A divorce metaphor cast as a nasty little horror story with blood, bludgeonings and bizarre deformities. It’s one of the most artful and adult barf bag flicks of 1979. Writer/director David Cronenberg was going through his own post-divorce child custody struggle at the time and he vents his rage here. It’s about a guy who’s married to an insane woman who’s undergoing an experimental treatment devised by Oliver Reed (one of many creepy doctors in Cronenberg’s films over the years). Meanwhile, the people around him start dying violent deaths by the hands of killer mutant dwarfs that show up out of nowhere.
The killings are tame by today’s standards, but the climactic confrontation still packs some stomach-turning power. One touching moment that involves a newborn mutant fetus and Samantha Egger’s tongue was censored in several countries, including the US, Canada, and the UK, at the time, but the US DVD restores it.