Director: Julian Roffman
Cast: Barbara Lord, Jack Betts, Peter Falk

In 1967, the Canadian government set up the Canadian Film Development Corporation, which years later was renamed Telefilm Canada. The intent of the government agency was to provide funding to Canadian filmmakers so that they could make films Canadians would flock to, embrace, and be proud of. More than fifty years later, has that goal been reached? Well, instead of me commenting about that, I will let prominent Canadians who have depended on Telefilm for their livelihood to speak. Dave Thomas (SCTV) once told a Canadian Parliament hearing about the Canadian film industry, "There's this thing about Canadian films being boring. I find a lot of Canadian investors tell me Canadian films are boring. [They say] 'Why do we want to invest in Canadian films? Why don't you give me something that's more hip and the audiences want to watch today?'" Director Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter) originally wanted to direct a Canadian film adaptation of the Canadian novel The English Patient, but was outbid by American producer Saul Zaentz. Seeing the finished American film, Egoyan commented, "I don't think I would have done it better, just differently. I would have made it with a lot less money. And I don't know, quite honestly, if my adaptation would have been anywhere near as successful a commercial breakthrough as the one that was made." Actor/director Paul Gross (Due South) once commented, "Telefilm is floundering. It's a public service, paid for by the Canadian people. But we are not making movies that people want to see. If we made roads that nobody wanted to drive on, that would be hard to defend as a public service."

And Robert Lantos (Barney's Version), Canada's biggest movie producer, once commented, "I'd be thrilled if one of our luminary directors came to me and said, 'There's this life affirming book where good triumphs over evil, a story of human kindness, and I'd like to make it my next movie.' Those calls rarely come." Later, he also commented, "Many, many millions of dollars are being spent on allegedly theatrical [Canadian] films that don't play in theaters." Okay, as you can clearly see, even the big names in the Canadian film industry are agreeing with my long argument that the Canadian government has been unsuccessful getting the Canadian film industry to make movies people would like. Something has to be done, but what? Well, in the past, I have suggested that reintroducing a tax shelter system - though adjusting it here and there to prevent abuse like what was with the tax shelter system from the 1970s to early 1980s - could be a great way to get private investment in Canadian films. Private investors generally fund movies that are more commercial than the movies governments fund. Another thing that could be done would be for Telefilm to refuse to fund any film unless it has a firm guarantee from a Canadian film distributor that the finished film will be substantially marketed and substantially distributed across Canada. That would push Canadian filmmakers to make more commercial films if they want distributors to accept their films. But I would like to talk about another course of action that might help. This plan would simply consist of the Canadian government stopping the funding of Canadian films altogether. With so much money been poured into the Canadian film industry over the decades with hardly any good results, it seems foolish to keep funding something with Canadian taxpayers' funds that continues to fail spectacularly. I sense outrage about this proposal by a lot of readers. They are probably thinking, "How can you say that? Without government funding, no Canadian movies would be funded at all! How do you expect a Canadian film industry to survive without support?"

To that I say: look at the Canadian wine industry. Not many people know this, but for years Canadian wine makers were heavily subsidized by the Canadian government, despite the fact the Canadian wine makers were constantly making wines that were considered a joke and simply weren't popular anywhere. Baby Duck, anyone? Eventually, in a rare brush with common sense, the Canadian government decided that their money would best be spent elsewhere, and withdrew the subsidies from the Canadian wine industry. There were of course protests and panic about this at first. But in short notice, the Canadian wine industry realized that to survive, they had to make wines people would enjoy drinking if they wanted to stay in business. They worked very hard to achieve that goal, and today Canadian wines are popular not only in Canada, but around the world. Another thing to consider is that over the decades it has been shown that Canadian movies made without grant money tend to be more successful. The Canadian direct-to-video industry, for example, has long thrived despite Telefilm turning up its nose at these kinds of movies. Heck, it was even proven before direct-to-video became a thing. Over sixty years ago, the wife of Canadian movie theater mogul Nat Taylor (who was the guy who later came up with the idea of the modern movie multiplex that can now be found all over the world) hooked up with Canadian documentary director Julian Roffman to make two movies - The Bloody Brood, and the first Canadian 3-D feature length movie The Mask - without one cent of taxpayers' money. And guess what - both movies ended up making a profit. Later, Roffman made two movies - Explosion (a.k.a. The Blast) and The Pyx - with Canadian taxpayers' money, and both of those later movies lost money. Something to think about. Speaking of thinking about, today I would rather think about a success rather than a failure, so I will be taking a look at The Bloody Brood. Although its title suggests horror fare, its focus is actually on the beatnik culture of the time, specifically a guy name Nico (Peter Falk, The In-Laws), the self-appointed leader of a bunch of young men and women who are into this counterculture movement. While the beatniks under him are pretty harmless people, Nico has a sick obsession about cruelty and death, maybe from the fact that he has secret ulterior motives to use the beatniks for his own benefit. Eventually, he decides for kicks to directly cause a death. When a messenger boy named Roy (William Kowalchuk) comes to the coffee house Nico and his fellow beatniks hang out at, Nico gives Roy a hamburger that is filled with broken glass. Not surprisingly, Roy dies from the hamburger a few hours later, and when subsequently investigating cop McLeod (Robert Christie, Hyper Sapien: People From Another Star) gives Roy's older brother Cliff (Jack Betts, Power Rangers Lost Galaxy) the bad news, Cliff is determined to track down the culprit all by himself. Not long into Cliff's investigation, he determines that he'll have to (drum roll) go deep into the local beatnik culture to wring out the truth. But, oh man, is he too square to fit in with the beatniks, win their trust, and narrow the long list of suspects down enough to prove who killed his brother?

