Brain Twisters is the name of this "classic" from 1991. It's part of a 12 movie set that I got at a rummage sale for a dollar called Gorehouse Greats. I've watched a few of these and I haven't seen any gore, just a little blood and some breasts. What kind of title is that misleading? It's not great, and there's no gore; hell, there's barely even a house.
The DVD's box describes the movie like this, "A mad, sci-fi thriller about an experiment in computer-generated mind control that gets out of control...and the body count is building! So the movie itself is mad, or is there a mad scientist? Also, mind control is killing people? This small plot reveal really doesn't do anything for me. It just seems worthless because the information is too vague. If this were a movie that I actually wanted to gain some information on before watching, the back of the box wouldn't do me any good; and the company has the same format for each of the 12 movies on this set! I guess you're just supposed to buy this thing on a whim and hope for the best like I did. The only difference between you and me is that I got it for a dollar and you had to buy it for retail. Sucks to be you.
One other nitpicky thing I hate about the physical aspects of the box and DVDs themselves is that the movies don't go in order! So, reading from the back, the movies are in alphabetical order, makes sense, right? Then, when you open up the damn box you have four movies to a DVD, two on both sides, but they don't follow the same order from the case. So instead of scanning the back once and counting which DVD will have the movie I want to watch I have to go through the painstaking effort of looking at each disc individually. When did convenience become too difficult for companies to produce? Oh yeah, and take a look at the cover picture:
It's just so misleading it's not even funny. The picture makes you think that some of the movies on here will be worth the $5 that you find it for at Wal-Mart because it looks decent and modern, but it's just a trick. Anyway, enough with that, let's just get into the freaking movie.
As the pre-movie credits roll I hear this familiar droning song. After about ten seconds, I finally figure it out: it's the music from all of the DVD menus! Why is it taken from this one film? Is this the seller's personal preference from this set of movies? Was this one song just that good? Unfortunately I couldn't find this song on the internet so the reader's ears cannot be graced by it, which is just dandy for them.
The first scene is a car crash that's never referenced again, or wait, it is, just too far into the movie to really matter anymore. Some guy is driving down the road while the camera flashes back and forth between that and some girl running with headphones. Both the music in the car and on the headphones reminds us that it's the very early nineties. We see the car come close to the woman and then we see her headphones go flying straight up into the air. Of course that's what happens when you get hit by a fast moving vehicle; and that's really our only indication that the woman was hit. Who are these people and why do we care? Long story short is that we don't know and we don't care.
We flash to some crazy video screen with pixelated images and flashing colors. None of it is impressive. I know it's 1991, but Nintendo was in full swing at this point in time. Couldn't the production team get something better than some rejected Atari images and vector graphics? The only redeeming quality of these video portions are the sounds. It really does sound like someone was playing some old game on an Intellivision and they recorded the audio for the movie. Now pull up a quick video of Mario and watch it for thirty seconds. Go ahead, I'll wait.
...
Each of those thirty seconds are 1000 times greater than every second of this movie.
So right, there are two women watching the screens in some crazy space pod with delorian doors, remote controls, and keyboards. They're hooked up to diodes and all they do is stare at the flashing colors. Eventually the stuff stops and one girl gets out. I think this one is Yvonne; I really don't remember. All of the characters in this film have names, I just didn't care enough to learn them really well. She gets out and gets some money for the test while the coordinator is on the phone with a corporate guy. Something about terminating the project because of no progress with the research. No progress is right, Nintendo is pumping out 8-bit games with a vengeance and they're definitely dominating these gimped Atari games.
As Yvonne leaves she sees the janitor. Why is this significant? There's no dialog! The janitor is a recurring character with very little dialog, but we just know that he plays some part at the end. The director force feeds us that fact every time we see the guy. We establish some of the other characters in a lecture class; there's a slutty girl who comes in wearing a bra/bikini thing, Denise, and Lori. The only interesting thing that happens here is that Denise asks Lori about going to aerobics and then later asks her boyfriend, Ted, if he wants to go to the carnival. Did she forget about aerobics already? She said that she wanted to lose weight but she also wants to go to a haven for fried food? Not smart.
