The Brood - Production

Production

The Brood was filmed in Toronto and Mississauga, Ontario, on a budget of C$1,500,000. It was a financial success, and executive producer Victor Solnicki (who also produced Cronenberg's Scanners and Videodrome) called it his favorite Cronenberg picture. Cronenberg called it the most classic horror film he did, and, together with The Fly and Dead Ringers, one of his most autobiographical. At the time The Brood was developed, Cronenberg fought for custody of his daughter from his first marriage.

This was the first Cronenberg film to be scored by Howard Shore, and is also Shore's first film score. He has written the music for all but one of Cronenberg's subsequent films.

The Brood had cuts demanded for its theatrical release in the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom. Cronenberg condemned the censorship of the climactic scene, 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 fetus 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." The US MGM DVD and UK Anchor Bay DVD feature the uncensored version, while most other releases feature the shorter version.

The Brood was listed #88 on the "Chicago Film Critics Association's 100 Scariest Movies of All-Time". In 2004, one of its sequences was voted #78 among the "100 Scariest Movie Moments" by the Bravo Channel.

In 2009, Spyglass Entertainment announced a remake from a script by Cory Goodman, to be directed by Breck Eisner. Eisner left the project in 2010.