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