The Dwarfs of Wrath

Mommies don’t do that. Mommies don’t hurt their own children.
--Samantha Eggar, The Brood (1979)

It says a lot about the depressing number of news stories that argue otherwise that my first response to that line was “Bullshit!”

But enough of real life. What, you may ask, has all this to do with the 1979 movie The Brood?

Well, The Brood is one of director David Cronenberg’s first entries into mainstream horror. The running theme of the movie is maternal violence and it is supposedly based on a true story. Not everything that happens in this movie literally happened in real life but Cronenberg himself admits to having being inspired by his real-life experiences with his ex-wife while writing the screenplay of this movie.

The movie concerned a man named Frank Cavert (played by Art Hindle) whose wife Nola (played by Samantha Eggar) was undergoing treatment at a mysterious retreat run by Hal (played by Oliver Reed). One day Frank arrived at the retreat to pick up his daughter Candice only to discover when he got home that she had been beaten. When he asked Candice about it, he received no answer. When he tried to confront Nola about it, he got stonewalled by Hal who threatened to deny all visitation rights if Frank made an issue of this.

Later on, Hall talked to Nola and confronted her with Frank’s accusation. At first, Nola was in denial. What? Her? Hurt her own child? Surely Hal was joking.

Then Hal confronted Nola with the stories she herself had told about the abuse she suffered at her own mother’s hands. Stories that still had an active influence on Nola. So much so that she found herself expressing more and more anger at that parent.

Meanwhile, Art had a conversation with Nola’s mother, a doting grandmother who seemed awfully defensive about something. She accused Nola of making stuff up and yet seemed to drink quite a bit for someone who had nothing to feel guilty about.

For some odd reason, Frank left her alone with Candice. Candice and her grandmother were looking at an old family photo album when their quality time was interrupted by some mysterious noises in the kitchen. Grandmother excused herself to investigate and then...

Kids? What kids?
--Art Hindle, The Brood (1979)

The rest of the film involved a series of murders committed by homicidal dwarfs. Dwarfs small enough to pass for children from a distance yet far more cruel than even the worst playground bully. All of their victims were people with whom Nola was angry. Yet apart from strange dreams, Nola had no memories of the deeds the dwarfs committed. And yet the people they killed were still dead.

Frank accidentally came across one such killer while it was in the process of dying. Apparently once the dwarfs’ rage was dissipated, they began dying. Yet there were so many targets for their rage. Even imaginary ones... And according to the local coroner, they were physically incapable of seeing things in anything but black and white. No shades of gray were possible. They had no room for soft answers turning away wrath. In fact, it was tempting to wax political and compare the dwarfs to some real-life humans I could mention.

But all that was besides the point.

What’s been happening to me has been just too strange... too strange for me to share with anyone from my old life.
--Samantha Eggar, The Brood (1979)

The Brood was allegedly inspired by the real-life custody battle Cronenberg underwent for his daughter Cassandra, a bitter conflict in which he allegedly went so far as to kidnap Cassandra from his ex-wife. Although Cronenberg tried to give his characters shades of gray (for example, he had Frank at one point admit that his ex-wife’s mental issues may have rubbed off on him and had the not very likable Hal perform a very gutsy -- if not heroic -- deed), it still seemed obvious which character he most sympathized with (Frank) and which one he most disliked (Nola).

To make things more complicated, we never learned how much of Nola’s stories were true and how much were not. Her parents did act awfully guilty for people who considered themselves the victims of false accusations and yet Nola herself was not always truthful. Indeed, she was all too ready to condemn and execute someone who was herself innocent of the deeds Nola attributed to her. Granted, Nola never consciously order that such-and-such individual be killed. But the results of her “dreams” were such that she might as well have.

And what about Frank? Though Frank seemed like the closest thing the movie had to a conventional hero, he ultimately resolved the problem of Nola and her wrathful dwarfs in a way that was not exactly chivalrous. True, his deeds could be justified on the grounds that they were the only realistic way Frank could keep his daughter from getting killed. Yet his deed did not keep Candice from undergoing a horrific experience.

Indeed, it seemed quite evident at the end of the film that while Frank’s deed saved his daughter’s physical life, it might well have also set off the same genetic qualities that ultimately gave Nola her murderous powers. And so the cycle of violence moved from grandmother to mother to daughter. I guess it is a good thing that things like that rarely happen in real life, right?