Denise and Ted leave the class and run into the janitor, who's also the gardener. Does no one else do any type of maintenance at this University? At least I think it's a school... They've established the characters but not the location. I just assumed it's a college because of the class. Whatever. Then Ted looks off into the distance and Denise asks him if he's alright in this weird echoy voice, over and over again until you just want to hit something. The slutty character implies about how she got her "B" average by having sex with her teachers. She must not be very good in bed if she only got "Bs." Maybe she should try a course in Kama Sutra.
Our first scene with a death involves Ted and Denise coming back from the carnival, I think, and going to Denise's place where they say goodnight. Ted gets pissed and complains about not getting any. He leaves and Denise gets ready for aerobics in her super-chromatic dorm apartment. Also, for some reason she takes her stuffed teddy bear into the bathroom with her. I really don't know what that's about. Why would anyone take their stuffed animal into the bathroom? While she's cuddling her bear in front of the mirror there's a killer's POV while random sounds play; yawn. There's no killshot or violence of any kind. All we see is Lori popping in and her finding Denise hanging by her neck from a towel. Lori runs out of the room and uses a payphone to call the police. Why the fuck didn't she use the phone in the room? It was right there and she saw the door shut when the killer left! Why pay the change to use the damn payphone when you can call from two feet away?!
We shoot to the Professor at home where the slut comes over to talk about her paper. Prof. Rothman gives her a glass of wine and she asks if he has, "Any suggestions on how to improve it," or "any pointers that he wants to give her." How freaking blatant can you be? Rothman says yes and flat out tells her she should drop out of school and be a whore somewhere else. He decides to put her into a work study for "nerve stimulation." She looks confused for a bit and finally says that it's kinky. There's also a detective, Frank, that questions Lori and Ted that night about Denise's death. The questioning is too intense for Ted, I guess, because he kills himself while a pinball machine, dart machine, and a Commando arcade machine blare in the background. His body is taken to Rothman's lab where the Professor takes off his head and puts it in a jar, which we don't get to see. Classic mad scientist without the mad or classic. The detective questions the professor about the body and gets it taken to the morgue for an autopsy. During the whole scene, everyone is so concerned about the neuroscientist having a brain in his fucking lab. Why is that so strange?!
There's more random lab footage with Atari sounds and graphics. Blah, blah, blah. The slutty woman goes to the work study and runs into the janitor. What does this movie have against janitors? The only exciting thing here is that the girl's screen looks like the original tempest game. After all that crap we see some girl staring into a pool for a minute. Is this some sort of dream or simulation? She looks like the slutty girl, but apparently she's Yvonne? This is where the movie gets insane and starts becoming super disjointed. Yvonne, Lori, and Yvonne's boyfriend go get food and a car wash. For some reason the boyfriend wants to have a threesome. I have no idea where this dialog comes from. The scene just starts and he brings it up. They laugh it off, but haunts you for a much longer time. Also, why are they getting a car wash when the car is spotless?!
Yvonne has some kind of reaction from the car wash that's supposed to be linked to the work study. We watch her stretch for a few minutes and then she runs out of the car and away into the daytime. The insane thing is that she's perfectly dry afterwards. Did she have some kind of invisible force field or umbrella? Then we flash to a Halloween party where Yvonne has a psychedelic experience in the tub, grabs a scissors, slices the throat of a guy, and stabs her boyfriend in the back twice. Both of them die and no one tries to stop her. What the hell? It's a goddamn scissors, not an axe!
Later we go to Rothman at the bar and he has a talk with the company and wants to stop the killings. Halfway through the call he just stops talking because of a song with flashing lights and shit. He propositions a girl and then smashes her boyfriend in the head with a glass bottle. Then for some reason he shows up on like forty monitors in the bar. Am I the only one that doesn't understand what's going on? I reallly hope not.
There's also this scene where Detective Frank asks Lori to come over for dinner. It's been established that she hates him, but she accepts anyway as some kind of disjointed plot device. The dinner is really odd; he makes a salad and noodles that he claims is olive oil, clams and fresh garlic. Of course when he explains this he asks Lori which of those items she is. What the fuck kind of question is that? We jump to them doing dishes and she makes fun of an apron he's wearing. At this point I'm just confused and feel like I'm out of my mind, like I'm being subjected to the work study myself. At this point the whole original plot feels so far out of scope that it's pointless to even refer back to it. Lori then turns on the TV and Uncle Ted's Monstermania is going to start playing but some agent of the company in a truck turns on a machine that does the work study software shit. Lori stares at it like it's a freaking movie...Why doesn't she change the channel? It was never established that you can't move when you're watching it. She comes after the detective with a knife and she starts making out with him like a crazy person and then shoves him off. Again, what the fuck does this have to do with the original plot, and why is it so crazy? Then she tells him to leave?! I thought it was his house! She throws food at him and yells. Whatever.
