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The Brood
By 1979 David Cronenberg was already being hailed as a uniquely disturbing film maker.
With SHIVERS (1975) and RABID (1977), he displayed an emergent talent for intelligent but confrontational cinematic ideas and imagery, unlike anything that had come before. But it was a raw talent. A talent not quite in control of all the elements of film production.
THE BROOD (1979) was Cronenberg's first masterpiece. Now fully in control of his artistic talents and the means of cinematic production, Cronenberg harnessed his considerable gifts to an intensely personal story, that nonetheless drew from related cultural and societal elements to create one of the most overwhelmingly emotional horror movies ever made. It is a film that goes to the heart of pain and trauma, and does not flinch. A film that does not shy away from the destructive aspects of our inner lives, how they damage those around us, and how they live on, infecting those we hold most dear.
Join Stephen R. Bissette as he takes a forensic and holistic approach to examining the many facets of this dark jewel of horror...
With SHIVERS (1975) and RABID (1977), he displayed an emergent talent for intelligent but confrontational cinematic ideas and imagery, unlike anything that had come before. But it was a raw talent. A talent not quite in control of all the elements of film production.
THE BROOD (1979) was Cronenberg's first masterpiece. Now fully in control of his artistic talents and the means of cinematic production, Cronenberg harnessed his considerable gifts to an intensely personal story, that nonetheless drew from related cultural and societal elements to create one of the most overwhelmingly emotional horror movies ever made. It is a film that goes to the heart of pain and trauma, and does not flinch. A film that does not shy away from the destructive aspects of our inner lives, how they damage those around us, and how they live on, infecting those we hold most dear.
Join Stephen R. Bissette as he takes a forensic and holistic approach to examining the many facets of this dark jewel of horror...
690 pages, Hardcover
Published March 1, 2020
3 people are currently reading
46 people want to read
About the author
Stephen R. Bissette
264 books51 followersStephen R. Bissette is an American comics artist, editor, and publisher with a focus on the horror genre. He is best known for working with writer Alan Moore and inker John Totleben on the DC comic Swamp Thing in the 1980s.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 23, 2020
The Brood by Stephen R. Bissette published by PS Publishing offers an immensely detailed analysis of David Cronenberg's classic horror film. It includes biographical, cultural and geographical contexts to provide an impeccably researched, lovingly crafted gargantuan book to absorb and digest at leisure.
An index would been useful but given the exhaustive content covering all aspects of the production this is only a minor niggle.
An index would been useful but given the exhaustive content covering all aspects of the production this is only a minor niggle.
February 17, 2021
I very nearly gave this five stars, as it’s one of the most remarkable pieces of popular film scholarships I’ve ever come across. A comprehensive examination of the making , the themes, the cultural context, and the lasting influence, of David Cronenberg’s first masterpiece. Over 600 pages about one, important, but only moderately successful, Canadian, cult, horror film!
I hold back the one star for , maybe, one or two, overlong digressions.
That being said, the book is a genuine achievement, articulate, without being academic, and, enthusiastic, without being fannish.
I’m impressed.
I hold back the one star for , maybe, one or two, overlong digressions.
That being said, the book is a genuine achievement, articulate, without being academic, and, enthusiastic, without being fannish.
I’m impressed.
March 22, 2024
David Cronenberg's The Brood, which turns 45 this year, is his most personal, painful and humourless work but rife with many of his recurring obsessions. Stephen R Bissette's deep dive monograph is highly personal, clearly obsessive, far from humourless and compelling throughout. Bissette acknowledges, and sometimes dodges, his own engaging tangents during a remarkable feat of analysis and research as he positions the film in the context of Canadian history (of film and otherwise), Cronenberg's career and tumultuous personal life at the time, parasitic cinema, censorship, religious cults, horror literature and so much more. Particularly impressive is his counter argument against changes of misogyny, levelled at the film by the revered Robin Wood among others, though there are fantastic insights into the picture's conception, production, reception and afterlife.
July 24, 2020
Rarely, undoubtedly, will one have discovered such a sum devoted to a single and unique work (in all the senses of the terms). And this is the first aspect of this book that strikes the mind: its volume. Over 600 pages for a single movie. The sixth feature film by a Canadian director who, at the time of its release, had actually had only two really personal features in theaters (‘Shivers’ and ‘Rabid’).
