phanthinga I'm so glad that i found Frank Henenlotter cause his movie has been entertain me non-stop for the past few days.Brain Damage is a horror movie gem in the late 80s that i encourage many people see it cause it not just another cheesy over the top horror movie but also a powerful social commentary about drug abuse.After a tired day the main character Brian get infected by a worm like creature called Aylmer.With the voice smooth like silk it drug Brian with some blue juice produce by itself and start eating brain of people around him.The plot is as crazy as it can get when it featuring many trippy images,the weirdest oral sex scene ever and a nice cameo with Bradley while holding his brother Belial from Basket Case.It suck when the director doesn't get the attention he deserves but fan like me will never forget

tomgillespie2002 Largely ignored on its original release but subsequently gathering a loyal cult following over the years, Brain Damage will no doubt appease fans of director Frank Henenlotter's other darkly humorous and outrageously gory works Basket Case (1982) and Frankenhooker (1990). Bringing his trademark sense of humour and mixing it up with lashings of tongue-in-cheek blood-letting, Brain Damage also strives to deliver a message, and is admirable for the anti-drug theme running throughout. With America in the midst of an AIDS and crack panic at the time, Henenlotter paints a very bleak picture of a New York City in crisis, as a parasitic killer searches for unwitting victims.Average Joe Brian (Rick Hearst) wakes up one morning feeling disorientated, finding his bed sheets soaked through with blood. He doesn't seem to be cut, but when he looks in the mirror he finds a strange parasitic creature on his person. Looking like a turd with eyes and big teeth, it also has a name, Aylmer, and speaks in a dignified foreign accent (voiced by John Zacherle). Injecting Brian through the back of the neck with a blue liquid that gives the unsuspecting goofball a drug-like sense of euphoria, Brian gets hooked on the stuff, and Aylmer exploits his addiction for food. Only Aylmer has a taste for human brains, and so Brian must spend his sober hours searching for human victims. Alienating himself from his girlfriend Barbara (Jennifer Lowry), Brian also faces the threat of the symbiote's former owners, who have been going cold turkey ever since it fled.Cut to pieces on its original home video release but later restored, it isn't difficult to see why the ratings board demanded the removal of certain scenes. A wonderfully wince-inducing scene in which Brian pulls his own brain out of his ear for what seems like an eternity found itself on the cutting-room floor, as did the uncomfortable scene where a woman is eaten alive while appearing to be performing fellatio in an unnecessarily sexualised moment of pure exploitation that left me genuinely horrified, and not in a good way. The story and characters are engaging enough to keep the film interesting, while the obvious lack of budget means that the acting is sub-par and the special effects are often laughable, if not charming. The main strength is Brain Damage's depiction of a drug addict going to increasingly desperate measures in order to procure his fix, and Hearst is surprisingly good in the role. Fans of Henenlotter should keep their eyes peeled for the appearance of a certain man with a basket.

