Post by petrolino on Mar 10, 2018 1:28:03 GMT
In the gruesome shocker 'The Brood', fearless family man Frank Carveth (Art Hindle) is battling his estranged wife Nola (Samantha Eggar) for custody of their daughter Candice (Cindy Hinds). Nola is enrolled in a controversial course run by radical psychotherapist Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed), a pioneer in psychoplasmics.
'The Brood' is a terrifying body horror made by body shock master David Cronenberg back when he was still writing and directing most of his films. These early self-penned works of fiction are my favourite Cronenberg pictures, more so than his justly celebrated, cerebral literary adaptations. The story goes that Cronenberg was in the midst of a messy divorce and bitter custody battle when he conceived 'The Brood' about nature's nastiest conception. It's a consuming murder mystery with disconcerting incidents and a strong psychological subtext.
Art Hindle is superb as a driven father respectfully looking for answers while the gates of hell are being opened and Samantha Eggar is creepy as hell as his institutionalised wife who's recovering from a mental breakdown while experiencing physical manifestation. Oliver Reed delivers arguably his finest horror performance as the weird doctor of madness and Cindy Hinds is devastating as a child found lost within an unlikely genetic shuffle.
'The Brood' is notable for having one of the earliest music scores composed by Howard Shore. It's imaginatively shot by camera wizard Mark Irwin who conspired to create many of Cronenberg's scariest sequences filmed during his days as a devilishly dark fantasist. Check it out, because chances are you won't regret it.
Cindy Hinds & Art Hindle in 'The Brood'
'The Brood' is a terrifying body horror made by body shock master David Cronenberg back when he was still writing and directing most of his films. These early self-penned works of fiction are my favourite Cronenberg pictures, more so than his justly celebrated, cerebral literary adaptations. The story goes that Cronenberg was in the midst of a messy divorce and bitter custody battle when he conceived 'The Brood' about nature's nastiest conception. It's a consuming murder mystery with disconcerting incidents and a strong psychological subtext.
"Following up the intimate, disturbing and controversial body horror of his first two features, Shivers (1975) and Rabid (1977), David Cronenberg went off and made an uncharacteristically straightforward drama about drag racing called Fast Company (1979). Starring William Smith and John Saxon, it would be one of the few movies to properly explore Cronenberg’s fascination with cars – a topic he’d return to in his unsettling adaptation of JG Ballard’s novel, Crash (1996). After making Fast Company, Cronenberg immediately began filming The Brood, another film which took advantage of the private investment trickling into the Canadian movie industry at the time. The Brood is commonly described as Cronenberg’s most autobiographical movie to date, since it’s partly about a father attempting to take custody of his child – something Cronenberg himself was going through while he was writing the script. Cronenberg has joked in the past that The Brood is his version of Kramer Vs Kramer – a 1979 divorce drama starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep, which proved to be a hit both at the box office and with the Academy. Cronenberg dismissed the film as “False, fake, candy” in the book Cronenberg On Cronenberg."
- Ryan Lamble, Den Of Geek
"I think The Brood really marks the emergence of David Cronenberg as a top talent in the horror field. His previous movies were intriguing and imaginative, but never quite lived up to their potential. But with The Brood, the impact of the finished product actually exceeds what a casual observer might reasonably expect of it. The movie carries a visceral charge that has rarely been equaled before or since, and contains the most aggressive portrayal yet of that curious combination of psychological, sexual, medical, and biological horrors from which Cronenberg derives so much of his work: a mind gone bad makes a body go bad with the help of modern medicine, with hideously venereal results."
- Scott Ashlin, 1000 Misspent Hours And Counting
"It’s been a long journey to “respectability” for David Cronenberg. In the early days of his career, the helmer was a favorite of the Fangoria crowd, crafting genre entertainment that relied heavily on nightmarish prosthetics to sugar (or rather, gore) -coat the elemental, sometimes philosophical ideas he was preoccupied with. Many of these ideas are captured succinctly in early-year masterpiece “Videodrome”: we are but slaves to our outer sheaths, mutation is the only real evolution and matters of the heart are merely an illusion, while the mind’s fragility and propensity to conflate reality with dreams or hallucinations will always make it ultimately subservient to the desires of the flesh. Pit logic against the darker recesses of human nature, he suggests, and logic, control and intellectualism will always fail.
Which is ironic, considering one the most frequently leveled accusations by Cronenberg’s detractors is that his films are entirely too passionless, too intellectual, and too clinical in their emotional detachment. And this criticism is not without some basis: sympathetic characters are few and far between in the director’s oeuvre (there are very few puppies in Cronenberg), and if we identify with anyone it’s usually reluctantly, perhaps recognizing in them some of the uglier aspects of ourselves that we’d rather not think about. And that’s precisely the point: his is a cinema of discomfort, of unease, which is why he found his greatest early success in the horror genre, where audiences pay to be challenged viscerally, and if you can slip in some psychological shocks amid things going splat in the night, all the better."
