Brain Dead (1990)

July 29, 2018

Directed by: Adam Simon

Written by: Charles Beaumont, Adam Simon

Starring: Bill Pullman, Bill Paxton, Bud Cort

Budget: $2,000,000

Tagline: From the writer of the original "Twilight Zone" comes the most terrifying film of the decade.

Trivia: Dr. Rex Martin (Bill Pullman) mentioned that he went to "Miskatonic University", the college where Re-Animator (1985) took place. Miskatonic University is supposedly located in Arkham, Massachusetts, a fictional town created by H.P. Lovecraft.

Brain Dead is a bizarre psychedelic films that explores the human mind and blurs reality with fantasy. There were a couple of these in the 1970s and 80s, Altered States comes to mind. What is interesting about these films is that they force the viewer to question what exactly is reality? What is madness? If I were mad, would I comprehend my own insanity? In addition to the mind exploration films of the 1970s, this film is also inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's writings and modern medical breakthroughs in brain surgery. When the brain can be so easily manipulated with a poke here or a prod there, thereby changing the subjective reality for the individual, is there an objective reality?

Brain Dead is about a brain surgeon named Dr. Rex Martin (Bill Pullman) and his friend, the businessman Jim Reston (Bill Paxton). Reston contracts Dr. Martin to perform a brain surgery on a former employee and mathematical genius John Halsey (Bud Cort... Harold from Harold and Maude!) who has been locked in a mental institution for the past several years (I am almost positive the mental institution is the set of the movie Bio-Dome with Pauly Shore). Halsey's brain contains some secret that Reston's military company desperately needs. However as the film progresses it becomes increasingly difficult to tell if Dr. Rex Martin is a doctor imagining himself as a patient or if he is actually a mental patient himself imagining himself as a doctor.

Looking at the film from a certain perspective, it is the tale of the individual against an oppressive system and a critique on global power structures and capitalism's attempt to corporatize scientific and individual knowledge. Dr. Rex Martin is an individual whose interests are purely based on science and the expansion of scientific knowledge. Jim Reston represents the oppressive corporate structure whose only goals are the accumulation of wealth at the expense of any individual or individuals who get in its ways. As Dr. Rex Martin becomes involved in the system, as the saying goes, he doesn't change the system but the system changes him.

What is most memorable about the film is the way the filmmakers very gradually shift the madness from John Halsey's character to Dr. Rex Martin's. The confusing mess of delusions, mental hospital imagery, and paranoia leave the viewer just as confused about what is happening in the film as Dr. Rex Martin is about his own sanity.

There are some great moments where a couple prods in the brain transforms him onto a beach. There is also a very weird scene early on with a face that is able to manipulated when a brain that is attached to it across the room is poked. Finally, in the movie we get to see what it would look like if a wall full of brains in jars were to crash on the floor. Spoiler: it is awesome.