Midnight Movie Monographs: The Brood by Stephen R. Bissette. PS Publishing 2020.
The Brood, is arguably one of David Cronenberg's best movies and is certainly his most personal born out of his own divorce. Stephen R. Bissette shines a magnificent 670 page spotlight on the movie, its origins, impact, and numerous asides into the history of Canadian production, tax shelter laws, censorship madness, literary and cinematic thematic precursors, Cronenberg's own films leading to and through this one, and many, many other threads and connections that give the most exhaustive overview and dissection of a single cinematic work as you can imagine.
Bissette is to be commended not only for his research and insightfulness, but for bing able to weave so many threads through this work without any tangles, or knots. It's scope is matched by the clarity of its content. It should be an important example of what can be done in dissecting a cinematic work, and I hope more cinema scholars follow his lead.
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