Brain Twisters (1991)
Dir. and written by Jerry Sanguliano
Starring Farrah Forke, Terry Londeree, Joe Lombardo
In the early
1990s, there was a low-simmering fear that computers were going to turn us all
into psychotic killers (see, EVILSPEAK, BRAINSCAN, LAWNMOWER MAN, BRAIN
TWISTERS). Nowadays, of course, we know that was silly. They only encouraged
us to turn into psychotic killers by exposing us to a constant undiluted
barrage of humanity’s darkest and most unrestrained compulsions all day, every
day, year after year. Most of us just turned into passive piles of clinically
depressed glucose, and the rest became aggrieved, reactionary monsters
furiously sending rape threats to any woman online who had the audacity to
disagree about what Luke Skywalker would do in a given situation. But
mostly not psychotic killers, by and large, with probably only a few hundred
exceptions a year. So, bullet dodged.
Back in the
innocent days of 1991, though, we had no idea that’s what would happen. In
fact, this movie alleges, we didn’t really know what would happen if
students were exposed for minutes at a time to abstract pixelated computer
animation. It might very well twist their damn brains, for example!
Which is, in this case, exactly what happens when the villainous professor
referred to alternately as “Dr. Phillip Roth” or “Dr. Phillip Rothstein” (the
credits say “Dr. Phillip Rothman,” but what do they know? Let’s just call him
“Dr. Phil”) (Terry Londeree, 40th-billed in the Mormon romantic epic THE WORK
AND THE GLORY, no other credits) begins subjecting students to some sort of
experiment where they watch an 8-bit light show in a little darkened booth
while a trippy electronic soundscape plays. Needless to say, it’s not long
before one of them (this guy Ted, Shura McComb, no other credits) cracks up,
possibly murders his girlfriend (though I don’t think that’s ever definitively
established), freaks out at a pinball machine while being interviewed by
police, and leaps out the window to his death.
This is certainly tragic, but would not seem
sinister or suspicious in any way, because let’s face it, college students are
ridiculous and barely able to stay alive even in the best of conditions (in
fact, one of the first emails I received upon arrival to college was a
campus-wide communication from the university, begging in apparent helpless
desperation for students to please for the love of god stop falling out
windows.) There would be absolutely no way to link this dork Ted’s odd
behavior to these experiments, except that Dr. Phil gets uncomfortably
possessive about the corpse, claims it for himself and demands the cops get a
judge to force him to release it, a move which he seems to regard as super
slick but definitely, uh, raises some red flags with law enforcement. Even when
he gets a court order, he huffs, “I have some imperative matters to accomplish.
I’ll be there in an hour,” and storms off, which Detective Frank Turi (Joe
Lombardo, PLEASE DON’T EAT THE BABIES) seems to think is rude but not
completely outrageous behavior. Turi smells a rat, but since it would be pretty
crazy for him to immediately jump to the conclusion that a professor is driving
his students insane by subjecting them to a groovy screen-saver, Dr. Phil
continues his experiments, all the while being pushed forward by a nefarious
business concern which apparently wants his research for a video game? Which I
think is supposed to brainwash kids and turn them into mind control agents,
although it’s not clear that Dr. Phil is aware of the potential applications of
his pure science.
Also there is the main character, White Girl #1
(Farrah Forke, Wings, Lois and Clark, HEAT) who is a college
student of some sort, and will perpetually be hovering on the outskirts of all
this stuff without ever being directly involved. I believe she will be
mentioned exactly one more time in this lengthy review, when she is served a
plate of spaghetti.
BRAIN TWISTERS
almost immediately gets down to the business of dragging out a bunch of
cheerfully dumb cliches, starting with a rare combo deal of two of my favorite
college cliches at once: 1) the professor makes the only relevant point he’s
going to make in a presumably hour-long class just as the bell rings, and 2)
our protagonist walks into class late, just before the only point we need to
hear is being made. Separate, the two are still lazy movie cliches, but
combined they becomes a bit surreal as we’re left to accept this young woman
casually walks into the class literally seconds before the bell rings. That’s
no way to get an education!
With its standard
shady-corporate-science-gone-too-far hook and an even more standard vanilla
detective snooping around while a bunch of disposable cracker college kids and
their one affirmative action friend get bumped off, BRAIN TWISTERS gamely sets
itself up for being exactly what you imagine it is. But of course, this isn’t
just some hacky B-movie cranked out by AIP or Cannon or somebody. This is a
first-time director working for the prestigious Crown International Pictures,
whose regal moniker is somewhat belied by their official website, which appears to have been put
up shortly after BRAIN TWISTERS premiered in 1991 and left in its pristine
original form ever since. When you think of B-movies, you might think of
BLOODSPORT or something. CIP (which had been around since the late 50’s, and
made a film as recently as 2003!) was not making BLOODSPORT. Hell, it was not
even making AMERICAN NINJA 3: BLOOD HUNT. It’s making things like BLOOD MANIA
or CRATER LAKE MONSTER or BLUE MONEY, which identifies its genre as "Soft-Porn" :
CIP is probably best known for the terrible-movie classics THE
BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS and MADMEN OF MANDORAS: THEY SAVED HITLER’S BRAIN, films
so unbelievably insane and incompetent that they transcend puny human
judgements like “good” or “bad.” Granted, those were made in the early 60’s,
but the reviews of more recent fare do not suggest that experience improved
their creative process much.** And so it was that even in 1991, director Jerry
Sanguliano (filming in Scranton, Pennsylvania) managed to make something which
is not just terrible, but somtimes terrible in confusing, inexplicable ways
which make one wonder how recently Sanguliano had actually watched a real
movie.
