Horror in the 90's: 'Brain Dead'

Brain Dead (1990)

Directed by Adam Simon

Written by Adam Simon, Charles Beaumont

Starring Bill Pullman, Bill Paxton, George Kennedy, Bud Cort, Patricia Charbonneau

Release Date January 19th, 1990

Box Office Gross $1.6 million dollars

One image. Brain Dead is remembered for one, singular image. The fact that this one image has nothing to do with the movie that contains it, does not matter. There is only one thing that anyone remembers about Brain Dead and it is just one memorable, awful, brutal image. You see it in all of the marketing materials about the movie from when it was released in January of 1990. To those who've never seen Brain Dead, this image is the star of the film. It's a very compelling image, one worthy of building a bizarre cult movie marketing campaign around.

In a college science lab there is an unnamed student toying with a human brain. The student shoves an electrode into the ooey gooey brain situated in a petri dish. The brain is connected to something, a metal apparatus. Upon this apparatus is a complete abomination. Stretched like horrifying silly putty across an empty expanse, connecting to a circular metal apparatus is a human face. This face has eyes, a nose, and a mouth. It seems to have facial muscles somehow, hidden behind a weathered expanse of skin.

The facial muscles are implied in the film by the way the face twitches in pain when the brain in the pan is electrocuted back to life. Depending on where the student stabs his electrode into this brain in a pan, the face twitches its eyes, wrinkles its nose, or turns the mouth in a pained expression, a wince. From the manner in which the student playfully stabs away at this brain, this is a normal day in the lab. We don't know how long the student and the face have been in this dynamic, but it is not the first time this student has engaged in this twisted game.

The logistics of this detached face and detached brain are intentionally comical. The face has eyes and a mouth but it's just an expanse of skin. It doesn't have muscles or nerves. It's just creepy, comic visual, one that happens to be striking and memorable. It's very silly looking but with an uncanny creepiness that makes the sight of it stick with you. You can't help but wonder about whose face this was and the horrors that led to this face and brain being left in this horrific condition. The sight calls to mind detached heads from horror and science fiction past, movies as diverse and weird as Re-Animator, The Brain That Wouldn't Die and Basket Case. Quality levels vary but those are some memorable, villainous heads. Brain Dead is promising a lot with this visual homage.

You would be forgiven if you thought that this detached face were that of a main character, that of Bill Pullman, or Bill Paxton, or Bud Cort, the stars of Brain Dead. It's not. In fact, we have no idea where this face came from or how this face ended up attached to a brain in a pan being painfully stimulated by electrodes. We get only a vague sense of why this is even being done. It's being done to prove that the human brain is capable of being stimulated after death.

That's part of the crazed, doomed experiments being conducted by Bill Pullman's monstrous, genius brain scientist. Dr. Rex Martin believes he can cure all manner of neurological disorders by using the brains of the dead as guinea pigs. Dr. Martin's particular specialty is paranoia and he is convinced he can cure paranoia via brain surgery. This brings his research in line with the awful, amoral aims of Bill Paxton's corporate shark. Paxton wants Pullman to cure the paranoia of a genius mathematician, Bud Cort, so that said genius will reveal an equation that could be worth billions.

What does any of this have to do with that face on that metal apparatus? What does that striking, memorable, ungodly image have to do with this plot about out control science and corporate greed? Absolutely nothing. The face that is so memorable that it is the only thing that even the most devoted horror fan knows about the movie Brain Dead, has nothing to do with the plot of the movie Brain Dead. The film is actually a sub-basement level dumb rip-off of a Twilight Zone episode that is stretched to feature length via a series of lengthy and confounding dreams within dreams.

The face, that face, isn't even a visual warning to Pullman's doctor. I thought, as Brain Dead unfolded its dim-witted, derivative, and poorly stretched premise to its breaking point, that the face would foreshadow Pullman's fate. We may not know anything about the man whose face we see in the opening scenes but it will all make sense when it is Dr. Martin's face and Dr. Martin's brain being prodded by electrodes that send painful shocks through that expanse of facial skin stretched to an inhumane breaking point.

But no, that never happens. After we see the face in the opening scene of Brain Dead, the face never comes back. That face that is the center of the marketing campaign for Brain Dead never has any relevance whatsoever to the plot of the movie. Thus, beyond being an eye-catching and memorable image, it's mostly symbolic of a mercenary marketing campaign. The face symbolizes a desperate attempt to sell people a movie that doesn't exist, a movie about a crazy mad scientist and a detached face attached to a detached brain.

Imagine being promised something as wild and outlandish as 1962's The Brain that Wouldn't Die and instead getting a limp rehash of a Twilight Zone episode. That's the level of disappointment encompassed by the poster for Brain Dead. The promise of that stretched out face is probably too great for any movie to live up to but they could have at least tried. Instead, they used that tremendous visual horror to try and sell us a deeply, painfully, forgettable movie.

This is an excerpt from my planned book project, tentative, but not officially, called "Horror in the 90s." In the book I will include segments like this along with discussions of the actors, writers, directors, and others who shaped the horror genre in the 90s. I will talk about themes and subgenres, famed franchises, successes, failures, and the ideas that drove the horror genre in a very unique and strange decade for the genre.

With that said, I can't write this book without your help. I need some financial backing to get this book to its final form. Thus, I will be posting pieces from Horror in the 90s here with the hope that you generous readers might want to support an independent author with some big ideas and insights into a beloved film genre. Through Vocal you can donate to me either via a monthly pledge or by leaving tips. Everyone who pledges or tips will get a mention, a credit, in the final book. Every little bit helps, a dollar, two dollars, 50 dollars.

You can also make suggestions along the way by leaving comments on this and other pieces I post here on Vocal. So please, be Vocal and support this project. I promise that I have a lot to say and a lot of research and insight to share. This is my third piece from the book. You can read the first piece on Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer, linked here. And my piece on the serial killer flick, The First Power, here. Follow me on Twitter at PodcastSean. I also am part of the podcast, Everyone's a Critic where I and my co-hosts discuss new release movies every week. If you need further convincing about my film writing, you can read more than 20 years worth of my back catalog of online film reviews at SeanattheMovies.blogspot.com.