Frank Henenlotter's Brain Damage follows in the slime trail of his Basket Case, and indeed has all the same features (crazy camp gross-outs and a parasite puppet) and flaws (bad acting, loud screaming, the puppet is inherently silly...), but in this case, I think those flaws overtake and overwhelm the features. It's the story of an immortal brain parasite that "juices" its host in exchange for human brains to eat, a metaphor for how drugs destroy lives. Our hero trips balls through most of the flick, but still has the wherewithal to throw himself an intervention. Is it too late to save his loved ones from his new buddy's insatiable hunger? Where I had a lot of fun with Basket Case, Brain Damage annoyed me more than anything. Maybe it tried too hard to recapture the feeling of Henelotter's opus. Maybe the "message" was too trite and obvious (yet, a bit confused as well, as sometimes it seems to be about sex addiction or repression - I guess all the 80s anxieties). And to my ears, the synth music was at odds with the horror we should have felt during a kill. A mixed bag.
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Torgo
More on the surreal than trashy side. I could perfectly imagine Aylmer as the host of a TV show.Siskoid
Frank Henenlotter's Brain Damage follows in the slime trail of his Basket Case, and indeed has all the same features (crazy camp gross-outs and a parasite puppet) and flaws (bad acting, loud screaming, the puppet is inherently silly...), but in this case, I think those flaws overtake and overwhelm the features. It's the story of an immortal brain parasite that "juices" its host in exchange for human brains to eat, a metaphor for how drugs destroy lives. Our hero trips balls through most of the flick, but still has the wherewithal to throw himself an intervention. Is it too late to save his loved ones from his new buddy's insatiable hunger? Where I had a lot of fun with Basket Case, Brain Damage annoyed me more than anything. Maybe it tried too hard to recapture the feeling of Henelotter's opus. Maybe the "message" was too trite and obvious (yet, a bit confused as well, as sometimes it seems to be about sex addiction or repression - I guess all the 80s anxieties). And to my ears, the synth music was at odds with the horror we should have felt during a kill. A mixed bag.mcmakattack
Cheesy and gross-out in all the right ways