4. FAMILY MATTERS: It takes a family to raise this village.

Dr. Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed) has figured out how to get his patients to get rid of mental illness through changing their bodies by psychoplasmics. It sounds ridiculous but it works and its helping Nola Carveth (Samantha Eggar), a woman in a battle with her husband Frank (Art Hindle) over their daughter Candice (Cindy Hinds). Something weird is happening, though, as Frank keeps finding scratches all over his little girl, so Raglan intensifies his techniques to help Nola get custody. That’s when he discovers that eureka moment that some therapists believe is behind every psychosis. Nole was abused by her mother (Nuala Fitzgerald) and ignored by her father (Henry Beckman).

A past patient, Jan Hartog (Robert A. Silverman), tells Frank that the treatments have given him lymphoma. While learning more, he’s left his daughter with his wife’s mother, who is soon killed by something…small. And Candice watches the whole thing. After the same thing kills Nola’s father, Frank kills it, revealing an aesexual toothless man-child. Worse, even with Raglan’s institute closing, now Nola commands an army of these creatures.

David Cronenberg said, “The Brood is my version of Kramer vs. Kramer, but more realistic.” He was going through a divorce and even cast Hindle and Eggar as they looked like him and his ex-wife. Eggar went all out, even cleaning one of the strange children after it was born, saying “I just thought that when cats have their kittens or dogs have puppies (and I think at that time I had about 8 dogs), they lick them as soon as they’re born. Lick, lick, lick, lick, lick…”

As for the critics, Leonard Maltin said, “Eggar eats her own afterbirth while midget clones beat grandparents and lovely young schoolteachers to death with mallets. It’s a big, wide, wonderful world we live in!” and rated it an outright “BOMB.”” Roger Ebert said, ” “Are there really people who want to see reprehensible trash like this?” And Vaughn Palmer stated, “The people who made The Brood do not like people. They do not even appear to like themselves. They just like money.”

Man, what were those guys watching? While I know this is in no way a comfortable watch, it feels like it came from Cronenberg’s heart and soul. I mean, as much as any movie with killer genderless miniature people murdering a teacher in front of her class can be.