Unless maybe you have an interest in the now gone (or maybe just greatly evolved) beatnik culture that ran through the 1950s and 1960s, The Bloody Brood's biggest selling point is that it features actor Peter Falk in an early screen role, just a year before his breakthrough (and Oscar nominated) role in Murder, Inc. While Falk's performance in this earlier movie may not worthy of an Oscar, it definitely shows what was to come from him. The character of Nico is definitely of an individual who is very sick and twisted, but Falk does not act in the typical scenery-chewing manner other actors might do. He is very calm at almost every moment, treating everything around him in a manner that could be labelled "casual". But when we see Nico doing things like being fascinated with the sight of an innocent man having a fatal heart attack, and shortly afterwards dismissing the whole incident while beating some bongos casually, we know this is a greatly disturbed person - even if he never once cracks a smile or laughs out loud during the course of the movie. We sense his utter confidence throughout as well, and that makes him even more potentially dangerous to anyone around him. Jack Betts, as the hero Cliff seeking out justice for his murdered brother, also gives a more subtle than expected performance. Although he is clearly upset about his loss - we see tears, he is occasionally provoked into short bursts of fury - we get a sense that this guy is very well educated and smart, and seems to understand that just sitting around and bawling will do absolutely no good for him or his deceased brother. And while Robert Christie gives police inspector McLeod at first a kind of cold and blunt attitude towards Cliff, he also doesn't overdo it. While we dislike him at first, we see that he's trying to act professional and to not get emotionally involved - what good police officers try to do. He does eventually give Cliff a few clues to start with for his own investigation, and in that moment, we see that he cannot help but let his humanity out once in a while.

When Cliff takes the clues and starts off with his own investigation, we in the audience are expected to believe he could do what no cop could do. Indeed, his investigation is in large part helped by some moments of dumb luck, though these moments don't seem especially outlandish and unbelievable. Also, as his investigation progresses, he also gets a few brushes with bad luck, which get Nico suspicious of this stranger. Nico is no dope, and for that matter, neither are the beatniks who are following Nico. Early on, Cliff tries to casually get some information out of the beatniks, but they almost immediately see that he is not one of "them", and at first don't want anything to do with him. It's a little odd then that these beatniks - who all have jobs and lives outside of the coffee houses and apartment parties - do seem pretty clueless that Nico is using them. While Nico is often casual in his behavior, the cruel streak within him often gets exposed, so questions like how he managed to get all these beatniks to accept him as their leader come up - questions that never really get answered. The sometimes vagueness of the story also comes up with Nico's secret scheme, which until in the final sequence is kept so vague (possibly due to censorship policies of the period) that sometimes it's difficult to dislike Nico when you don't know what he's actually up to. However, The Bloody Brood does manage to keep the beatnik characters under Nico at a fairly likable level, even though most of them are not presented at more than face value. Sure, they say and do some strange things at a fairly regular rate, but the most hostile they ever get towards a person is when they label the person receiving their disapproval simply as "a square".

Director Julian Roffman keeps up the pretty positive viewpoint of the beatniks throughout the movie despite the limitations of the script and budget. Just about all of the movie takes place in indoor locations, and these indoor locations are a little below the number of indoor locations you might see in a higher budgeted movie of the period. While these interior sets are limited, it is clear that the production design team managed to squeeze every last penny to make the sets look fairly elaborate and believable (Canada had pennies back then, but not anymore for years - we got rid of them very quickly and very easily when told to, unlike another country I know.) The sets are well dressed with various props, adding to their authentic air. And if you can get a hand on the official DVD or Blu-Ray edition of the movie (there are indications that The Bloody Brood may now be in the public domain, so beware of what edition you get or view), you'll see that the lighting and photography are pretty professional. Roffman also manages to throw in a few small but impressive tracking shots, knows how to position actors in a shot for maximum effect, and also generates a somewhat moody feeling to the story. However, while Roffman does manage to generate a climax that packs some raw punch, I have to admit that the story up to that point for the most part unfolds in a somewhat slow fashion, even though the running time is only 70 minutes. The more relaxed pace of the unfolding story never gets to be really annoying, though I think had things unfolded with a bit more zip, The Bloody Brood would play out a lot better. But as it is, the movie is interesting enough, offbeat enough, and well complimented enough by its cast and crew to make it a worthwhile curio about a culture and time that no longer exists. And best of all, this Canadian effort is a real movie, not one of those vaguely cinematic pretentious and boringly arty Canadian efforts that Telefilm can't seen to stop funding and encouraging to this very day. It'll make you want to write to Prime Minister Mark Carney and tell him that our tax dollars can be better spent elsewhere, which will result in more than one kind of good then happening to Canada.

(Posted January 13, 2026)