiological changes in their bodies. One of Dr. Raglan’s
(Reed) patients is Nola (Samantha Eggar), the wife of Frank Carveth (Art
Hindle). Frank is worried about his wife’s treatment at the hands of Dr. Raglan
and begins to suspect something else is wrong when their young daughter returns
from a visit covered in scratches and bruises. Frank is right to worry as an
unwanted side effect of Nola’s treatment is the creation of The Brood,
childlike monsters who feed off her negative thoughts, attacking and killing
based on her emotions.
Unlike Scanners
which I enjoyed all the way through, The
Brood takes its time to get going. There are large swathes of the film
where I was feeling a little bit bored by what was going on and I wasn’t sure
where the film was going. What kept me interested was an early appearance of
one of The Brood. The confusion about what it was and where it came from helped
me to remain focussed throughout the less interesting moments before a final
half hour which was full of excitement, action and terror.
