 She goes down on him. Feels like he got a monster down there! Hahaha! Cause he does! Doesn't know how right she is! Music Hello and welcome to another edition of Freightfully Forgotten Horror Movies and today we have another Patreon request. Today we are tackling 1988's Brain Damage requested by Christine Irene Fadouk. Before we get started what are we drinking? Well I'm drinking still fire in the sky Rye baby! I'm drinking store-bought beer cause... Damn! I can't brew anymore! Hahaha! Hopefully soon I'll be brewing again! Poor son of a bitch! Brain Damage was directed by Frank Hennan-Lauder and he did Basket Case and Frankenhooker which we covered! And we will be covering Basket Case very soon! It's on the list, it's on the short list! Rick Hurst is in this just to mention the main character! And he was in like tons of soap operas! He's one of those guys that went from B-movie to soap operas! Yeah! Brain Damage starts off with this woman coming home plops all these brains on the table that she got from the butcher! Oh that's kind of small, I don't know if that'll be enough! They go to bring these brains into the bathroom to feed it to something, we don't know what it is! There's nothing in the bathtub! This old couple just lose their shit! They just start freaking out! Tearing the place apart looking for whatever this thing is that they went to feed! Sounds like that time we went to that party and he couldn't find that bottle opener! It shows these old people all convulsing and foaming at the mouth! You get introduced to our main character Brian here who's sleeping in a shitty apartment and he wakes up and kind of rubs his back of his neck and realizes he's bleeding for some reason! It starts like hallucinating and like there's all this water coming into his bedroom! All this blue liquid and shit! He goes back to the bathroom and doesn't know what's going on and this creature thing kind of pops up from behind his back! It starts talking to him! All pleasant dude! Convincing Brian to go out with him for the night and find some brains basically! Victim! Yeah, if you want to keep feeling good Brian! Me and you are gonna go for a little stroll! Okay, just put me on the back of your neck! He puts them on the back of his neck and you see this weird antenna thing like go through into his brain and start squirting all this blue liquid shit on his brain! Yeah, you'll see the brain too and everything! He goes to this junkyard and he's seeing all these weird colors and everything and he's having quite the trip! Security guard comes out! What are you guys doing here? He jumps off of Brian right into the security guard's head and burrows into the guy's brain! He's like... The next day Brian goes on a date with his gal! Not so nice restaurants! Eating this spaghetti and he's trying to concentrate on the conversation with his girlfriend but he looks down at the spaghetti and starts seeing like instead of meatballs all these brains, these mini brains that start poliating! Freaks out, he can't hack and he takes off and goes for a walk and ends up at this punk bar where they're playing that wicked song and everything on stage some woman notices him and goes up to him and he's like You're beautiful! Because he's hallucinating, right? So they start dancing and he's some idiot! She takes him outside and they start kind of kissing a bit and he's still all hallucinating and don't OD on me yet! She's kind of trying to keep him awake she goes down on him Feels like he got a monster down there! Cause he does! Doesn't know how right she is unzips his pants and shoots out into her mouth and starts eating her brains and it looks like she's giving him a blow job! I don't know how they got away with that with the sensors He's all veiny Yeah, yeah Brian kind of comes too notices that his clothes are all full of blood so he goes back to the apartments and as he's throwing everything in the garbage there's the old couple that show up and they got a gun and of course it's some old World War II like Nazi gun They want Elmer and he's like Elmer? He's like you named the fucking thing Elmer? Yes! He's like not Elmer Elmer! The Elmer! The old man proceeds to tell him the backstory of this organism This Elmer has quite a bit of influence Yeah, over world events There's a big fight that ensues and they try and grab Elmer and Elmer actually ends up killing the old couple Brian at this point is kind of getting fed up with all the killing so he goes to this like flop boarding house with all these shitty people and like the shitty rooms and stuff to try and detox and get away from Elmer The two kind of get pitted against each other where they're kind of taunting each other and Elmer's taunting him In the sink? Yeah, yeah, he's like I can make you feel good You want my juice, Brian? And that's where we're gonna end the plot So if you want to see what happens with Brian and Elmer and all the other ensuing characters in this story keep watching 1988's Brain Damage Brain Damage is a pretty awesome fucking movie Yeah For a B-horror movie that's schlocky as hell it has a lot to say about a lot of things Yeah The subject matter in this movie is pretty in your face and intense Frank Hennan-Lotter had something to say about drug abuse obviously with this movie Whole journey of like a drug addict, right? From getting addicted to then needing it and doing whatever it takes to also destroying and killing Everything you love Yeah, exactly and sort of coming full circle and then sort of realizing it too, right? Elmer is quite the interesting device here as far as what he represents The first thing I got Well, he's a drug dealer He represents the dealer, the pusher man And he is the drug too, right? Yeah, and he's like You know, I'll make you feel better, Brian And just, you know, you want it and, you know, always convincing him to keep taking it And I thought it was pretty funny that Elmer looks like a piece of shit Yeah And is that like commentary? Like drug dealers are a piece of shit? And Elmer also doesn't only look like a piece of shit He looks pretty phallic too The whole