Brain Damage (1988)

Brain Damage is the first movie I've personally seen from cult director Frank Henenlotter, and already I'm a fan of his. This movie was a quirky little horror-comedy that's surprisingly restrained from more over-the-top humour and gore and gives us a really effective body-horror story. Although that's not to say the movie isn't funny or gory, it just chooses the intelligent decision to focus more on telling a story rather than try to outdo itself in how outrageous it is with each passing gore scene.

The movie is about a young man by the name of Brian who finds an unlikely companion in a talking black penis-slug thing with a cute smiling face and a comically warm and friendly voice. The phallic looking monster feeds off people's brains, but needs humans to help him get these delicious brains. In return for helping him kill people, he gets people high, which is where the body-horror element comes in. Brian's addiction to the penis-slug is treated just like a drug addiction, which includes isolating himself from his roommate and girlfriend, not going to work, and eventually going through withdrawal when he tries to quit the thing. This adds to both the humour and horror Brian acts silly and awkward while high, but it also makes him go crazy much like a real drug addiction. I found this parallel to be rather clever as it gives a real-life experience to compare it to, making it more realistic and easier for the audience (even those who never suffered through any kind of addiction) to relate to the main character, minus the brain eating of course.

And if it seems like I'm focusing on the creature's resemblance on a penis too much, they knew exactly what they were doing with that design, as evidenced by one of the movie's more memorable kills:

And no, that's not a wrinkly old black man she's sucking off.

The movie's creature was very memorable, probably one of the best horror movie monsters of the 80s. And what was especially great about this movie was the build-up to the monster. It opened on an old married couple, with the husband bringing home a bag of brains, which were apparently over-priced. They get excited about how much something named Elmer was going to love them, but when they get to a bathtub which he was supposedly supposed to be in, they start freaking out about him not being there. This was great build-up because it gets the viewer curious about what Elmer is, why the couple wanted to feed it brains and why they became so scared about it escaping. When we finally see Elmer, he is unexpectedly monster-like in that he's basically a big, wrinkly slug, but what's brilliantly unexpected is his cute, smiling face and warm, friendly voice. It was voiced by a horror host named John Zacherle (I have no idea who he is but apparently he hosts horror movies on TV) and he gives the creature lots of personality. Elmer is manipulative with a friendly facade, and is often funny, especially when he mocks Brian for trying to quit him and goes through withdrawal. This was a fresh subversion from the usual animal-like movie monsters.

Although the main puppet's animatronics seem to just be limited to moving the creature's head side to side, the movie makes up for this with the creative kill scenes, which contains great gore effects and even some stop motion with Elmer. Although I was just a little disappointed with the small amount of trippy effects while Brian was high, this was also a good thing, as it met we mostly got to see Brian how the other characters in the film saw him. The minimal special effects also helped this focus on being a good story, and not have the scenes one-up each other on outrageousness.  That said, we do get a few memorable visuals brought on by Brian hallucinating. 

Overall, Brain Damage was a fun, quirky movie with a great monster and greater body-horror. I recommend it to anybody who enjoys 80s horror comedies, but don't expect it to be as over-the-top as other films of it's genre. Gore fans still won't be disappointing by the death scenes of the movie.

 92/100

Bad Taste (1987)

The poster for Peter Jackson's 1987 debut cult classic film Bad Taste is probably one of the single greatest posters ever in terms of how much it makes me want to see the film. It features a man in a cheap alien costume holding a gun and giving us the finger. If that doesn't promise a great cinematic experience, I don't know what will. This poster promises us a violent movie with aliens, with the middle finger suggesting irreverent humour with the whole thing looking like a delightfully quirky horror-comedy. And for the most part, Bad Taste delivers on the promise its great poster gives us. It was a really fun, quirky gore-fest that should satisfy most people who enjoy low-budget cult classics.

The film opens with a man listening to a call made by a poor bloke getting killed by some unknown thing. We then hear this man talk to another man about sending "the boys" down to investigate. This opening was great because it really helped build suspense and atmosphere through it's music and minimalism of onscreen visuals. It really gets you pumped up for the movie that will follow by showing the threat as dangerous, but also shrouding it in mystery. The opening also immediately sets up the quirky dark humour by showing the unseen man's hand replaced by a metal contraption with a severed finger on it.

The boys turn out to be the Astro Investigation and Defence Service, who turn out to be a bunch of completely normal seeming guys who are investigating the disappearance of everybody in the town of Kaihoro, New Zealand. It turns out the town has been taken over by aliens disguised as humans. We later learn that these aliens are harvesting the humans to be eaten for fast food on their planet. Although for the rest of the movie, we never experience any of the suspense the opening gave us, we do get treated to plenty of great (considering the budget) action scenes and hilarious, over-the-top gore effects.

This movie was filmed on weekends over a period of four years, with no real script and barely any money. Peter Jackson would just shoot whatever crazy things he thought up during the week on the weekend and this really showed. Not only was the movie rather unevenly paced, but one could notice the action and gore scenes getting more and more over-the-top as the movie progressed as though he was trying to outdo what he did the previous weekend. The second half of the movie also felt like one big climactic scene that goes on way to long with its constant gun fights and barely any dialogue. This unprofessionalism is actually what gave the movie a lot of its charm. You can see Jackson's ambition and effort to make a good movie, but you also see a bunch of friends having a good time making an independent film together.

Peter Jackson makes up for the movie's low budget with lots of heart and passion. This differs from a lot of other cheesy, ultra low budget horror-comedies in that you can see a lot more effort in the film-making than in others of its genre, a great early display of talent similar to Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead. He doesn't just use his camera to film the actors speaking their lines, he makes the movie more visually interesting by having more dynamic and varied cinematography as opposed to the static filmmaking that's common in many other amateur film projects like this one. And to prove his determination to make Bad Taste a good film, not just a watchable one, there is one IMDB trivia item that claims he built his own steadicam device for $15, and another claiming on scene was shot with the cameraman sitting on the hood of a car while it was driving.

What makes Bad Taste memorable for most people is the hilariously over-the-top gore effects. These effects were definitely done up to be silly and cartoonish rather than realistic, and it makes them all the more awesome. We see real care and creativity went into making these effects, and a lot of creativity definitely went into thinking up all the zany violent imagery to use these effects in. All the gore in the movie is complemented by the cartoonishly loud and exaggerated sound effects played over them. There is one really great scene that really showcases the live action cartoon feel of the movie where the aliens force a man to puke in a bowl, with a puke looking nothing like real puke and disgusting, exaggerated sound effects are played over the eating of it.

The music for this movie was a mix of spooky music for the horror scenes and energetic rock music for the action scenes. These were all very exaggerated much like everything else in the movie and complimented the comedy nicely.

Although this movie is very rough around the corners, with flawed pacing, obvious low budget production values, and inexperienced crew, all this just adds to the great charm of this goofy cult classic. I'd recommend it to anybody who wants to watch a silly horror-comedy that's low on budget but high on heart with lots of energetic action scenes and charmingly silly homemade effects, or just want to see how the director of Lord Of The Rings started out and want to see how much he's improved as a filmmaker since then. If you enjoyed such movie as The Evil Dead, Dead Alive, or Return Of The Living Dead, than this might be the type of movie you'll also enjoy.

84/100