The third principle, or impurity, is family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This idea is at the heart of three of the most terrifying films ever made about the domestic experience: David Lynch\u2019s Eraserhead<\/em>, David Cronenberg\u2019s The Brood<\/em>, and Andrzej Zulawski\u2019s Possession<\/em>. Released within the span of four years (1977, 1979 and 1981), all three focus on the dissolution of a family unit amidst the birth of a mutant progeny. Here, family is more than an impurity\u2014it\u2019s a disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Eraserhead<\/em>, a Chaplinesque neurotic is thrown into the deep end of the gene pool when his estranged lover reveals she\u2019s given birth to a hideously deformed baby. In The Brood<\/em>, a father struggles to protect his young daughter from his ex-wife\u2019s murderous offspring, asexual reproductions resulting from her experimental psychotherapy treatment. And in Possession<\/em>, the violent collapse of a marriage between a couple in West Berlin ushers a tentacled demon (possibly the Antichrist, possibly God himself) into the world and triggers nuclear Armageddon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While tonally very different from one another–Eraserhead<\/em> operates on pure dream logic, The Brood <\/em>maintains a clinical remove, and Possession<\/em> comes on like a full body clonic seizure<\/a>–they share a remarkable number of qualities with one another, both technical (each features outstanding creature and body horror effects) and stylistic (JG Ballard\u2019s review of Lynch\u2019s Blue Velvet<\/em>–\u201cThe Wizard of Oz reshot with a script by Franz Kafka and decor by Francis Bacon\u201d–applies equally to all three). But what most distinguishes Eraserhead<\/em>\/The Brood<\/em>\/Possession<\/em> as a thematic triptych are the way the real-life traumas which inspired them would go on to find new hosts in the cinema of the directors\u2019 own progeny. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Like the monsters at their center, each film was borne out of overriding domestic anxieties: during the five-year production of Eraserhead<\/em>, Lynch and his wife gave birth to daughter Jennifer (who suffered from clubfoot) before splitting up. Cronenberg\u2019s first wife, like Samantha Egger\u2019s deranged matriarch in The Brood,<\/em> left him to join a cult, taking their young daughter, Cassandra, with her (he had to hire private detectives to forcibly take her back). Zulawski\u2019s marriage, similar to the one depicted in Possession, <\/em>collapsed after his partner (the actress Ma\u0142gorzata Braunek, who starred in his first two films) left him for a spiritual guru (presented in the film as a hilarious New Age charlatan). In the latter two cases, a grueling custody battle ensued, which explains why discussions of The Brood<\/em> and Possession<\/em> inevitably brook comparisons to Stanley Kramer\u2019s 1980 divorce drama Kramer vs. Kramer<\/em> (Cronenberg has said his movie is \u201cmore realistic\u201d.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n But although each film served as a dearly needed exorcism for the filmmakers, hereditary trauma, like hereditary disease, tends to get passed down the line, and eventually, these cases manifested in the work of the second generation filmmakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although Jennifer Lynch\u2019s notorious debut, Boxing Helena<\/em> (1993)\u2014an erotic thriller about a beautiful hit-and-run victim (Sherilyn Fenn, of Twin Peaks<\/em> fame) who has her arms and legs amputated by obsessed surgeon–is rightly regarded as a failure, it continues to fascinate, if only for the ways it plays with the themes and ideas seen in her father\u2019s first feature (as well as an earlier short film, The Amputee<\/em>): Fenn\u2019s helpless husk finds herself in much the same position as The Baby in Eraserhead<\/em>, only with an overly devoted caretaker rather than a reluctant one. Lynch said she took inspiration from her own birth defect, much the same way her father did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Years later, this time in a reverse case of life imitating art, Lynch was almost left paralyzed by a car accident. Upon recovery, she returned to filmmaking to direct the far superior Surveillance<\/em> (2008). Centering around a different kind of roadside collision, the Rashamon-<\/em>styled murder mystery served as a way for her to work through her physical and emotional trauma, as well as connect with her own young daughter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Like Boxing Helena<\/em>, it\u2019s impossible not to think of her father\u2019s work when watching Surveillance<\/em> (comparisons to Lost Highway<\/em> are particularly unavoidable since they both star Bill Pullman), but the film still manages to stand on its own as an effectively disturbing slice of horror-noir. As Lynch tells it<\/a>, the finished film even managed to freak out her father: \u201cHe was completely horrified. He said \u2018You\u2019re the sickest bitch I know. You can\u2019t have the forces of darkness triumph over the forces of light.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the last decade, Xawery Zulawski has established himself as a successful director in his native Poland. His latest film, 2019\u2019s Bird Talk <\/em>(Mowa Ptak\u00f3w<\/em>)–which, although not a horror movie, features the disintegration of a living body that\u2019s as gruesome as anything found in these other films–was written by his late father, the last script he penned before succumbing to pancreatic cancer in 2015. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A frenzied ensemble drama about a group of friends struggling to maintain their sanity as their nation spirals into fascism, much of the story is directly autobiographical, with the central plot focusing on a would-be writer\u2019s strained relationship with his controversial filmmaker father. Bird Talk<\/em> is littered with clips, soundbites, and artwork from several of the elder Zulawski\u2019s movies, foremost amongst them Possession<\/em> (at one point, characters sit down to watch Isabelle Adjani\u2019s notorious subway freakout scene.) The dissolution of Zulawski family that inspired it hangs over these scenes, and is even explicitly discussed a couple of times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/brood-1024x576.jpeg\")
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