Horror High

I am so pleased to see so many people have seen this movie....of course...late night on Elvira or Grimsley. My sister and I used to laugh hysterically at this. I mean with a name like Vernon Potts..you're going to get picked on! We used to say lines from this movie...we knew it word for word!

So now we are in the DVD age and I am looking to replace the really bad and really old VHS copy I made from one of our late night viewings! I need to add this one to my collection.

But on to the film......Everything about it shows the start of teen horror flicks. These guys pioneered the "outcast teenager". This is Carrie, Prom Night......all the horror flicks of the eighties.

I especially like the drawn out interogation of Vernon by the detective. The delays in response, as if they are reading from cue cards, is hysterical.

I really am pleased, like the rest of you, to know that I am not the only one who watched this movie and remembered it all these years.

Wow... Reading through these comments is giving me goose bumps! For years, no one I asked had ever seen (or heard of) this nasty little movie, but now I see that I am not alone after all!

My experience of Twisted Brain is nearly identical to many others here: I was 11 years old when my best friend and I saw this movie on Pittsburgh, PA's Chiller Theater. Ever since that night, I have never looked at a paper-cutter or a pair of cleats the same way.

As many of you have said, there is something about this gritty, low-budget shocker that just sticks with you. It's not that this is a good movie, but obviously it had a lasting impression on a whole generation of us. Even now, I can remember the grainy film and cheesetastic music, the vat of acid, the brutal murders. I will never forget that first viewing of this film.

I can't say that I recommend it, exactly. It may be a you-had-to-be-there kind of experience for those of us who saw it back in the day, and I'm sure Twisted Brain may not hold up well after all these years. I'm just really glad to read that so many others had the same experience of it that I did.

Jason Atwood does'nt know what he's talking about! Lots of people would agree that this is a very good movie. (about the scenes being too dark,I could see them fine,has'nt he heard of a brightness dial!) I do admit that most of the people who like this film think of what they thought of it when they saw it as kids on late night tv. I see movies on video store shelves all the time that are totally stupid and I can't say that about this one. This was the goriest movie I could find on network tv. A guys face melting off after being dipped in acid,and a guy getting brutally stomped to death with steel baseball cleets are a few things to look for in this movie! The acting is'nt too bad either,you kind of get to feel bad for the main character,its cool to see him get his revenge. (even though he does go a little overboard) I'd like to see this movie make a comeback! If anybody else remembers this movie,write a review,I'd like to see what you think.

While very low-budget, this is still a pretty enjoyable simple horror film. A gawky, geeky high school student gets bullied by his teachers and classmates. He gets revenge.

How he gets revenge is foreshadowed by the fact that the movie begins during an English class in which the teacher has finished showing the first half of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde movie. Twisted Brain is itself a sort of Jekyll and Hyde remake. The student accidentally handed in a biology report instead of his paper on Stevenson, and the teacher gives him an F on the Stevenson report, and chops his biology paper up with her paper cutter. Those old paper cutters are like machetes! Turns out the student was working on a potion to change the physical strength of living creatures. After his guinea pig kills the janitor's cat, the janitor forces him to drink the potion for some reason, and there's conveniently a barrel of acid in the lab....

Meanwhile, he finds he's less shy in his normal form and starts warming up to a girl he had a crush on. Like Jekyll, the potion also starts trying to change him even when he hasn't drunk it.

I watched it on one of the DVDs in Rhino's Horrible Horrors Vol. 1 box set. It's not horrible, just cheap. Apart from the gore scenes, it almost feels like a Saturday morning TV movie. It's too bad there's not a commentary track.

Scrawny, but good-natured Vernon(PAT CARDI, in a memorable performance) is a science-minded high school nerd, and an unassuming human target for cruelty who's belittled and abused by nearly everyone he knows(moronic jock schoolmates, choleric teachers, the psycho janitor, etc.). He concocts and ingests a substance which renders him a Jeckyll/Hyde type beast, the more powerful and assertive(and certainly more dangerous)persona emerging sporadically to become the "normal" Vernon's savage avenger. A sharp and suspicious investigator has his eye on Vernon, as does the school beauty queen(because the prettiest girl in school is always in love with the skinny, picked-on science geek. She knows he's gonna be rich some day...)

This bouncy little Crown International Pictures wonder was a perennial staple on late-night creature feature shows during the 70s and 80s, and those of a certain bracket remember it fondly. Folks today should get a kick out of its funky retro panache, and they may be surprised by the potent violence in some scenes(nicely punctuated by jarring heavy-reverb guitar thrums).

An all time great...of sorts. 7/10.