BRAIN DEAD
A review in the public domain
by The Phantom
(baumgart@esquire.dpw.com)
As the Phantom mentioned last week in his review of the unfortunate TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE, the film so disappointed and disillusioned him that he was forced to seek solace in the arms of the Criterion Center, New York's sleaziest legitimate theater. Whenever he comes to believe that films -- and especially horror films -- have become too mainstream, too middle-of-the-road, too tame and too, well, boring, he checks out the Criterion, conveniently located in the heart of Times Square (home to more sleaze than the boards of a dozen Texas savings and loans).
He had quite a selection of choice films from which to choose, and although several of the ninja and revenge films seemed to have much to recommend them, he chose BRAIN DEAD instead because he felt it so aptly described the sad excuse for a horror film to which he had just been subjected.
So imagine his surprise when he found that not only was BRAIN DEAD a cut above the average horror film (and at least three cuts above the cut-rate TALES), but that it was a superb example of the genre, a little-known and limited-release gem in the rough of big budget and big name bungles.
BRAIN DEAD is good for the same reasons that TALES was not: for one, someone actually sat down and wrote an intelligent script. For another, that person was Charles Beaumont, one of the original writers for the "Twilight Zone" series. And finally, BRAIN DEAD was directed with style and confidence by Adam Simon, a director with whom the Phantom is not familiar, but one whom he hopes will continue working in the field. The last director who so impressed the Phantom was John McNaughton, who brought us the incredible HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER; before that, the Phantom would have to go back to Sam Raimi and his equally stylish and compelling EVIL DEAD series.
Such directors are quite obviously few and far between. Now, lest the Phantom raise his phan's hopes too high, let him say that while BRAIN DEAD is quite good, it isn't really in the same class as either McNaughton or Raimi's masterpieces. BRAIN DEAD is stylish, it's fairly original, it's well written, but it does have problems.
Before we get to the problems, though, the Phantom will attempt a brief plot synopsis: "It's a dream, isn't it?"
That's about it. Throughout the film, it's never quite clear what is and isn't a dream; Beaumont and Simon lead us on for ten or fifteen minutes at a time, only to confound our expectations time and time again. The protagonist appears to be involved in brain research -- particularly in the mapping of specific thoughts, actions and personality traits to specific portions of the brain -- and he's called upon to help a mathematician who was hospitalized after he cracked during a particularly difficult equation -- and one that evidently would lead to a conclusion of unspeakable violence (this is implied by the mushroom cloud drawn just to the right of the equals sign). In fact, the corporation for which he works has the blackboard containing the equation, but they don't have the right side -- just the left, and a paranoid schizophrenic who used to be their star researcher.
Of course, this theme has been touched upon by countless horror films in the past (most popularly in the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET series); its roots go back to the stellar DEAD OF NIGHT in 1945, a film that predated the "Twilight Zone" television series by 20 years and provided the inspiration for many of its best episodes (the Phantom is indebted to Brandi Weed, who reminded him of this wonderful classic -- those phans who enjoy classic Zone episodes will be more than pleased by this very early horror effort). But rarely has the theme of dream vs. reality been carried quite so far, and for so much of a film, as it has been in BRAIN DEAD.
In the Phantom's eyes, this is what makes BRAIN DEAD a cut above the average horror film. As he mentioned in his review of TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE, most horror films suffer from an excess of exposition -- the writers and directors spend much too much time on perfectly ordinary scenes of perfectly ordinary people doing perfectly ordinary things in the hopes that these scenes will provide dramatic contrast with the horror to come. Sometimes this works -- HALLOWEEN and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD come to mind -- but most often it doesn't, and instead it creates the "7 minutes of tedium" scenario that we've grown to loathe but live with in the interminable FRIDAY THE 13TH SERIES: for every killing or suspenseful scene, there is a corresponding seven minutes of pointless dialogue and exposition ("Where's Sally?" "I don't know." "Is she in the barn?" "Maybe she's in the basement." "Should we go down there?" and on and on, ad infinitum and ad nauseam) that do nothing but help us bide our time until the screenplay gets back to Jason, his hockey mask, and his impressive array of gardening implements.
But in BRAIN DEAD Beaumont and Simon have all but done away with the "curse of the 7-minute-space filler"; throughout the film even the blind alleys are interesting, and we spend so much time trying to figure out whether what we're seeing is "real" that we barely have enough time to catch our breath and pat ourselves on the back for figuring things out before we're sent off into still another dream (or, as is more frequently the case, another nightmare).
This, too, is one of the best things about BRAIN DEAD: whereas most horror films use dreams and dream sequences and the contrast between dreams and reality in a cheap and exploitative way, Beaumont and Simon do an admirable job of exploring the theme. Throughout the film, they avoid most of the more sensationalistic and shocking aspects of the "dream within a dream" sequences: unlike in, say, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON or CARRIE, people don't suddenly wake up beside dead people or thrust their hands through the six feet of dirt covering their coffins. While those kinds of thrills are fun, they have to be taken in moderation -- if in the ELM STREET series Freddy could appear at will anywhere at any time, there wouldn't be much point to having chase sequences, and the films themselves would be almost wholly without suspense. Instead, the dreams in BRAIN DEAD go on for tens of minutes at a time, and this turns out to be a much more effective and disturbing technique than the quick scares that comprise most horror films. Showing decomposing corpses is easy; having "reality" degenerate slowly but surely into the impossible landscape of a nightmare is difficult. But it's also very effective, and the Phantom thinks that it will be much more greatly appreciated by true phans of the genre.
Unfortunately, in structuring a film like this they also break one of the cardinal rules of the game: continuity. By the time BRAIN DEAD nears its end, we feel somewhat cheated because we find that there is no way to keep the "story" straight in our minds. The Phantom wished he'd saved his FIRST POWER score card; there are so many false leads and blind alleys in BRAIN DEAD that he felt somewhat frustrated by the time his popcorn ran out (though in truth that might have been the real reason for his frustration).
For some, this may be what ultimately sinks the film. The Phantom believes that he is better than most at suspending disbelief and accepting whatever premise with which the filmmakers wish to proceed, but even he started having difficulty with BRAIN DEAD toward the end. However, those phans who stick it out will be amply rewarded: unlike run-of-the-mill horror films made by run-of-the-mill directors with dreams of sequels dancing in their heads, BRAIN DEAD has a real, believable and satisfying ending. As he unstuck his sneakers from the floor and left the theater, the Phantom caught himself thinking that with the exception of the exceptionally literate HENRY, it had been a long time since he had seen a film -- horror or otherwise -- that had an ending other than "trap/catch the bad guy/zombie/Russian sub commander and kill him/disintegrate him/repatriate him." For all its faults and sometimes faulty logic, BRAIN DEAD has a real and reasonable ending, and that, too, puts it a cut above the competition.
So, phans, on the whole the Phantom highly recommends this one. Alas, BRAIN DEAD seems to be in very limited release -- so much so that he never saw a newspaper advertisement for it -- so phans who wish to see it will probably have to wait until it makes its Blockbusters debut. That's especially a shame in this case, since BRAIN DEAD boasts some stunning cinematography and clever camera work that will likely be lost on the small screen. (And yes, that last sentence does set off even the Phantom's alliteration alert, but thank you so much for noticing....)
: The Phantom
: baumgart@esquire.dpw.com
: {cmcl2,uunet}!esquire!baumgart
.
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