“David Cronenberg’s first great film”: the cult classic horror movie Stephen King called essential
Few creatives have ever kept their finger on the pulse of horror longer or more successfully than Stephen King, with the author using it to his advantage to become one of the genre’s defining voices regardless of their preferred medium.
Having discovered first-hand that he wasn’t cut out for filmmaking when his directorial debut Maximum Overdrive ended in abject disaster despite the best efforts of a rollicking AC/DC soundtrack, King swiftly realised that the printed page was always going to be the best use of his talents.
He’s taken several ceremonial producing credits on the never-ending procession of film and television adaptations based on his work, though, while he remains an avid fan of all things spooky as an audience member. King has recommended plenty of titles to his legion of followers over the years, but not many of them have been labelled as essential.
One of them hailed from an auteur who became synonymous with psychosexual nightmares and phantasmagorical transformations, even if King was of the opinion it took them a while to reach greatness. It may have been his sixth feature overall, but it was a 1979 cult favourite that announced the arrival of a new and unmistakably unique voice in horror.
“The Brood is David Cronenberg’s first great film,” King told A.Frame. “With Samantha Eggar (‘BAD mummies! FUCKED-UP mummies!’) and Oliver Reed (who looks on the verge of exploding) playing parents from hell. Only hell turns out to be the children.”
Written by Cronenberg in the midst of a divorce, he wanted The Brood to serve as an exploration of how a dissolving relationship between a married couple can affect a child caught in the centre, albeit with several of his gruesome stylistic flourishes and plenty of unsettling sequences thrown into the mix for good measure.
Reed’s Hal Raglan is the psychiatrist who tries to help Eggar’s Nola Carveth in overcoming her issues with the use of controversial techniques, while Art Hindle’s beleaguered spouse Frank tries to gain custody of their five-year-old daughter, all while a string of vicious murders loom large over the proceedings.
Never mind the fact he’d already helmed Stereo, Crimes of the Future, Shivers, Rabid, and Fast Company by the time The Brood released, King is adamant it was the first of Cronenberg’s flick to stand on its own merits as a genuinely great work of cinema. Some may disagree, but unless there’s a particularly famous dissenter, none of them would be among the bestselling writers of all time.
The Brood was definitely a picture that marked a shift in Cronenberg’s direction, with more eyeballs being placed on his exploits than ever before after it turned a tidy profit at the box office. His next four features after that were Scanners, Videodrome, The Dead Zone, and The Fly, so King’s admiration for The Brood coincided with the filmmaker’s most fruitful period either way.