- The staff of IndieWire present 'Retrospective : The Films Of David Cronenberg'
'Dare you enter the institute ... of the Brood!'
- Ryan Lamble, Den Of Geek
"I think The Brood really marks the emergence of David Cronenberg as a top talent in the horror field. His previous movies were intriguing and imaginative, but never quite lived up to their potential. But with The Brood, the impact of the finished product actually exceeds what a casual observer might reasonably expect of it. The movie carries a visceral charge that has rarely been equaled before or since, and contains the most aggressive portrayal yet of that curious combination of psychological, sexual, medical, and biological horrors from which Cronenberg derives so much of his work: a mind gone bad makes a body go bad with the help of modern medicine, with hideously venereal results."
- Scott Ashlin, 1000 Misspent Hours And Counting
"It’s been a long journey to “respectability” for David Cronenberg. In the early days of his career, the helmer was a favorite of the Fangoria crowd, crafting genre entertainment that relied heavily on nightmarish prosthetics to sugar (or rather, gore) -coat the elemental, sometimes philosophical ideas he was preoccupied with. Many of these ideas are captured succinctly in early-year masterpiece “Videodrome”: we are but slaves to our outer sheaths, mutation is the only real evolution and matters of the heart are merely an illusion, while the mind’s fragility and propensity to conflate reality with dreams or hallucinations will always make it ultimately subservient to the desires of the flesh. Pit logic against the darker recesses of human nature, he suggests, and logic, control and intellectualism will always fail.
Which is ironic, considering one the most frequently leveled accusations by Cronenberg’s detractors is that his films are entirely too passionless, too intellectual, and too clinical in their emotional detachment. And this criticism is not without some basis: sympathetic characters are few and far between in the director’s oeuvre (there are very few puppies in Cronenberg), and if we identify with anyone it’s usually reluctantly, perhaps recognizing in them some of the uglier aspects of ourselves that we’d rather not think about. And that’s precisely the point: his is a cinema of discomfort, of unease, which is why he found his greatest early success in the horror genre, where audiences pay to be challenged viscerally, and if you can slip in some psychological shocks amid things going splat in the night, all the better."
- The staff of IndieWire present 'Retrospective : The Films Of David Cronenberg'
'Dare you enter the institute ... of the Brood!'
Art Hindle is superb as a driven father respectfully looking for answers while the gates of hell are being opened and Samantha Eggar is creepy as hell as his institutionalised wife who's recovering from a mental breakdown while experiencing physical manifestation. Oliver Reed delivers arguably his finest horror performance as the weird doctor of madness and Cindy Hinds is devastating as a child found lost within an unlikely genetic shuffle.
"Brilliant, subversive and flesh-crawlingly gruesome, David Cronenberg’s virtual-reality stunner “eXistenZ” is one terrific movie. It’s a “Matrix” for those who find the artsy execution of provocative ideas more thrilling than flashy special effects and virtuosoaction sequences. The question “eXistenZ” asks is: What happens when we give ourselves over to a technology that creates an illusion of life so absorbing we prefer it to the real thing? The consequences prove eerie, macabre and deliciously horrifying."
- Rob Dreher, New York Post
"Sounds like David Cronenberg’s masterpiece The Fly is about to get a good old remaking by the powers that be in Hollywood. The spine-tingling 1986 movie, starring Jeff Goldblum as a genius scientist who falls foul of his own experiment, is a quintessential example of the ‘body horror’ genre pioneered by the director. Now Birth Movies Death reports that Fox, who made the original, are interested in ‘re-adapting’ the film, with JD Dillard and his writing partner Alex Theurer being invited to helm the project."
- Olivia Waring, Metro
Oliver Reed treats Samantha Eggar in 'The Brood'
'I Heard It Through The Grapevine' - Creedence Clearwater Revival
- Rob Dreher, New York Post
"Sounds like David Cronenberg’s masterpiece The Fly is about to get a good old remaking by the powers that be in Hollywood. The spine-tingling 1986 movie, starring Jeff Goldblum as a genius scientist who falls foul of his own experiment, is a quintessential example of the ‘body horror’ genre pioneered by the director. Now Birth Movies Death reports that Fox, who made the original, are interested in ‘re-adapting’ the film, with JD Dillard and his writing partner Alex Theurer being invited to helm the project."
- Olivia Waring, Metro
Oliver Reed treats Samantha Eggar in 'The Brood'
'I Heard It Through The Grapevine' - Creedence Clearwater Revival
'The Brood' is notable for having one of the earliest music scores composed by Howard Shore. It's imaginatively shot by camera wizard Mark Irwin who conspired to create many of Cronenberg's scariest sequences filmed during his days as a devilishly dark fantasist. Check it out, because chances are you won't regret it.
