BrainWaves

Beginning with the prototypically menacing 80s P.O.V slasher motif of unseen stalking menace, culminating in the shocking slaying of some bathtub reclining bimbo Ulli Lommel's San Francisco-based chiller very soon clinically draws us into the immoral practices of faintly sinister medical impropriety masterminded by the wicked, crypt keeper gaze of secretive, permanently brooding neurosurgeon Dr. Clovis (Tony Curtis) whose basilisk demeanour may or may not disguise a far more diabolical intent! 'Brainwaves' (1983) plays out its supernatural Michael Crichton-esque horror hokum of futuristic pseudo-scientific technological wizardry and base human degeneracy with stolid, workmanlike conviction, while having a not uninteresting premise, this faintly stodgy family psychodrama feels a trifle staid after the riotous sturm und Drang of 'The Bogeyman' and you can't help being somewhat underwhelmed by its rather diluted TV Movie of the Week approach to thrill spillage. 'Brainwaves' is certainly well made and competently performed by an engaging cast with an especially heartfelt and sympathetic turn by Kier Dullea as the stalwart, loving to his greatly beleaguered spouse Kayleigh (Suzanna Love) who also finds herself being psychically harassed by the victim of a flesh and blood killer who now has his murderous sights on the delectable Kayleigh! The film's technical merits are robust, multitasking Mr. Lommel proves himself a capable D.P, if a rather inauspicious dramatist, and the bravura score by Edmond O. Ragland has some splendidly squalling, Bernard Herrmann-esque flourishes doing much to instil a thematic urgency that the narrative frequently lacks, building up to a tumultuous musical crescendo at the thriller's adequately melodramatic conclusion. On a final note, the deliciously dark ambivalence of the enigmatic Dr. Clovis was intriguing, and whenever Tony Curtis turned up the scenes had a much darker energy that overall the film could have had more of. The brainwaves of this particular viewer remained even throughout, in a semi vegetative state, quite in sympathy with the largely comatose Suzanna Love. 'Brainwaves' proves engaging and not without interest but is ultimately a far from essential work by the quixotic Mr. Lommel.

BrainWaves (1983)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Rather confusing tale of a woman (Suzanna Love) who suffers brain damage after being struck by a car but a doctor (Tony Curtis) does a strange experiment on her, which appears to bring her back to normal. Soon after the experiment the young woman starts to have visions of another woman who was apparently murdered by someone with "X" tattoos on his wrist. This film comes off as somewhat of a disappointment after reading a few good reviews for it. The film runs a short 77-minutes but it felt much longer as the screenplay is all over the place and never really knows what to focus one. For starters, we have the mysterious woman who is murdered at the start of the movie. We then have Love's character who goes into a coma and then slowly starts to rebuild her life. We then have the nutty doctor doing the experiments. The film never really tells a straight story because it appears no one knew which story to really focus on. For a large portion of the film the murder is forgotten about as the woman tries to rebuild her life. We then get back into the murder aspect of the film but then everything about the coma takes a backseat and is pretty much forgotten. Love turns in another fine performance and makes the character interesting and worth watching. Vera Miles (PSYCHO) plays her mother and delivers a nice performance as well. On the DVD director Lommel talks about Curtis having a cocaine problem at the time of this movie being made and he also mentions that the actor didn't want any dialogue. This explains his horrible performance, which is all over the place and that includes the line delivery. It seems Curtis is extremely mad throughout the movie as he just comes off like he's ready to explode. There are a few nice technical moments including the death by electrocution but in the end I must admit that the film left me bored and unsatisfied. I'm really not sure who I'd recommend this movie to as it doesn't really work as a drama and the horror elements are so minor that most fans will be hitting the eject button early on.

Glossy looking but very slow and ponderous 'thriller'.

A young accident victim receives a "transplant" of deceased accident victim's brainwaves in an innovative new procedure. Before long she begins to experience flashes of the other woman's memory that indicate the death was more than an accident, and which identify the perpetrator.

