When Therapy Goes Bad

Annalee Newitz — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:27:13 PDT

Years after seeing David Cronenberg's psychotic movie The Brood, I could not get this scene out of my head. Nola has been undergoing experimental "psychoplasmics" therapy with Dr. Raglan (Oliver Reed!), trying to deal with rage over her divorce from doughboy Frank. Using psychoplasmics, she winds up literally giving birth to her rage in the form humanoid creatures who kill people she doesn't like. In this scene, Frank has come to help their real daughter escape from mommy and her scary, fucked up rage babies. I love Samantha Eggar as Nola: She isn't just a horror show chomping on baby goo; she really gives you the sense that she's a messed up lady locked into a surreal custody battle with the bumbling but well-meaning Frank.

While Frank tries to calm Nola down, Raglan is upstairs trying to rescue the couple's daughter from a herd of rage babies. The best part is the way they're all dressed in cute little pastel onesies in this giant room full of bunk beds. It's like sleepaway camp with mind-controlled mutants! Watch them kill! This is one of those classic flicks that probably wouldn't get made these days. Partly that's because 1979 was a golden year for freaky psychotherapy, but also because today this would all be CGI. And CGI just don't bleed like that freaky-ass baby does. [The Brood via IMDB]

Screw "Scanners" Reboot — Remake "The Brood"

Annalee Newitz — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 08:00:20 PST

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]

io9: the brood

When Therapy Goes Bad

Screw "Scanners" Reboot — Remake "The Brood"