“I sucked out her brains”

Justin’s Rating: Now with colored marshmallows!

Justin’s Review: One of the great mistakes of the 1980s was the national impression that bright, vibrant colors (protected by Snuggle fabric softener) spoke more than words for our society. Neon, strobe lights, and cheesy animation talked, of course, and they said, “We’re too darn bright. Buy sunglasses.” The problem of hideously intense colors plagues our current review, Brain Damage.

Sort of a horror/comedy that doesn’t really have enough of both, Brain Damage can best be understood as a remnant of those old acid-riddled cinematic trips from the 1960s. There’s this parasite named Aylmer (“You’re named Elmer?” one of the main characters says) who escapes from its former owners and latches on to this ’80s Goofy Generic Teenager (GGT). Aylmer looks a bit like those nasty flukeworms from the early seasons of The X-Files. He’s on the rampage for brains… BRAINS!… and GGT must help him accomplish this task.

To provide proper motivation, Aylmer feeds GGT a steady supply of blue brain juice that sends GGT into the realm of pyschadelic bliss. Over the course of the movie, no less than a dozen times do we see this happen: Aylmer inserts his mouth straw into GGT’s neck, squirts radiator fluid or something into his brain, which then starts to get these cute electric bolts on it like a Die Hard battery commercial. After the third or fourth time I sat through this sequence, I started to think how much this reminded me of those fuel tankers that dock with jet fighters in mid-air.

I can’t give away the plot… since there really isn’t any. Aylmer docks with GGT, GGT goes out dancing or something, Aylmer sucks out someone’s brains. In fact, this film is so horribly redundant that all I came away with was a vow never to eat or drink anything blue ever again. The only salvation, if you want to call it that, was that Aylmer is blessed with the only fun personality in the flick. He talks like a mellow Muppet, wise and witty, utterly unlike what you might think a foot-long parasite would sound like (assuming I can make that assumption). So there were a few good chuckles that interrupted my snoring.

I suppose the only good use a film like Brain Damage is for is to show classroom kids that drugs are bad for you, especially when offered and delivered by a big slug that hooks itself on the back of one’s neck.