Brood Mother
A 1979 Canadian psychological body horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg.
The Brood is a 1979 Canadian psychological body horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg, and starring Oliver Reed, Samantha Eggar, and Art Hindle. Its plot follows a man and his mentally ill ex-wife, who has been sequestered by a psychiatrist known for his controversial therapy techniques. A series of brutal unsolved murders serves as the backdrop for the central narrative. Written by Cronenberg after his own acrimonious divorce, he intended the screenplay as a meditation on a fractured relationship between a husband and wife who share a child, and cast Eggar and Hindle as loose facsimiles of himself and his ex-wife. He would later state that, despite its incorporation of science fiction elements, he considered it his sole feature that most embodied a "classic horror film".
Lore & Background
The Brood was written by David Cronenberg after his own acrimonious divorce, which included a custody battle over his daughter. During his divorce, Cronenberg became aware of the drama Kramer vs. Kramer (also released in 1979), and was disillusioned by its optimistic depiction of a familial breakdown after a couple's separation. In response, he began writing the screenplay for The Brood, aspiring to depict the strife between a divorced couple battling over their child. Cronenberg cast Samantha Eggar and Art Hindle as loose facsimiles of himself and his ex-wife. Eggar, whom Cronenberg stated "looked a little like my ex-wife" and had a husband that looked like him, was selected. Cronenberg met Eggar ten years later at the Sitges Film Festival where she told him that "The Brood was the strangest and most repulsive film I've ever done".
Reader's Guide
The Brood was shot in Toronto from 14 November to 21 December 1978, on a budget of $1.4 million (equivalent to $6,280,874 in 2025) with $200,000 coming from the Canadian Film Development Corporation. The Kortright Centre for Conservation, just north of Toronto, was used as the location of the Somafree Institute. Additional photography was done in Mississauga. Eggar recalled the production crew being very small, with only around seven crew members in total while she was filming her sequences, many of them "academics and PhDs, standing there holding lights".
Her scenes were shot over a period of three days. To portray the brood of children, Cronenberg cast a group of child gymnasts from Toronto. The Brood was the first Cronenberg film to have an original soundtrack. Howard Shore has written the music for most of Cronenberg's subsequent films.
Released in the spring of 1979 by New World Pictures, The Brood proved profitable for the studio, grossing over $5 million. Though it initially received mixed reviews from critics, it would establish itself as a cult film in the following decades. In 2006, the Chicago Film Critics Association named it the 88th-scariest film of all time. In 2013, it was selected for restoration by the Criterion Collection, which subsequently released it on Blu-ray.
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