Line #5 Film/TheBrood


1	[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/poster_the_brood.jpg]]
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3	->''"Go through it... Go all the way through it... All the way to the end..."''
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5	There are certain pairings that you know are going to result in something horrifying: [[Film/{{Audition}} Takashi Miike taking on romantic comedy.]] [[Literature/TheShining Stephen King making a domestic drama.]] [[Film/FromDuskTillDawn Quentin Tarantino]] [[Film/PulpFiction writing a]] [[Film/DeathProof crime caper.]] And in this case: Creator/DavidCronenberg discussing alternative psychotherapy.
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7	''The Brood'' is a 1979 Canadian {{horror}} {{film}} written and directed by David Cronenberg (often considered to be his first really good movie), centering around a psychotherapist, Dr. Hal Raglan (Creator/OliverReed), who has created a technique called psychoplasmics. By encouraging his patients to "go all the way through it", he is able to induce radical physical changes. A man verbally abused by his father develops welts all over his body. Another man's self-loathing induces lymphatic cancer. And a psychotic woman named Nola Carveth (Creator/SamanthaEggar) parthenogenetically gives birth to strange mutant children who act out her negative emotions. Then the therapist starts bringing all these negative emotions to the surface, and the children start killing anyone she sees as a personal enemy...
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9	Cronenberg has condemned the censorship of the climactic scene, "trimmed" in the United Kingdom, in which Eggar's character gives birth to one of the monsters and starts tenderly licking it clean. "I had a long and loving close-up of Samantha licking the foetus... when the censors, those animals, cut it out, the result was that a lot of people thought she was eating her baby. That's much worse than I was suggesting."
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11	In 2005, the full uncut version was made available on UK DVD. A remake was announced in 2009 with Breck Eisner as the director, but Eisner left the project the next year and the remake was shelved.
12	----
13	!! ''The Brood'' contains examples of:
14	* ArtisticLicenseBiology: The medical examiner who autopsies one of the broodlings claims its eyes have no retinas. An eye with no retina would be ''completely'' blind, not just colorblind as he claims.
15	* BigBad: Nola. Particularly after it's revealed that, contrary to Raglan's initial perceptions, she's [[spoiler:well aware of the brood's actions against her victims. [[FromBadToWorse Including her own daughter]]]].
16	* BizarreAlienBiology: The broodlings have no belly buttons, no retinas (the ME who autopsies one has no idea how they can see at all), no genitals, and no digestive systems, instead drawing nutrients from a membranous sac along their spines.
17	* BodyHorror: Cronenberg is the king of this trope. The infamous birthing scene definitely plays this straight.
18	* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Frank attempts to reach out to Nola while Raglan rescues Candice. They nearly fail when Frank shows outward disgust at Nola's external uterus. She directs the brood to kill Raglan and then tries to have them kill her daughter to prevent Frank from taking her away. Frank strangles her to death, which also kills the brood. On the drive home, Candice's arm shows signs of the [[SequelHook mutant growth that Nola had...]]]]
19	* CensoredForComedy: As indicated above, the censors' trimming of Nola's birthing scene made a sequence of her licking her hate-baby clean look more like she was eating it.
20	* CloudCuckoolander:
21	** Jan Hartog, the guy with lymph cancer.
22	** Also Mike, the man who wants you to "be [his] daddy."
23	%%* CreepyChild / EnfanteTerrible: The mutant children.
24	* FanDisservice: Nola's external uterus, which she is quite willing to show off.
25	* GenreBusting: A cross between the Gothic horror of the 1800s and the immediate, gory horror of the 1970s.
26	* TheHeartless: Nola literally gives birth to her inner demons.
27	* LovecraftianSuperpower: While Psychoplasmics isn't ''necessarily'' a superpower, the ability to birth homunculi from your traumatic memories who end up subconsciously doing your bidding might be considered useful, if fucked up.
28	* MadwomanInTheAttic: Suggested as a possible explanation for the first broodling found.
29	* MadLove / ManufacturingVictims: Not as in erotic or romantic love, but Mike, one of Raglan's patients, becomes addicted to the treatment when Raglan plays a surrogate of his father who gives Mike all the love his real father didn't give him. He constantly looks for someone to "be my daddy" when Raglan [[spoiler:throws every patient of the institute out when he's dealing with Nola's ultimate breakdown.]] He even says that no one can play his daddy like Dr. Raglan, giving it a very creepy and disturbing pseudo-incestuous vibe.
30	* MotherOfAThousandYoung: Nola develops this as a LovecraftianSuperpower, giving birth to [[TheHeartless murderous manifestations]] of her own psychosis.
31	* NiceJobBreakingItHero: [[spoiler:Raglan's plan to save Candice would have worked had Frank done what he was supposed to and ''kept Nola calm''. Instead he can't hide his disgust on her "child", getting both the doctor and Nola killed.]]
32	* NoNavelNovelBirth: The broodlings have no navels, a feature which is pointed out during an autopsy as a sign they're not born in the normal way.
33	* OnceDoneNeverForgotten: Invoked by Robert Silverman's character, who intends to sue the psychiatric clinic that he believes to be responsible for his lymph cancer. He knows he's going to lose the case, but he also knows that in a few years, people won't even remember the verdict.
34	-->All they'll remember is the slogan: "Psychoplasmics Gives You Cancer." Catchy, huh?
35	* RedemptionEqualsDeath: [[spoiler: Raglan realizes that Psychoplasmics is ''too'' effective and turns against Nora. In response, she has her "children" murder him.]]
36	* SelfMadeOrphan: [[spoiler: Nola's first victims are her parents, whom she resents both for her upbringing and for siding with Frank against her.]]
37	* WellDoneSonGuy: Raglan's first patient, Mike, was the son of an abusive father, and his Psychoplasmics effects create cigarette burns and welts on his flesh. He has a tendency to latch onto any possible father figures he can as a result.
38	* YourMindMakesItReal: The whole point of Raglan's therapy. He would make mental illnesses into physical ones, which he would then cure.

Context Film / TheBrood