Brain Machine

James Best (Rosco From "Dukes of Hazzard") plays an emotionally tortured clergyman who volunteers for a secretive government experiment in this tepid, badly-edited thriller. The other participants in the experiment are: a fat slob, a hillbilly woman, and a wimpy guy played by Gerald McRaney. They seem like normal (if annoying) folks at first, but they all have terrible secrets in their past. The government wants to put these people in something called the "E-Box," which looks like a big cubicle filled with lawn furniture. While inside, their darkest, most embarrassing memories are dredged up for the world to see. Of course, the experiment goes horribly, horribly wrong, and there's a lot of pain, suffering, and death in the last half hour of the movie. The rest is just a rather confusing series of scenes showing big office buildings and people in lab coats. There are about 372 shots of a swimming pool for some reason. If you love establishing shots, THIS IS THE MOVIE FOR YOU. They establish the HELL out of these scenes. The exact point of the experiment remains a mystery to me. Surely, there are cheaper and more efficient ways for the goverment to make people feel bad about themselves. So in summary, "The Brain Machine" -- rent it, won't you?

Someone mentioned editing. This is edited badly and what started out as somewhat intriguing became an incomprehensible mess. For starters, let us know what it is you are trying to do with these experiments. Why are these people the best choices for the type of experimenting they are involved in? And, what exactly are they testing? Apparently there is some grand plan that some agency is going to exploit. The acting is pretty bad. Everyone is emoting. Everyone is keeping secrets. They frequently mention that if it weren't for the money, they'd hang it up. There's a deranged minister who spouts scripture. On and on. But, again, the biggest hang up is the lack of laying out a playing field for the actors. There are some really cheesy elements. Those little rooms and those chaise lounges. The awful wallpaper (was it wallpaper?). It was interesting, but didn't seem to go anywhere.

I rented this as part of a weekly movie night with a friend of mine. We got this, "The Supernaturals," and "Blood Splash," also known as "Nightmare" or "Nightmare in a Damaged Brain." This was the worst of the three.

We got this under the name "Mind Warp," and decided to get it only because it looked like it could be okay. (Well, why else would we rent it?!) The story is pretty basic. Two doctors stick four people in an underground lab and start doing mental tests on them with these Star Trek computers. (Spare the constant "beep-beep...beep-beep" from the TV show.)

Nothing really happens. The film's first twenty minutes is about an escapee from the lab who has a file showing all that goes on. Apparently, these tests are pretty much illegal. He eventually gets caught and killed off. Then the four people (a war veteran, a priest, a girl, and some other guy) are tested on. It's all really boring until finally they all start going mad and either killing themselves, or each other, until the abrupt and pretty unsatisfying ending.

I say...avoid this. Really. It isn't very good at all. I found it in the horror section, and hopefully if you do, too, you will just pass it by. It has nothing to offer.

While I watched The Brain Machine I thought I must be kind of dumb because I had to keep on rewinding it in order to follow what was going on. I thought it was pretty bad that I was having so much bother understanding an exploitation flick. But subsequently, I have read other reviews and discovered that thankfully I was not alone and it seems to be generally felt that this is one confusing sci-fi thriller. It's about a secret government sponsored experiment where four volunteers are put through a series of tests that cause them to relive dark psychological events from their past including murder and war flash-backs. That makes it sound relatively straightforward but boy it sure isn't. It's edited together in such a way that it's difficult following not only what is going on but also who is who. While it's never in the least bit obvious what the point of the experiment actually is in the first place. The Brain Machine itself is sort of vaguely defined, although lawn chairs with sensors do seem to be an important component of it. There is also a room in which the test subjects are located in which the walls shrink in, which is a way of testing the psychological consequences of overpopulation! It's so random and strange. We have good people and bad people but it's not always even obvious what their motivations are, so character actions are also somewhat eccentric to say the least.

But despite being very low budget and shoddily made, there is something consistently interesting about this film nevertheless. It's kind of endearing that a film with so little money and made for an exploitation audience is so ambitious. While it may not achieve its goals exactly, it falls short in an entertaining and intriguing enough manner. Its very incomprehensibility actually probably does it some favours too, in that you can watch this again and discover new aspects. Like a lot of 70's movies it has a paranoid thriller element, where the government are up to no good. The mixture of conspiracy film intrigue with science fiction works pretty well. It stars a couple of notable people with James 'The Dukes of Hazzard' Best a pervy priest and Stuart 'Russ Meyer' Lancaster as the Senator. I got to say I liked this one's clunky charm and while the story-line is messy, it was at least a little bit different. And that counts for quite a lot.

I thought watching employment videos on corporate compliance was tedious. This movie went nowhere fast. What could have been a somewhat cheesy half hour twilight zone episode turned into a seemingly endless waste of film on people parking their cars, a picture of some dude's swimming pool (he really needs to answer his phone by the way) a dot matrix printer doing its job, and Heuy and Louey sitting in a yellow lighted control room repeating "T minus 10 and counting" as if something exciting is going to happen. It doesn't so don't get your hopes up. The best thing about this movie is to see James Best and Gerald McC, in something other than there famous TV personalities, and that is stretching to find anything good. And do NOT get me started on the music which was totally composed of a Tympani, some large marine mammals, and microphone feedback. This movie is as close as I have given a one yet, but it gets the 2 because I actually was able to finish this insomnia cure, and didn't have to leave in the middle. AVOID AT ALL COSTS.