So right after the opening salvo of cliches, things get more
offbeat. First, a major shock: this turns out to be a rare and possibly even
unique college movie where a student tries to sleep with a creepy professor for
a better grade, and he actually turns her down and tells her to work
harder! (Or, alternatively, participate in his evil experiments). Wow, the
times, they are a’changing! Of course, someone has to bang the sexy
co-ed, I mean, come on, Sanguilio may not have seen that many movies, but he
knows that much. So they just have the cop investigating the
murder/suicides of all her friends do it, which is hopefully not standard
police procedure in these cases. Here’s a good mental health tip, ladies: If a
cop ever tells you he has to talk to you about the details of your friends’
grisly murder/suicides case that he “can’t get into over the phone,” and then
proposes he come over to your house and tell you over dinner... just say
“no.” It can only lead to tedious conversation and inappropriate behavior with
a side dish of mind-control murder (and a plate of ostentatiously elaborately
prepared ...spaghetti... that both he and the movie agree makes him pretty much
the greatest chef since Boyardee).
 |
| "I'm not used to an electric stove!" he grouses, apparently unfamiliar with the concept of heat which does not originate with visible flames. This is after chiding this broke-ass college student, who has to work in a creepy lab after school just to make ends meet, about having an insufficiently gourmet selection of herbs. Solid police work, dude. |
Inexplicably, though, this blatant feint towards a more prurient
appeal doesn’t actually lead to the expected softcore payoff. They passionately
make out in a cramped kitchen, sure, but no clothing whatsoever is removed. In
fact, you’ll notice as BRAIN TWISTERS grinds along that it features all the
standard beats of a sleazy exploitation movie -- forbidden love subplot, shower
murder, even an extraneous bath scene… and yet, not only is there no nudity,
there’s not even a hint of T n’ A unless you’re into the tops of
people’s shoulders under a mountain of bubbles. Without any leering nudity to
distract you, your mind might well start to wander to other topics, such as
“gosh, is there any blood in this movie, either?” There are a few deaths, but
two happen off-screen, and the only one I think we actually see is a
scissor-slashing which results in a thin line of blood on the victim's’ neck,
briefly glimpsed as he falls over. The movie claims to be rated R, but unless
they dropped some profanity in there that I didn’t notice, I sure can’t imagine
why.
After a while, finally it becomes clear that this low-rent horror
movie isn’t peddling sex or violence (and it’s certainly not selling itself on
high drama) and that it’s instead putting all its eggs in the visual effects
basket. Which translates to: a lot of the movie is spent watching oscillating
colored squares, which was about the coolest thing computers could produce on
the cheap in 1991. Alas, I’m afraid it doesn’t quite hold up as a reason to
watch an entire 91 minute movie the way sex and violence reliably do. But I
guess it’s cool in a lame sort of way. At any rate, I’ve never seen anything
else quite like it.
I mean, there were things that could have been built on, here. The
cast seems to be making an effort with their inane, glacially paced dialogue
scenes. Londeree, as the villainous professor, acquits himself nicely
enough by doing a solid John Glover (IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS) impersonation,
which is fine, because I like John Glover.** And some credit is due to the
filmmakers for (whether by amateurish naivety or intentional undermining
expectation) not going the obvious route with the villainous professor
character. (SPOILERS for a movie you’re definitely not going to see) Any normal
movie with this plot would posit him as a sociopathic villain recklessly
killing off students for personal gain. He seems real shady and he’s definitely
a jerk, but... it turns out he is genuinely surprised that his
experiments are killing people, and as soon as he learns, he stops doing them!
In fact, since he’s also been experimenting on himself (as we glean from a
SHINING-esque glance through his notebook as it chronologically becomes
illegible and insane), he’s really just as much a victim as the dead kids,
which sort of retroactively explains his bizarre behavior.
