Brain Damage

MOVIE #1,398 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 02.26.24 Continuing with one of 2024’s cinematic themes (for me), today marks the start of another DIRECTOR FOCUS clean-up. I reviewed Frank Henenlotter’s Basket Case trilogy as part of Spooky Month last year, and the fantastic Frankenhooker in 2021. Today I’ll be reviewing his two only other narrative fiction features and two weeks from now I’ll close the books by examining his documentary work. It’s kind of a shame he didn’t make more movies because his flicks are so entertaining. And 1988’s Brain Damage, his second, might be the very best. Although many have, trying to find a metaphor seems almost besides the point. A little ancient blue alien/ parasitic monster (hilariously voiced by John Zacherle) gets people addicted to the juice he secretes so they will go fetch him human brains to eat. Sure, that’s an allusion to drug addiction, but it’s so obvious that it feels more like plot than purpose.

Maybe this is Henenlotter’s genius: this is true exploitation for the sake of exploitation. As he did in Basket Case, this film centers on a tiny demented guy named Aylmer. This has the same spirit of his debut as well, but everything is slicker: from the story and acting to the amazing practical FX work, which — although only a half-decade later — feels light-years ahead. It's still as grimy as hell in some respects, but that's the Henelotter touch.I mean, look at this guy…


And it's not just the creature design: there's wonderful trippy drug sequences...


...some unexpected early post-production video effects...


...and of course, the requisite blood and guts...


The gore is expertly spaced out (and more effective for it) and the kooky plot never bogs things down (there is but a single exposition dump on Aylmer’s long and convoluted backstory, which itself felt like a joke at the expense of most films’ obligatory need to expound on such things). And while I love Kevin Van Hentenryck’s totally aloof and original performance in Basket Case, Rick Hearst delivers a more traditional one here that works better for the story.

I understand the desire to pick apart movies of this ilk (especially in this genre, and this era) but honestly it’s simply more fun to just vibe and have a good time with. I’m not sure there’s much meat on the bone of a film which features a phallic, veiny, brain-eating monster that sings its own show-tune theme song while the lead writhes in a drug-withdrawal psychosis…

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Brain Damage is a 1988 American comedy horror film written and directed by Frank Henenlotter. It stars Rick Hearst in his debut acting role as Brian, a young man who becomes acquainted with a talking parasite known as Aylmer (voiced by John Zacherle) that injects him with an addictive fluid that causes euphoric hallucinations; in return, Aylmer demands that Brian allow him to feed on the brains of other humans. It was released on April 15, 1988.