Review of The Brood (1979) by Steve M — 11 Apr 2011

"The Brood" is a film that's been on my to do list ever since I made it and i'm glad I finally stumbled upon it at my dvd rental store. Now ive started to think very highly of "David Cronenberg" recentely, I havent seen more then five of his films but I liked all that ive seen except for one of them (which was "Scanners", i'm wanting to give it a re-watch at some stage though). Anyway I just love it when I watch a "REAL" horror because it reminds me why I love the genre so much it's no secret that there are more bad films in horror then allmost every other genre but if you love the genre you know when youve seen a great one and this right here is undoubtably a great horror in every way, and the greatest ive rented out in months or even longer.

So this is a very disturbing and relatively creepy horror film you will either like the subject matter or it will just put you off from proceeding. This is a hard film to actually review i'll admit but I wanted to reccomend it I dunno it just managed to make me feel different emotions throughout it was very well put-together, it had a good share of drama and some parts seemed allmost depressing and it had a brilliant amount of horror and gore. Alot of the horror scenes came when you least expected it and each horror scene was superbly pulled off like alot of these scenes are just unforgettable due to there shock value and originality there's not even another horror quiet like this. This is a very thought provoking one too which is something I wasn't even expecting.

So basicly a man's wife is under the care of a psychologist "Dr. Hal Raglan", (Oliver Reed) who uses innovative and theratrical techniques to breach the psychological blocks in all his patients. His daughter had came back from visiting her mother "Nola Carveth", (Samantha Eggar) and is covered with welts and bruises, the girls father "Frank Carveth", (Art Hindle) tries an attempt at keeping his wife from seeing the daughter but now faces resistance from the extremely secretive psychologist. Meanwhile, the wifes mother and father are soon attacked by a swarn of deformed children, and now the father begins to suspect some sort of connection with the psychologitsts methods.

Now a couple of the performences in here were quiet impressive the two that really stuck out and did the best job were "Oliver Reed" and "Samantha Eggar" now horror's don't allways have in-depth performences but this is indeed an exception the two were flawlessly believeable. Besides those two everyone did what they had to do but you would probably forget what they even looked like after a month from watching it lol, actually "Art Hindle" was allrgiht aswell but the other two outshined him. The creepy little kids managed to stick out there's no way you wont remember those little creatures after seeing this they were freaky as hell and alot of the horror scenes in here are bound to be remembered in horror as some of the best, im not kidding.

Alot of high praise for an 80% yea I know but really there still are plenty of horrors that are overall better then this and I pretty much compare all films from each genre. I really did enjoy this but I felt like it could have even offered more I mean the ending was good and ive noticed with every great horror film they allways pull off an unforgetable ending I actually did feel however that the ending was not the best part of the film. This also seemed a bit too short like I wanted it to keep going, also despite the great horror scenes it could have done just a bit more it was kinda scary but a bit more creepy and just creepy I did watch it in broad daylight though and I kinda wished I didn't. It had an extremely slow start however I wouldn't exactly say I was bored but I was close to it allthough when it picks up it REALLY picks up and the tension doesn't die off after it starts. Anyway this is one for every horror fan to watch only really for horror fans though. You may like it as much or more then me or you might not like it very much at all which is something ive noticed with alot of people so really this is even slighty underrated, prehaps missunderstood I don't see how it could be rotten. It's a good time like I said at the start a REAL horror watch it!!