The Brood (1979) on Netflix
Frank Carveth discovers bruises on his daughter Candice after she visits her mother Nola, who is in the care of the psychotherapist Dr. Hal Raglan. He moves to end the visits.
- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb6.8/1038,571 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes81%
Trailer
Plot summary
Dr. Hal Raglan treats patients with mental disturbances at his institute, encouraging them to release suppressed emotion by letting their bodies change, a practice he calls psychoplasmics. Nola Carveth, one of his patients, is sequestered there while she and her husband Frank dispute custody of their daughter Candice. When Frank finds bruises and scratches on the girl after a visit with her mother, he tells Raglan he wants the visits stopped. Raglan, wanting to protect Nola, intensifies her sessions to settle the matter quickly. Hoping to discredit the therapy, Frank visits Jan Hartog, whose own psychoplasmic treatment has left him dying of lymphoma.
Cast
- Michael Mageeas Inspector
- Joseph Shawas Coroner
- Larry Solwayas Lawyer
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Brood (1979)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Cronenberg conceived the screenplay in the aftermath of a bitter divorce that included a custody battle over his daughter, disillusioned by the optimistic view of family breakdown in Kramer vs. Kramer, also released in 1979; he called the result "my version of Kramer vs. Kramer, but more realistic".
- Cronenberg chose Samantha Eggar for Nola because she "looked a little like my ex-wife" and had a husband who looked like him; ten years later, at the Sitges Film Festival, she told him The Brood was the strangest and most repulsive film she had ever done.
SPOILER
Cronenberg said the censors cut "a long and loving close-up of Samantha licking the fetus", and that the result was that a lot of people thought she was eating her baby, which he called much worse than what he had been suggesting.SPOILER
Cuts were demanded for an R rating in the United States, but the licking of the newly spawned fetuses was Eggar's own idea: she thought of how cats and dogs lick their young as soon as they are born.
