Brainstorm

This was a pleasant surprise! I went into the movie expecting standard noir, which I enjoy greatly, and it started thus. I was delighted by the multitudes of appearances of old generation stars, as well as many who were just starting their careers. The two leads, Francis and Hunter, are excellent. And then the story starts spinning off into unexpected directions, creating a film which seems much more '70s than '60s. I quite enjoyed this!

Certainly, the movie is worth the watch.

Insane or not Insane? That is the Question! What is the answer? (See my board post which answers that but contains spoilers there.) Well, you better take notes and watch carefully, because you might have to go back and re-watch a few scenes. Yeah, one of those nice suspense movies. :) The director here is in tune with the message, and will play with you using a tiny bit of Hitchcock like style, but it's a well crafted movie. Yes, there are some rough spots around the edges, but one should certainly watch it for the great story and pretty good acting by both the scientist and the women.

Break out the popcorn and watch the end closely! Good movie for the time period. Still fits for today. Nicely directed.

Scientist Jim Grayam (Jeffrey Hunter) from Benson Industrias Research saves his chief's spouse (Anne Francis) from suicide but falls in love with her and schemes to kill her husband (Dana Andrews) by pretending to be criminally crazy. As he contacts a psychologist (Viveca Lindfords) from a State Mental Hospital to consider him insane .And then fakes insanity to escape the killing charge. The Most Fiendish Idea Ever Conceived By The Human Brain! .May Scare You Out of Your Mind!

A nice thriller with several surprises ,twists and turns. A simple and plain premise becomes more and more confuse and twisted when starring plots to kill a husband and becomes romantically involved with the wife . Being well-paced by actor/producer/filmmaker William Conrad in the decade he produced and directed several films for Warner Brothers . Fine interpretation from duo protagonists , the attractive Jeffrey Hunter who had an uneven career and died early and co-starring is the always gorgeous Anne Francis , along with the ordinarily effective Dana Andrews as the revenger hubby. And a lot of notorious secondaries , such as : Strother Martin ,Stacy Harris , Kathie Browne , Michael Pate , and look for Richard Kiel , Steve Ihnat , John Mitchum , and William Conrad himself as a mental patient.

This Brainstorm 1965 packs an adequate cinematography in black and whilte by Sam Leavitt who along with John Alton , Nicolas Musuruka and John Seitz were the best cameramen of the Noir Cinema . As well as atmospheric and thrilling musical score by George Duning . The motion picture was competently produced/directed by William Conrad . At the beginning his prosperous career he worked successfully in the Radio . Since his corpulence effectively precluded playing strapping roles like Matt Dillon in broadcasting , subsequently playing character parts in Big screen as Body and Soul , Sorry, Wrong Number, The Racket , Naked Jungle , among others . Bill began to concentrate on directing and producing by the early 1960's. This, ironically, included episodes of "Gunsmoke". In 1963 he contributed to saving 77 Sunset Strip (1958) for yet another season.. In 1971 he returned to acting and became the unlikely star of the Quinn Martin production Cannon (1971), for which he is chiefly remembered. Bill imbued the tough-talking, no-nonsense character of Frank Cannon with enough humanity and wit to make the series compelling but, despite the show's popularity, he made his views clear in a 1976 Times interview that he found himself poorly served by the scripts he had been given. A planned sequel, The Return of Frank Cannon (1980) failed to get beyond the movie-length pilot, but the actor's popularity resulted in another starring role in Jake and the Fatman (1987) as District Attorney McCabe, co-starring with Joe Penny and a brief run as eccentric Nero Wolfe (1981). A self-effacing man with a good sense of humor and never afraid to speak his mind, Bill Conrad died of heart failure in February 1994. He was elected to the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame and (posthumously) to the Radio Hall of Fame in 1997.

I do some court monitoring volunteering and a few years back I sat in on a murder case where a 19 year killed a 60 something man with whom he was having a sexual relationship with. During the course of the trial this kid gave certain answers to the court appointed scientist that he thought would help his case. As the perpetrator was high school drop out with a GED he wasn't fooling any shrink.

But that's what Jeffrey Hunter tries to do in Brainstorm. Hunter is a top scientist working for billionaire industrialist Dana Andrews. Hunter one nights saves Anne Francis who is the wife of Andrews from a suicide attempt. Risks his own life to do it.

Andrews is a cruel and vicious man and Hunter falls for Francis. Like the way Barbara Stanwyck lures Fred MacMurray into her murder scheme, Francis gets entrapped in her scheme and goes one better in that Hunter thinks it's all his idea.

Like my GED case Hunter being a most educated man figures he can game the insanity defense system. He does to some extent, but the end results are not what he bargained for.

I was pleasantly surprised by this film, mainly because Dana Andrews was doing a lot of mediocre films at this point so I wasn't expecting much from Brainstorm. But I found it refreshingly original, written and directed by actor William Conrad who had a nice sense of style. Jeffrey Hunter was really great in the part of the luckless lead. Kudos also go to Viveca Lindfors as a consulting psychiatrist.

The scenes with Hunter in the insane asylum are really freaky and bizarre. I expected to see Olivia DeHavilland and Dr. Kick come in the ward. The scenes were right of The Snake Pit. Strother Martin is one of the patients and he's memorable too.

And the ending is one for the books. Definitely if you're a fan of any of the players I mentioned you should see this film.

After being seduced by the unstable wife of his millionaire boss, a brilliant young engineer concocts a crackpot plan for the two to be together: murder her husband and then convince a panel of psychiatrists that he is clinically insane (the rationale being, I assume, that incarceration in a mental asylum is much preferable to prison!). Warner Bros. potboiler with a television budget--another in a string of pulpy, somewhat-sleazy yarns to be directed by William Conrad--is engrossing and enjoyable, even as it fails to come to much. Conrad works well with his actors while concentrating firmly on his narrative, however his scene transitions are amateurish and his work is not helped by the TV drama-styled editing (not to mention the melodramatic music cues). Jeffrey Hunter (curiously billed as Jeff Hunter) begins the film behaving like a staunch, overgrown Boy Scout, but by the second-half really goes out on a limb with the tics, cold sweats, and stammers of a man driven half-mad by desire. Screenwriter Mann Rubin preys upon the viewer's fear of insanity by setting our hero up as a dupe, a willing 'Gaslight' victim who may not be one-hundred-percent in the head anyway. There are no surprise twists to the plot, nor do Conrad or Rubin mean this to be a cautionary tale for would-be illicit lovers. It's rather a squarely straightforward tale with incidental characters (such as Viveca Lindfors' sweetly smiling doctor) who are never fully explained and a finale that is meant to be highly shocking. **1/2 from ****