There's another lecture?! Why are we watching everything these people do, little to none of it pretains to the damn story! The professor leaves his dog tied up to the stairs, and then the dog runs away from him and he just lets it go? What an asshole! Some time later, or at the same time (I really can't be sure), Lori calls Frank and apparently she's not mad at him anymore for her being insane at him.
Rothman questions Lori about being frank's lover and puts his hand on her shoulder, talking about how big of a help she is and how he'd hate to lose her. What the hell is going on?! We have never seen her help him, nor has he ever expressed himself to her in this way. Why is it happening now and if it's not built up to, why should we care? Then he looks outside and asks if she wants an ice cream from the ice cream truck below...Lori wants vanilla and the professor tells her that she should be more daring. She has him pick the flavor and looks as fucking confused as I feel right now. The actress was probably thinking, "Oh good lord why in the hell did I take this role, it's going to ruin my career that hasn't even started yet." Anyway, the meat of the scene is that Lori snoops around while Rothman is smiling and humming while bringing in two ice cream cones with blood red ice cream. What kind of flavor could that even represent? Oh, right, he tells us it's Raspberry Twirl. Great. Before Rothman can get back, Lori finds a notebook of his where he drew bleeding breasts, spider webs, and things dying with sharpies. That's exactly what I expected.
The slut goes back to the work study, finally some continuity, and does something that we've never seen before. She turns up the "LEVEL OF STIMULATION" on the machine and watches some crazy shit while grimacing. When she comes out of the machine her boyfriend tells her that they should leave, but she wants to have a little "fun" first. They kiss and she stabs his carotid with her acrylic nails. For a stupid bimbo, she sure knows how to hit an artery.
Rothman follows Lori to her house and begs to be let in. He goes crazy and starts pounding on the door; where we get our first real swearing and emotion of the entire movie, but after that the professor gets in and starts mumbling at Lori while she slowly walks backwards. He strangles her while talking about how she's the same as all of the other shit on the planet. He leaves and gets shot by the janitor, who was working for Biotronics the whole time. Ah, there's the connection. It's not fun that I found it, like it would be in other movies. Instead it's just there. There like a shit stain on the underwear of this movie. The janitor goes to kill Lori but Frank hits him with his car and squishes him into a tree. Kind of cool, but there's no blood or gore, and we barely see anything happen.
Flash to the CEO of Biotronics, and his driver, killed in the car by the loose girl's nails. Why don't the people fight back? They get strangled a little bit and then freeze while the girl uses her acrylic nails to kill them. What a bunch of bullshit.
Lori and Frank find the slutty girl back at the lab staring at the ceiling. Lori is supposed to be shocked, but doesn't seem so. She then makes some connection between when she tried to get into Frank's pants and the company. There was one there, she's right, but how in the hell could she make that connection without any evidence? Even an inkling couldn't have formed, there's no evidence of a connection whatsoever. As Lori comes to this conclusion, we see loose girl coming for her through the glass window of the swinging doors. Frank pulls Lori away as the nails come crashing through the glass. And then...nothing. No climactic fight scene or something, just nothing. We hear noises, look at loose girl's eyes and she just stands there. Why doesn't she come through the SWINGING DOORS? She could come through, kill the both of them and call it a night. I'd like that. The end of the movie we see some kid playing a video game called Brain Twisters. His mom calls him down, but he angrily screams at her, "I'll be right THERE MOTHER."
So this was all about video games and how noises and colors stimulate your mind to make you crazy? Why would I have ever thought about that until the end? There's no connection here. That's what this movie is all about, connections from violence to video games. If the movie is about one type of connections, why can't the fucking scenes actually relate back to the main plot? Couldn't the director keep one string of thought throughout the entire film? Maybe he was playing too many video games.
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