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Screw "Scanners" Reboot -- Remake "The Brood"

Poor David Cronenberg, the artsy B-movie director who brought you Videodrome, Scanners, and A History of Violence. The guy just wants to keep making subversive indie actioners like his recent Eastern Promises, but the world loves him for his early horror work and just wants to keep remaking it into the ground. He told MTV recently that he never watches remakes of his movies, and doesn't plan to see the reboot of head-esploding psychic gorefest Scanners, coming out in 2008. So that got us wondering — what Cronenberg remake would get Cronenberg into theaters? It would have to be The Brood, one of his lesser-known works about a mad psychologist and a bunch of angry killer babies with no anuses. Our pick for director and revamps after the jump.

The Brood is one of Cronenberg's more personal films. He's said that he wrote it while coming off a bad divorce, and you can tell: the film is about a woman seeing a demented psychologist in an effort to save her failing marriage. To channel her anger, the psychologist (played with wack abandon by Oliver Reed) urges her to "give birth to her rage" literally. She grows dozens of these strange, deformed toddlers with no digestive tracts that sort of come out of welts on her stomach and try to kill people she's angry at. Like her husband, for example. Luckily, the rage babies die quickly due to the lack of mouths and asses, but not before some people die and hubby freaks out.

We'd bet that Cronenberg would love to see a remake of The Brood from Lynn Hershman Leeson, director of biopunk indie Teknolust, the tale of a mad biologist and her sperm-eating cyber-creations. What The Brood lacked was a female perspective, largely because the female lead was mostly just an angry monster-creator. But who better to revisit this story than the imaginative Leeson, who clearly has a way with smart actresses (Tilda Swinton is amazing in the four roles she plays in Teknolust). She could remake the movie from the perspective of the woman having the rage babies, who is trying desperately to stop giving birth to them. Instead of the horror being in the mind of the husband stalked by the babies, it's in the mind of the mother who can't stop birthing monsters. Sort of like Rosemary's Baby crossed with Aliens or something.

Steal this pitch, Leeson! And get Cronenberg into the theater.

Cronenberg remakes [MTV Movies Blog]

8:00 AM on Tue Jan 1 2008
By Annalee Newitz
1,284 views
7 comments

Comments

  • I'd like to see a few remakes of his porn titles, maybe intertwined with his cinematic themes.

    Sure, it's no Marilyn Chambers (Rabid, my first Cronenberg experience) or Eggar (pictured), but some of the things he pulled off with swings and "on-the-floor" camera work... would just fit great with mutant orifices or orifice-less mutants.

    Really excited about the blog, doubly-so that you guys are going all Cronenberg early on in the piece.

  • considering the rumors that the Brood is the film he made as divorce therapy. it may be the one he really wont want to see. but i sure would

  • "The Brood" = Scary babies.
    "It's Alive!" = Even SCARIER babies. With fangs, claws and the ability to crawl through hospital air ducts and kill you.

  • Image of strider_mt2k strider_mt2k at 08:03 AM on 01/02/08 *

    I have a better idea.
    Don't remake ANYTHNG.

    Make more interesting and creative NEW shit for a change! :\

  • Image of braak braak at 09:22 AM on 01/02/08 *

    @strider_mt2k: That's a terrible idea. How will we know if something is going to be popular enough to make money before we invest in it if there's no precedent for it?

  • You'd be angry too if you didn't have an anus.

  • Considering I dropped her class when I fell asleep in it on the first day, I'm pretty sure Lynn is teaching right now. Although, not at the college I attended any longer.

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