THE BROOD
Canada, 1979, 88 minutes, Colour.
Oliver Reed, Samantha Eggar, Art Hindle.
Directed by David Cronenberg.
The Brood is written and directed by Canadian David Cronenberg whose repulsively fascinating horror films, Shivers and Rabid, showed contemporary society infected by parasites. This is a much more respectable film, restrained (at times almost too much so after his previous crude horror exuberance) and much more intellectual and stylish. With nods to such films as Forbidden Planet and Don't Look Now, the screenplay links monsters with the psyche, the Shape of Rage, in mutant children embodying the angers of the human soul. Uncontrolled therapy breeds destruction. Psychodrama becomes psychoplasmatics. Oliver Reed and Samantha Eggar star in what could become a reputable horror classic.
1. The appeal of horror films? Science fiction? The blend? The horror techniques and conventions here and their blend with science fiction? The background of nightmare, the psyche, shadow aspects of human life? How enjoyable this kind of fiction? The purging of fears?
2. A Canadian production, the English stars, locations, colour photography, score?
3. The background of monster films and terror? The menace and combat and monsters ? and the conventions of the genre: appearance, fear, clash, violence? Mystery and ugliness? Detection, the chase? The atmosphere of catastrophe?
4. The use of psychodrama and the plausibility of the plot? As a basis for horror? The importance of the opening role-play and the way that it was photographed in tableau? Dr. Raglan and his role, communication with his patients? The patient and his enacting of talking with his father? Nola and her various psychodramas? The consistent way in which they were filmed, their being interspersed throughout the film? Their importance for revelation of character, indication of theme, plausibility? The invention of psychoplasmatics? A key for the science fiction imagination? The film's comment on therapy and its use, help, its menace if taken too far and uncontrolled? Helping and intervening, the dependence of the patient on the director? Isolation therapy and its effect? The shape of rage and the embodiment of rage in creatures? The takeover by psychic powers of the free will and control of the person?
5. The film's theme of the Shape of Rage - the book, its prominence? The people reading it e.g. the teacher? As a title for the embodiment of angers? Nola and the embodying of her angers and rage - her role-plays about her parents, her husband, the teacher, Candy? So much giving birth to rage that they contorted her body, its male/female grotesqueness and its revelation at the end? The symbolism of giving birth to the shape of rage, an attic full of rage characters, their capacity for murder, their mutant nature. the impression that they had not been born? Their having to be killed and their destroying of Nola? The shape of rage out of control?
6. The brood and the title of the film? The overtones of brooding, a group of animals, menacing animals, menacing animals, monsters? Psychological and cruel mutants?
7. The quality of the screenplay - the presentation of the institute and its way of therapy, the presentation of Raglan and his work, his assistants and their impersonal presentation of themselves, the patients - their participation in role plays, their later being sent away, the bearded patient and his initial role-play, his being betrayed and reporting to the family? The patients being destroyed?
8. The focus on Nola? Background, the unhappy marriage, her being away from her husband and home, the isolation? Her reaction to her mother and her affairs, her father and his leaving home, the teacher and the jealousy? The role-plays, the re-enactment of her rage, telephone calls? The final contortion and horror? The husband trying to persuade her to control her rage and the mutants? Her revelation of herself to him? Her wanting to possess her daughter? Her death and the destruction of the monsters?
9. Her husband and his admiring of Raglan, his attitude towards Nola and her therapy? His coping with the situation at how, his love for his daughter and the family sequences with them? His mother-in-law and his attitude towards her, her death? The visit of his father-in-law, discussions, death? The liaison with the police? The friendship with the teacher, the visit to the school, her death? His helping Candy through her trauma and her not wanting to admit that she had seen the killings? The build-up of suspense, the kidnapping of Candy? His attempts to rescue her, collaboration with Raglan, holding Nola? How well developed his character, the hero of the film, audience identification?
10. The domestic scenes in contrast with the horror - the mother-in-law and Candy, the funeral, the contrast with the ugliness of Candy's capture and the small lyrical scene of her walking down the street with the mutants in their raincoats?
11. The role of the teacher, her help, Nola's phone call, the control of the class, the ugliness of her death?
12. Candy as the focus of attention, a little girl, her separation from her mother, her love for her father? Her seeing the killing of her grandmother? Hiding, blocking out the horror? Her being shaped by Nola? The capture, walking with the brood, prisoner in the attic, the final rescue?
13. The ordinary tone of the opening of the film, the low-key presentation of horror initially, the death and the suggestion of mystery, ugly noises and looks? The growing number of the brood? Raglan's final decision to give himself to save Candy, his trying to hold the mutants, their murdering him? The grotesqueness of Nola and her death? The final irony and Candy's infection?
14. A satisfying use of horror conventions for exploring the psyche and evil, power, contortion and destruction? An image of contemporary society?