There’s a scene later in the movie where he acts
really weird to our ostensible heroine (OK, one more mention of her, you caught
me) and creepily offers her ice cream (“Vanilla? Come on Laura, be a little daring!”
he says, with a weird mix of off-putting strangeness and genuine earnestness,
like he’s really trying to inspire her with some wise advice). It would be a
pretty standard “overtly friendly sinister guy” scene if we hadn’t just learned
that his mind is so scrambled he can’t even write legibly anymore. I think he
might genuinely believe he’s being friendly and helpful, and isn’t aware he’s a
few pinball machine dings away from turning into a homicidal maniac. It’s kind
of a tragic direction to take with the ostensible villain, and it really could
have been a potentially interesting character if the movie ever realized it
(hard to know if Londeree does get it, or if he just stumbled naively into an
interesting portrayal through incompetence, but there’s definitely something
intriguing in his performance, if not the script).
The other parts, alas, are not even in the same time zone as
“potentially interesting,” and so any effort on the actors’ parts adds up to
exactly nothing. In fact, the harder they try the more dull they make it, since
their efforts aren’t anywhere near enough to create actual drama, but are more
than enough to ensure you won’t have much fun snickering at their ineptitude
(well, maybe the guy who plays Ted.)
The sound designer also seem to be making a real effort, using
atonal glitchy computer sounds to depict the killers’ electronically fried
mental state. Again, it’s not even remotely close to making the thing
watchable, but at least it’s a net gain for the movie. And there’s a Halloween
party with masks and stuff, where the only actual “kill” takes place. It’s
badly lit and the masks are lame, but it was a thought. You can imagine a
remake with a few more genre goods and a good deal more (or less) competence
making something less bland out of these elements. Not this time, though; I’m sorry
to say so, but mostly it’s not even incompetent in an interesting way. It’s a
bad tale badly told, but even at that it’s just too stale and uneventful to
even be worth more than a fitful chuckle. The ugly, overlit 1990s photography
and borderline competent but witheringly dull characters can’t really be blamed
for its failure --it was a lost cause from the start-- but certainly do their
part to doom it to rightful obscurity.
There is one cheerfully ridiculous bit that made me laugh out
loud, though: once it’s become clear that prolonged exposure to microsoft paint
is having deleterious effects on the experimental subjects, Dr. Phil calls up
his evil financial backer and yells at him that he thinks this research is “the
cause of all these murders and suicides around here, don’t you understand?” and
the guy denies it in pretty specific terms and hangs up, then indulges in a few minutes of quiet post phone-call reverie while staring thoughtfully into the distance. That in itself isn’t
so funny, except that the next shot changes
from a close-up to a long shot… and suddenly we see that he’s not in his
office, he’s sitting at the head of long desk in a meeting with about twenty
other people, patiently waiting for him to remember they're still there! They’re in on the conspiracy too, but man, it was pretty rude of
him to take this phone call right in the middle of a meeting!
(I'm also not sure where those curtains and window came from, but let's not linger on that)
Anyway, I take no pleasure from saying this, but BRAIN TWISTERS
has held up about as well as its still-active website, which you should definitely check out (inexplicably under the title FRACTALS, which IMDB assures me is
actually a long-gestating 2013 sequel with an identical cast and plot, even
though the photo montage in the website is obviously from this movie). In fact,
irony of ironies, watching it is probably more likely to drive you to murder-suicide
than any pixelated light show ever could. But if something this dull was going
to push you over the edge, that’s really sort of on you, anyway.
**Say, whatever happened to John Glover? You couldn’t escape him
in the 80s, but it looks like he hasn’t had a single significant role since his
stint on Smallville. Did he just get replaced by William Fichtner?
That seems unfair. We could always use more John Glover.
CHAINSAWNUKAH 2017
CHECKLIST!
The Discreet Charm of the Killing Spree
TAGLINE
|
An Experiment in Mind Control is Out Of Control... And The Body Count is Building!
|
TITLE ACCURACY
|
BRAIN TWISTERS seems a kinda mild description
of “mental breakdown leading to insanity suicide and murder,” but sure, why
not.
|
LITERARY ADAPTATION?
|
Good lord, no
|
SEQUEL?
|
None, although IMDB seems to erroneously
suggest that FRACTALS is a sequel
|
REMAKE?
|
No
|
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN
|
USA
|
HORROR SUB-GENRE
|
Techno-Anxiety, mind control
|
SLUMMING A-LISTER?
|
Is Farrah Forke considered A-list because of Wings?
No, right?
|
BELOVED HORROR ICON?
|
None
|
NUDITY?
|
None
|
SEXUAL ASSAULT?
|
No
|
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!
|
No animals
|
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?
|
None
|
POSSESSION?
|
Mind control
|
CREEPY DOLLS?
|
No
|
EVIL CULT?
|
None
|
MADNESS?
|
Definitely
|
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?
|
No
|
VOYEURISM?
|
The evil corporation is watching and
surveilling people
|
MORAL OF THE STORY
|
Studying harder in college is a good way to
avoid having to sleep with your creepy professor or having your mind
twisted! Do yourself a favor and show up for class before the bell rings,
even if it’s just to hear the one important sentence in the hour-long class!
|
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