Add to that the name of the author: Stephen R. Bissette, cartoonist (‘Swamp Thing’ with Alan Moore and John Totleben, to quote perhaps the best known of his considerable work), screenwriter, writer, editor (the review ‘Taboo’, in which he notably published the first papers of ‘From Hell’ by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell), a teacher until recently (at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, VT), and great connoisseur of all things horror, Bigfoot, strange cinematography, dinosaurs, you name it.
Suffice to say that the meeting of Stephen Bissette and ‘Chromosome 3’ (the French title for ‘The Brood’, released on October 10, 1979 in France) had everything to excite the imagination and raise unreasonable expectations. Expectations which, in the end, will have been exceeded.
Rather than retracing hypothetical influences, Stephen Bissette draws links, proximities, communities of tones or patterns. With ‘The Manster’, for example, a Japanese-American film by George Breakston and Kenneth G. Crane, a variation on the Jekyll/Hyde duality, with a motif of human parthenogenesis, of virginal birth of oneself.
For Cronenberg, his films do not contain ‘monsters’ per se, but what he calls ‘incarnate pathology’, a pathology made flesh. He creates creatures ‘to change the aesthetic perceptions of the viewer’. And for that, he makes very ‘body-conscious’ films, unlike monster movies because, with him, the horror comes from within, not from an external threat.
Just as ‘The Brood’ reflects the biography of the Canadian director (reflection of a broken marriage), one of the great interests of this book is his personal side: Stephen Bissette also talks about his own story of reader-cinephile-telephage in the territory of SF and horror. Much like Stephen King's prefaces or his ‘Anatomy of Horror’, it creates a special bond with the reader. Something warm, which complements the absolute precision of the writing, which makes this extremely powerful book a reference for any researcher as well as for any fan thirsty for further research.
This small review barely scrapes the surface of this extraordinary book, a study as deep and well-documented as it is precise and complete, and an example for all movie studies.
Add to that the name of the author: Stephen R. Bissette, cartoonist (‘Swamp Thing’ with Alan Moore and John Totleben, to quote perhaps the best known of his considerable work), screenwriter, writer, editor (the review ‘Taboo’, in which he notably published the first papers of ‘From Hell’ by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell), a teacher until recently (at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, VT), and great connoisseur of all things horror, Bigfoot, strange cinematography, dinosaurs, you name it.
Suffice to say that the meeting of Stephen Bissette and ‘Chromosome 3’ (the French title for ‘The Brood’, released on October 10, 1979 in France) had everything to excite the imagination and raise unreasonable expectations. Expectations which, in the end, will have been exceeded.
Rather than retracing hypothetical influences, Stephen Bissette draws links, proximities, communities of tones or patterns. With ‘The Manster’, for example, a Japanese-American film by George Breakston and Kenneth G. Crane, a variation on the Jekyll/Hyde duality, with a motif of human parthenogenesis, of virginal birth of oneself.
For Cronenberg, his films do not contain ‘monsters’ per se, but what he calls ‘incarnate pathology’, a pathology made flesh. He creates creatures ‘to change the aesthetic perceptions of the viewer’. And for that, he makes very ‘body-conscious’ films, unlike monster movies because, with him, the horror comes from within, not from an external threat.
Just as ‘The Brood’ reflects the biography of the Canadian director (reflection of a broken marriage), one of the great interests of this book is his personal side: Stephen Bissette also talks about his own story of reader-cinephile-telephage in the territory of SF and horror. Much like Stephen King's prefaces or his ‘Anatomy of Horror’, it creates a special bond with the reader. Something warm, which complements the absolute precision of the writing, which makes this extremely powerful book a reference for any researcher as well as for any fan thirsty for further research.
This small review barely scrapes the surface of this extraordinary book, a study as deep and well-documented as it is precise and complete, and an example for all movie studies.
May 21, 2020
It's good to know someone out there is more obsessive about things that I am. Bissette pours so much knowledge and history into this tome about Cronenberg, I'm amazed it's theoretically about just one movie! Does David Cronenberg know this much about himself? Bissette puts events in context over 4 decades of this amazing career, and it's inspired me to start rewatching Cronenberg's library from the beginning.
August 20, 2020
One for the devotees of Cronenberg's "The Brood", full of detail and interesting background, lots of pictures and quotes from the time. A PhD in the making?
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews