THE BRAIN (1988)

 

DIRECTED by Edward Hunt

SCREENPLAY by Barry Pearson 

STARRING  - Tom Bresnahan as Jim Majelewski,  Cynthia Preston as Janet,  David Gale as Dr. Anthony Berol Blake, George Buza as Verna,  Brett Pearson as Willie,  Sarah Chapple as Debbie Hodges,  Christine Kossak as Vivian.

PLOT - Jim is a brilliant, highly intelligent but unstimulated and bored high school student. After blowing up the school toilets in a prank, Jim is forced by his head teacher to enroll in a self help program run by the sinister Dr. Blake.

Once enrolled Jim discovers that there is more to Dr.Blake than meets the eye. For the seemingly respectable scientist harbours a deadly secret - a giant man eating mutant alien brain is working with Dr Blake. It is looking to take over the world with it's hideous mental powers and its hungry...

Can the troubled teen and his friends save the world from the hideous hunger of...the Brain ?...

DIALOUGE  - Blake (whilst watching the Brain eat somebody) - "That's food for thought."

PERFORMANCES  - Jim, the film's central character is played by Tom Bresnahan. Jim is a highly intelligent student who isn't being mentally stimulated enough by his studies, so in the grand tradition of all bored, clever kids has started to act up. Jim has taken to playing silly practical jokes on people to alleviate his frustration. 

It's his latest stunt (blowing up the gents toilet at school with Sodium and Water) that gets him put onto Dr Blake's self-help programme. Incidentally, I have no idea if mixing Sodium with H20 is as highly volatile as this film makes out (I was absolutely shit at Chemistry at school and failed it with the high-end achiever's grade of  "F"), although the film makers do go to the trouble to warn viewers not to try it at home on the end credits, so maybe it isn't an exaggeration (it certainly becomes a major plot point as the story progresses). Bresnahan does a pretty serviceable job of playing the young hero, nothing remarkable but solid enough for this type of film. He does have a tendency to mumble some of his lines in places, but all in all he's OK.

Jim is accompanied in the movie by his girlfriend Janet (Cynthia Preston) who seems to have two default personality settings - 1) Being a "good girl" who doesn't want to sleep with Jim until they've both graduated, and 2) flying into a hysterical state when anything horrible happens (which it does FREQUENTLY).

I said above that Janet isn't ready to have sex with Jim. Well...she isn't at first (a lot is made of this subplot in the first quarter of the movie), ultimately Janet eventually decides she does want to do the nasty with our boy Jim...but ONLY whilst they're both hiding away in the high school's locker room whilst the hideous mutant man-eating Brain (and a bunch of brainwashed townsfolk) search for them outside. Talk about picking your moment...

Dr Blake is played by David Gale (best known to horror fans for his role in the Reanimator movies). Here he's silkily evil. Suave and charming on the surface but bitter, twisted and throughly evil deep down. He's the best actor in the film and doesn't get nearly enough screentime. 

Blake is aided and abetted by his evil henchman Verna (George Buza) who seems to come firmly from the Igor school of mad scientist's assistants. He's got a slightly Neanderthal look to him and is pretty handy with an axe (which is always useful when it comes to schemes for global domination).

SFX - The star of the show is the Brain itself. A practical effect that straddles the line between being utterly cheesy and throughly horrific brilliantly. It's everything a good B-movie monster should be. I love this fella. He looks so pleased with himself all the time.

We also get some hallucinations when the Brain attacks people. These usually consist of people imagining themselves being attacked by rubbery looking tentacles and claws. In one particularly cheesy moment, Jim gets a vision of the Brain whilst he's driving. This "vision" is achieved by a shoddy looking video effect that looks like something from an 80's pop video.

SEX & VIOLENCE  - Jim keeps having visions of Blake's sexy female assistant...completely topless (I'm assuming he's feeling a bit sexually frustrated due to Janet not putting out).

The Brain chomps into various people, eating them alive - including Blake's aforementioned sexy female assistant,  and eventually Blake's henchman Verna. The Brain also eats Jim's best friend Willie (I would make a joke about the Brain putting a Willie in his mouth, but I consider this blog to be above such purile antics).

Verna decapitates a cop with an axe. He then blames the death of the cop on Jim (even though he's clutching the blood dripping murder weapon in his hands at the time. Bizzarely, he's even believed).

In an utterly ridiculous scene, Jim's headmaster is murdured by his brainwashed wife with a chainsaw. She advances on him and he falls to the floor and lets her hack him to pieces. The thing is - the chainsaw is plugged into a nearby wall socket, his wife only had a reach of about a metre. He could have EASILY evaded being chopped up if he'd just stood far enough away from her. Instead he goes down screaming like the dumbarse he is. Idiot.

Finally Blake gets decapitated (revealing him to have been an alien all along as well, if the green blood is anything to go by).

Jim blows up the Brain with his patented toilet destroying Sodium/Water mixture (told you it was an important plot point), thereby saving the day, the town and planet Earth in the process. Hooray for Jim !!!!

RATING  - The Brain is a lot of fun. It has elements of classic 50's B-movies mixed with VHS era practical effects and sensibilities. To me that's a perfect mix. 

If you like your thrills cheesy, sleazy and fun then this one could be for you.

3 and a half man eating brains out of 5.

ART -