Man with the Screaming Brain (2005)

Sadly Over-hyped

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

If you've got a taste for the absurd this movie is surely it. The characters are absurdly exaggerated, they are like caricatures of the clichés they represent. The American businessman is THE ugly American businessman, the scientist is weird, his gofer is inapt, the communist is the communist.And yet this movie manages to put absolute sincerity into one of the weirdest love scenes I've ever seen: a sort of Frankenstein's monster declaring his eternal love to a robot. It's got to be true that at the very heart of it this is actually a love story. And in a more daring approach I can even see it as a sort of love-hate story between William and Yegor, after all they have to learn to live with one another if they want to survive. Live, learn and above all communicate.Though the movie definitely is a low budget production and hence suffers a lot from this, it still offers some good cinematography, like the final fight between Tatoya and William/Yegor.

As a fan of the Evil Dead movie series including Army of Darkness I like to see most movies that Bruce Campbell is in because he has a knack for either just picking fun movies to be in or just making them fun himself by being in them, I think it is probably both. The Evil Dead Series is bloody awesome pun intended maybe? But Bubba Ho Tep was another awesome movie where he played Elvis Presley after he supposedly died, in some convalescent home where he had to fight off an evil mummy! In this movie he plays a guy killed by this woman and he is brought back to life by a mad scientist who has fixed his brain by attaching into it the brain of a Russian or Bulgarian cab driver named Yuri who now controls part of his brain, and they track down this woman who also killed Yuri or whatever his name is to get their revenge.

When you're an avid fan of horror and cult cinema, you're inevitably also an avid fan of Bruce Campbell. That almost goes without saying. He's one of the few actors for which the name alone is enough reason to see a film, regardless of how bad or derivative it may be or regardless of how small his part is. Suffice to say many fans, myself included, very much anticipated "Man with the Screaming Brain" because, not only does Bruce play the lead part in this, it also marks his debut as a director! Sadly though, it isn't a very good film and not something I'd immediately recommend to non-Campbell fans. It still definitely has its moments of ingeniousness and originality, but the overall accomplishment is far below any expectations. Maybe it was wrong to expect a typical B-movie homage to cheesy horror cinema, as the emphasis here clearly lies on comedy. But even as a comedy, "Man with the Screaming Brain" is too derivative and too random to ever become a cult favorite. The first half of the film is still very okay, because you wonder where Campbell is going exactly with all the bizarre and eccentric characters he introduced in such an unusual setting, but once the plot has fully unfolded, you'll be shocked at how simplistic and dull it actually is. Bruce stars as a sly and scumbag US businessman, visiting Bulgaria for one of his fraudulent practices, along with his spoiled and terribly bored wife Jackie. They become involved with a local taxi-driver, but they all get killed by a beautiful gypsy woman who's clearly frustrated no man will marry her. No worries, because the brilliant scientist Dr. Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov discovered a method to successfully separate brain-functions from the nerve system and even to transplant two brains into one head. It was Ivanov's biggest wish to show his breakthrough to the American, so he might as well use him as a guinea pig. Once half of the brains of an ex-Russian communistic rebel is forced to co-exist with half the brain of a typically vain and cocky American, the film quickly turns into a series of clichéd situations, predictable gags and exaggerated jokes about cultural differences. The title isn't even accurate, as the brain doesn't scream, but continuously argues with … itself. A much better title would have been "The Man with Two Brains", but that already exists in the form of a Steve Martin 80's comedy. The film relies too much on familiar faces (Campbell, as well as Ted Raimi playing the clumsy assistant to Ivanov) and far too little on witty dialogs and good action sequences.

Ah, classic comedy. At the point in the movie where brains get messed together, a two minute scene with Bruce Campbell beating himself up partially, reminds me of how simplistic movies and ideas can grab you and wrap you into a whole movie.For years and years, Bruce Campbell knows what kind of movies we want out of him. We want to see weird movies like Bubba Ho Tep. We want to see cameo roles in Sam Raimi movies, and we want to see 'Man with the Screaming Brain'. With the title alone, one knows that it's going to border that completely silly type of movie, like Army of Darkness, only with more silly and less monsters.The idea of the movie is simple. Bruce sees doctor. Doctor has new idea. Bruce gets bad things happen to him on way to see doctor. Coincidentally, it's the thing the doctor wanted to show him that saves him. Hilarity ensues.With the addition of Ted Raimi as a weird Russian guy, and journeyman Stacy Keach as Dr. Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov, it's funny, that does this movie. Complete funny. Never a point of scary.If you like the silly Bruce Campbell, you'll like this. Then again, why would you be watching this if you didn't like Bruce Campbell?