For this year’s 31 Nights of Horror Challenge, the Night 10 prompt is Killer Kids. We watched the movie The Brood on HBO MAX.

Storyline

A man’s wife is under the care of an eccentric and unconventional psychologist who uses innovative and theatrical techniques to breach the psychological blocks in his patients. When their daughter comes back from a visit with her mother and is covered with bruises and welts, the father attempts to bar his wife from seeing the daughter but faces resistance from the secretive psychologist. Meanwhile, the wife’s mother and father are attacked by strangely deformed children, and the man begins to suspect a connection with the psychologist’s methods.

Our Thoughts on The Brood (1979)

This is our second David Cronenberg film of the Challenge as he is one of the Masters of Horror. This one however is not his best work and it is utterly disgusting, even for me. 

Nightmarish horror film from writer-director David Cronenberg, an early effort but one no less effective, was critically-panned at the time of its release but has since gained cult status with fans of the genre. A disturbed woman in a custody struggle with her estranged husband over their little girl is one of the in-patients at an institute run by an acclaimed psychotherapist. After her elderly mother and father are both found dead of violent beatings, apparently done by freakishly strong children, the husband believes the cool, imposing therapist knows the secret behind the mystery. Well-made and well-acted, “The Brood” is nevertheless uncomfortably (and unpleasantly) physical, particularly at the finale when the effects become too grisly. However, Cronenberg mounts his scenario meticulously; he knows how to grab a willing audience with his assured visuals, and the film is guaranteed to have fainthearted viewers holding their breath.

5 out of 10 stars

Trivia 

Juliana Kelly: Thirty seconds after you’re born you have a past and sixty seconds after that you begin to lie to yourself about it.

Oliver Reed was arrested by the Canadian police during the production of this film after he made a bet with someone that he could walk from one bar to another without wearing clothes in freezing cold weather.

David Cronenberg wrote the film following the tumultuous divorce and child-custody battle he waged against Margaret Hindson. Cronenberg also said that Samantha Eggar‘s character, Nola Carveth, possessed some of the characteristics of his ex-wife.