The main problem with the film is that the plot is just too thin. The story is very straightforward, is predictable, and lacks any twists or surprises. It plays like an episode of television's "Quincy", or perhaps even "Murder She Wrote", but even those shows packed-in more twists and unexpected plot developments.

Certainly it appears a lot of footage was shot in all sorts of interesting San Francisco locations and we are treated to a constant repetition of these establishing shots throughout the movie. The camera-angles do look nice, but the heavy use of these travelogue sequences slow the film's pace down to a deadly level. There is also a lot of unnecessary character development; we learn all about the lead couple and their son and the grandmother but these details are all irrelevant to the plot. And Vera Miles' character of the grandmother (named Marion!) is utterly superfluous. She gets one good dialogue scene (though it is irrelevant to the plot) and basically provides background chit-chat in the various family scenes.

Many viewers may feel they need their brainwaves revived after sitting through this one.

I love a movie with an interesting story. This has a real story behind it, we almost want to believe it to be reality. Brainwaves is a tight, solid psychological thriller that some medics out there would get a kick out of with their analogies. A young girl is murdered in a bath, while listening to music, ear plugs on, again proving that water and electricity don't mix. Of course she didn't hear the intruder. As he picks up her radio placed behind her, while standing above her, he raises the radio above his head, although he's faceless to us. Then in slow effective motion we see the radio drop, following by her electrocution. Full on too. Later a young mother walking across a steep San Francis street, gets one of her heals caught on the railway track in one of those grooves. And a slow moving train is coming right towards her. Barely evading a flattening, inturn she's knocked up on the hood of this car, her skull knocking up against the windscreen, spider webbing the glass. She goes into a coma, but there is one way she can by pulled out of it. A thing involving the clavious process, where one can use electronic devices to transfer impulses from one brain to another. This becomes an experimental success. Unfortunately for that girl's killer, this isn't good as the mother is giving the dead girl's brain. How cool is this story. Now she starts acting strange, seeing images that the dead girl saw, like the killer wrist tattoo, while in the gym, where eventually the killer's identity becomes full circle too her. If you enjoy these psychological thrillers, this is something different in the thriller department. It's backed by a cast of great actors, including the late Tony Curtis as the respected genius doctor of the hospital, a kind of dark and a little enigmatic, this fine actor plays so well. This is a story that leaves you wondering if this really could possible. Who knows in today's times. A thoroughly engrossing thriller, one of those little movie surprises.

"Brainwaves" is an excellent horror movie. Its story, dramaturgy, cinematography and acting - and thus the main branches of the requirements of film theory - are not only satisfactorily, but very well fulfilled. However, Ulli Lommel - to whom we owe, amongst many other movies, also the brilliant "Tenderness of the Wolves" (1973) with the unforgettable Kurti Raab in the main role - is unfortunately subject to what I call the "Ed Wood Effect". This effect contains in blindly giving very low votes to a film director who once had the misfortune to become known as a B-picture maker.

In Ulli Lommel's special case this Ed-Wood-Effect is the more astonishing as the B-pictures that he produced after "Bogeyman" (1979) are not worse than this movie which was a success around the world, although or because it was filmed in the style for which nowadays people like to criticize Lommel, i.e. the use of video cameras and the "journalistic" cinematography which imitates the eye movement of a visitor who would be by chance witness of the crime that is filmed. If Rosa Von Praunheim takes a video camera and walks around on the streets or in bars filming just what he sees, the voting of these products are in the average higher - probably because Von Praunheim's topic is the gay-scene, and who would dare making respect-less comments against such a controversial topics without risking to get criticized not for his real critique but for his alleged attitude against a minority? As one can see, the Ed Wood effect implies that one measures with different measuring systems. To cite only one example: The "Underworld" movies are as silly as Lommel's younger horror flicks - and not a iota better, although they are produced with a guessed amount of ten times as much money as Lommel's productions. Perhaps one would achieve a juster judgment, if Ulli Lommel would release his older German movies - especially the wonderful "Adolf and Marlene" with Kurt Raab, Margit Cartensen, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and others - on DVD. But it also could be that even these movies would fall immediately under the spell of the Ed Wood Effect.