[yasr_overall_rating]
One morning, a young man wakes to find that a small, disgusting creature has attached itself to the base of his brain stem. The creature gives him a euphoric state of happiness but demands human victims in return.
“Brain Damage” is a movie that can be broken down to just one image. There’s the sled in “Citizen Kane” and the rose in “Beauty and the Beast.” “Brain Damage” has a talking parasite that kills a woman during oral sex. The parasite’s name is Aylmer and is voiced by John Zacherle who is largely forgotten now but in his time was one of the most legendary horror hosts. The film’s director Frank Henenlotter is skilled at creating unique characters and is best remembered for the mangled prostitute in “Frankenhooker.”
In Henenlotter’s second film, he creates an analogy about the ravishing effect that drugs can have on users and populates the world with a cast of characters that mainly exist to get attacked by a tube-shaped parasite. The few scenes that attempt to develop characterization are them do so by clobbering you over the head with tone. The only real story that you need to know about “Brain Damage” is that Brian (Rick Hearst) is Aylmer’s host. Aylmer secretes an addictive fluid into Brian’s brain while both eating Brian’s brain and killing others.
Not only is “Brain Damage” light on theme, the film also exists squarely outside the world of plausibility. Tapeworms are real parasites, Aylmer is not. Despite knowing that “Brain Damage” is highly implausible and the film not necessarily existing for a greater thematic purpose, it’s one of the oddest little creatures of a film I’ve ever seen.
“Brain Damage” is essentially a freak-out film, a gross-out movie that you can watch to get your horror kicks. Many horror films try to do this and few succeed. It succeeds because it’s so damn strange whereas most horror movies fail to do this because they offer nothing more than generic splatter. At the end of the day, though, the real skill of the film is that it manages to really play with the idea of Aylmer and come up with some horrifying scenes and ways for Aylmer to eat the brains of others. Most people that I know who like horror films would like “Brain Damage” and that’s not something I can say about many scary movies.
Now available in a 2-Disc Special Edition Blu-ray + DVD
