BFact: none of Roger Corman’s post-1990 productions have come close to recapturing the magic of his earlier films. None of the directors hired for his later productions are in the same league as former Corman protégées (such as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdonovich, Joe Dante and James Cameron), while mainstream Hollywood increasingly turns out the type of grade-B fare in which Corman once specialized (JURASSIC PARK, anyone?). But you can’t keep a good schlockmeister down, and Corman did manage to turn out a few interesting films in the last three decades, with 1990’s superlby tippy BRAIN DEAD near the top of the list.
…Corman did manage to turn out a few interesting films in the last three decades, with 1990’s superlby tippy BRAIN DEAD near the top of the list.
Directed by Adam Simon (of BODY CHEMISTRY II and CARNOSAUR), BRAIN DEAD wasn’t actually made by Corman (who now proudly affixes his name to it) but, rather, distributed through his Concorde Pictures, with his spouse Julie taking on producing duties. The film is also notable for a script by the great Charles Beaumont (1929-1967), a veteran of the original TWILIGHT ZONE and several 1960s Roger Corman films (including THE INTRUDER and THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH), and for featuring cult movie legend Bud Cort (HAROLD AND MAUDE) and the nineties’ most prominent movie Bills: Pullman and Paxton.
The film is also notable for a script by the great Charles Beaumont (1929-1967), a veteran of the original TWILIGHT ZONE and several 1960s Roger Corman films…
Dr. Rex Martin (Bill Pullman) is a neurosurgeon. He works with brains kept in glass jars that always seem to be getting dropped on the ground. Jim Reston (Bill Paxton), of the mega-corporation Eunice, enlists Martin to help extract information from the mind of John Halsey (Cort), a once-brilliant scientist who after massacring his family has been interred in an insane asylum.
In delving into his charge’s brain Martin learns of a man in a bloody white suit (Nicholas Pryor) haunting Halsey’s consciousness. This personage begins to haunt Martin, who sees the man turning up in various unexpected locales. He’s also assailed by visions of his wife Dana (Patricia Charbonneau) being romanced by Reston. Then Martin suddenly finds himself interred in the mental hospital where he met Halsey, watched over by a doctor with the face of the man in the bloody white suit, while Dana and Reston shack up and Martin takes Halsey’s place in the brain-probing experiments.
Which of these two realities is truly “real?” A famous Taoist allegory by Chuang Tzu, about a dream of being a butterfly only to awaken and wonder if he was truly dreaming of life as a butterfly or if things were the other way around, is introduced to deepen the mystery.
This film, keep in mind, appeared around the same time as JACOB’S LADDER (1990) and FINAL APPROACH (1991), whose narratives likewise toy with the nature of reality. The reality warping of BRAIN DEAD is pulled off in a surprisingly sophisticated manner worthy of the late Philip K. Dick (whose fiction underwent its first major revival around the time of BRAIN DEAD’s release), culminating in an ending that doesn’t really “explain” anything, with the implication being that, as in the Chuang Tzu allegory, no easy answer exists as to what precisely is what.
This film, keep in mind, appeared around the same time as JACOB’S LADDER (1990) and FINAL APPROACH (1991), whose narratives likewise toy with the nature of reality.
There’s enough gruesome imagery—scalpels jabbed into brain matter, Pullman yanking open the top of his skull—to satisfy the film’s exploitation classification, which offsets the intellectual angle. So too the overwrought performances, overinsistent synthesizer score, cut-rate scenery (designed by future director Catherine Hardwicke), hoary lines like “I’ll take Manhattan, but I’ll settle for dinner,” and moments of unintended comedy (as in a scene in which Martin, carrying one of his pickled brains, gets into a fight with a transient, with the repeated refrain “That’s my brain!”), all of which are to be expected in an early nineties Concorde production.
Vital Statistics
BRAIN DEAD
Concorde Pictures
Director: Adam Simon
Producer: Julie Corman
Screenplay: Charles Beaumont, Adam Simon
Cinematography: Ronn Schmidt
Editing: Carol Oblath
Cast: Bill Pullman, Bill Paxton, Bud Cort, Nicholas Pryor, Patricia Charbonneau, George Kennedy, Brian Brophy, David Sinaiko, Lee Arenberg, Andy Wood, Maud Winchester, Cynthia Ettinger, Shannon Holt, Jeff Foster, Brent Hinkley, Deirdre O’Connell