blowjob scene is pretty blatant about what it's doing there, right? Yeah, and his juicing, you know My juicing So it's like not only addiction to drugs but addiction to like sex Pretty interesting movie in that respect It's saying a lot It covers a full range Yeah You're not quite sure if Elmer is real or not though, right? Because they do such a good job of making this movie like a dream, almost Yeah, because the atmosphere is so dreamy and like the colors are always weird blues and purples Like it never really feels like it takes place in the real world Yeah, and so you know that Elmer's a metaphor, right? So you're always kind of wondering Well, does Elmer really exist here? Or is it, you know Is he just taking a drug of some other kind The thing on his back, you know The addiction, you know The thing on your back And the way the movie is structured and played out is pretty brilliant Like that opening scene where the old couple's freaking out Not only is it entertaining as hell It also builds mystery because you don't know what the hell they're looking for Why are they so upset? Yeah And then like when Brian wakes up and he's bleeding Like you still don't know what's going on Like you're not even introduced to this Elmer parasite thing For almost 20 minutes into the movie where you actually clue it in Oh, that's what they're looking for Then just like, well, what is it? Like, where did it come from? And then that kind of plays out for a bit And then the old man comes out and tells the story, right? So, okay, now I know what this thing is It's structured almost perfectly It's structured perfectly And the way they kind of unveil things is paced really well And the characters are awesome in this And there's not that many Which is perfect because it allows you to stay on point Yeah, you don't get bogged down with too many characters It allows the message to get across a lot easier Focus more on what's really happening Can't mention the characters without the acting Like, come on For a stupid movie like this with this stupid alien thing on your back eating brains The acting is superb Rick Hurst who plays Brian is fantastic Being strung out and dealing with this thing on his back And there's a lot of scenes where it's just him And he's losing his shit And you believe him And all the secondary characters are great too Like, they're all over the top and fun Like, that old couple are just crazy and fun The effects for this movie for a low-budget kind of movie for what it is are really, yeah, they're awesome How Elmer kills for one thing You know, and he like bores into people's heads The scene where he's like freaking out and his brains are all coming out spilling out and he's all, AHHHHHHHHH And it's like, it keeps going And then he's like, before that he's pulling out Like, his brain's like a string Looks great Elmer himself, man Like, talk about good practical combination of stop motion and puppetry Looks fantastic Like CGI can't beat that This movie may be a low-budget B movie But no CGI will ever beat shooting this thing that looks like a piece of shit shaped like a dick in real life The music for this movie is a little odd There's parts where it sounds like a kind of a shitty full moon movie But then there's other parts where it's just awesome And I think overall, both sort of parts of the music just fit the movie perfectly Even the parts of the movie where the music is that kind of generic shitty can tell you exactly what patch on what synthesizer they're using It's the digital native dance on a fucking D50 That they use in every shitty B or R movie It suits the style of the movie Yeah And it suits even the shitty music suits it because ah, it's a B movie Of course, it sounds like that But then when the movie gets good the music gets good too It's a tangerine dream style score Sort of Oh man, this music kicks ass It also plays with the comedy of the movie too because music is sort of shitty at the funnier parts too Ramps up where it needs And when it gets serious, the music gets better The settings in this movie are fantastic because it really reflects the whole drug use drug addiction going down this rabbit hole Every setting is like dirty and grungy their apartments kind of shitty Even when he takes his girlfriend to that date that place doesn't look all that good It looks like ah, that place looks shitty As he's going downhill with his addiction to Elmer the settings get more grungy That's right Shitty, right? It's just perfect And then the punk bar Exactly, yeah It's just so good Like there's not one nice setting in this And that's how it's supposed to be because drug addiction is not nice Yeah That's exactly what it is The settings reflect what the character is going through right? Is descent into fucking madness and addiction This cheesy 80s B movie nails so many of these essential things to do in a movie by using the setting to reflect what the character is going through All this stuff When these big budget blockbuster Hollywood movies have no fucking clue Yeah, they can't accomplish half of what this movie did A tenth of the budget Yeah It's insane It's incredible It just shows you what vision can do The only negative about this movie really is some scenes seem kind of stretched out too long and repetitive Like they keep always showing that same shot of Elmer opening his mouth and putting the thing in his brain and the blue shit going in his brain Like it's repetitive in that way Then I did some digging to find out the first cut of this movie was like just over an hour Yeah And they needed to like okay this has got to be an hour and a half feature length we've got to fill some time So now I get it why they had to stretch out some scenes maybe making them longer than they should have been and start repeating other shots and reusing old shots to just stretch out the runtime But it doesn't hurt the movie enough to make it bad Not as level Yeah, I've seen that shot two or three times already I don't need to see it again Check out 1988's Brain Damage It is a trip in every sense of the word And until next time Keep drinking