Foreverisacastironmess I consider myself a pretty well adjusted horror fan. Most gory body shocks don't bother me, except decapitation, gratuitous ugly violence and torture, stuff involving the eyes, what's between the legs, the spine-and the brain! This movie's metaphors and allegories have got to be the most obvious ever. I don't usually care for that."This is a metaphor for that, that is a social commentary on this." Boring! I'm very literal minded and don't watch films that way. Probably don't have the brains for it, truth be told. A lot of people in the movie sure don't! But with this movie it's so perfectly done that I quite like it. Like with Basket Case I liked the grittyness, although Brain Damage looks a tad nicer than that film and it is an entirely different kind of 80's. And then of course there is that sweet special magic that I've only ever seen with Henenlotter. He had such a wonderful talent with people, of bringing out and expanding on the qualities of pretty much ordinary people and making them seem like such, freaks! I like his lack of style! I once watched this when I was about 13 and I found it so stupid that I had to turn it off. Just goes to show how one's perspective can change. The colour blue is definitely a theme here, just like purple with Frankenhooker. Everyone knows the plot. Elmer and Brian meet, and they do make a connection, there's what you could call a full on chemical reaction, it's(if Bob Martin's anything to go by) possibly brought by some kind of dark divine intervention, although Elmer is definitely no shining li-ight! Heh. Yo Elmer, juice me! The "awe inspiring famous one" is so small and cute you'd think he wouldn't be able to hurt a fly. You'd be dead wrong! When you first watch the movie and first see Elmer, for a horrible few moments he looks really silly, but then you hear those deceptively lovely tones and he becomes something much more. One of the best evil laughs(I believe it's called a chortle)I've ever heard. All my favourite scenes in the movie are the twisted back and fourths between him and Brian. Particularly the "cold turkey" scene. For me it is so good to see Elmer finally die at the end, after all the death and misery the evil little b*****d has been causing for who knows how long... I love that ending! What with the juice-overloaded Brian with a little electric blue storm crackling above what's left of his head, looking quite serene. An epiphany, he burns so pretty... It lingers on the ethereally beautiful image for a few seconds and then-bzzm! The movie ends with a little blip of a sound like a TV going out, or Brian's life... On the DVD commentary Bob Martin talks about his book of the film. I've got one. Bob is supposed to be Frank Hennenlotter's good friend, so you may as well take the following as official canon. 6 Things about the Elmer you never knew: 1 "Said to have the power to make a king out of a commoner, and a conquerer of a king." 2 His juice can make the host age much slower. 3 Elmer can read people's minds. 4(oh god, this is really sad!) It's skin feels like a slimy sponge. 5 The reason it can get through a human skull so fast is because it's fangs secrete a bone dissolving acid. 6 "A water dweller, without it, it will become dormant and become something like a shard of driftwood, or a tight leather shell. It can stay this way for centuries if it needs to, until water gives it life again." Apart from a vague reference to it being meditated into existence, there is no definite answer as to what the Elmer is and where it comes from. I thought this sounded right: "A creature that is partly made from the earth and partly made from dreams, hallucinations and nightmares. He is only what you dream him to be-a devil who sells you what you already own at the price of your soul." When Brian sees Dwayne on the train he can sense something different about him and his basket, and Dwayne can feel the same thing. After Brian dies he goes to some kind of bizarre blue Elmer-type afterlife and sees a giant god-like version of Elmer, glaring balefully and triumphantly down at him. They touch and he becomes a part of it forever. Also, Beverly Bonner's bit character is the same one from Basket case! Hope someone got a kick out of all that, that was for every fan of the movie who said they wished to know more about Elmer. This is a great movie, it's Henenlotter's silver to the gold that is Basket Case!

BA_Harrison Tackling biological body-shock horror with a deliciously dark sense of humour and a bucket or two of low-budget gore, director Frank Henenlotter is—in my opinion—the David Cronenberg of schlock cinema.Like his better known Canadian counterpart, Henenlotter has dealt with deadly twins, the darker side of sexuality, parasitic creatures, and the hidden powers of the mind. But Whereas Cronenberg's output tends to be sober in tone, Henenlotter's movies are garish slices of demented fun—full of OTT splatter, sleazy characters, and moments of sheer lunacy.Brain Damage stars Rick Hearst as the unfortunate Brian, who wakes up one morning to discover that he has become host to a charismatic worm-like creature by the name of Elmer, who can deliver a euphoric high by injecting the brain with a highly addictive hallucinogenic liquid known as 'juice'. In return for these blasts of sheer bliss, the parasitic pusher merely asks to be fed—with human brains! Trippy visuals and outrageous gore scenes ensue, as a progressively messed up Brian lurches around New York, unwittingly providing his phallic pal with the nourishment he desires.As an allegory of the destructive effects of drug abuse, Brain Damage is effective stuff: despite their best efforts, Brian's nearest and dearest are unable to save him from the inevitable—an overdose that results in him blowing his mind (literally). And as an exercise in gross out visuals and bad taste gags, it's even better, delivering some incredible gory effects and enjoyably crass moments, the best bit being the oft-mentioned blow-job scene which sees an eager young woman accidentally giving head to Elmer, who proceeds to snack on her brains.Elmer himself is primarily achieved through puppetry and stop motion animation, although later scenes on a subway train see him briefly rendered via traditional animation; these effects vary in quality, from the passable to the rather shocking, but the character itself is so endearing that it is fairly easy to forgive his sometimes crude execution (Henenlotter managed the same trick with Belial in his superb debut Basket Case—a badly sculpted lump of rubber, but one with imbued with a well defined personality).