Brain Damage (1988)

There are numerous facets to horror. It is a genre that can be blended with many others. There have been dramatic horror films, comedic horror films, gothic horror films, romantic horror films, and various mixtures of each. The antagonists can be different between horror films. There could be ghosts, people, animals, monsters, religion, or even isolation to provide the scares. Horror is a genre that could be anything the mind could imagine. It could be everything that goes bump in the night. As long as there are some scares and dread involved, it is horror.

With that out of the way, there can be deeper themes and stories involved in horror flicks. A horror film doesn’t have to be surface level to be effective. Sure, there are things like Halloween, where the story is very surface level. A crazed killer escaped an institution and started killing people again. But there can be more to a horror tale than that. The horror could explore things like racism or sexism through the guise of a slasher or a ghost story. The stories don’t have to be surface level. There can be deeper themes and stories to give audiences.

Brain Damage was a 1988 film that most people wouldn’t think too much of. Brian (Rick Hearst) skipped out on a date with Barbara (Jennifer Lowry) because he wasn’t feeling good. He sent his brother, Mike (Gordon MacDonald), on the date instead. While he was home, Brian was assaulted by Aylmer (John Zacherle), an alien organism that fed on brains. They began a symbiotic relationship where Brian couldn’t live without Aylmer’s influence and Aylmer couldn’t live without Brian taking him out to eat brains.

There was more to Brain Damage than a simple monster movie. There was a simple, surface level story about a man’s relationship with a monster that wanted to eat brains. There was also a deeper story that added much more to the movie. Brain Damage was about drug addiction. It told a story about how drug use could lead to bad things for the user and the people in their life.

The drug addiction analogy started when Aylmer and Brian first met. Aylmer offered to make Brian feel better. He offered to help Brian get over whatever sickness he had. It was like an evil drug dealer trying to offer someone a drug they had never tried before. The way that Aylmer helped was to climb onto Brian’s neck and insert some sort of needle like appendage into a hole that led to Brian’s brain. Aylmer excreted some sort of blue liquid onto Brian’s brain, which acted like a stimulant. It pepped Brian up and started a series of increasingly horrible events in Brian’s life.

Not that Brian would remember them. The blue liquid caused hallucinations. Whenever Aylmer dripped it onto Brian’s brain, Brian would see psychedelic colours. He would go on a stereotypical LSD style trip as he ran around New York City. At least, it looked like New York City that he was running around. When the trip was done, Brian had no recollection of what had happened. He had been under the influence of Aylmer and essentially blacked out.

When Brian tried to quit the Aylmer fluid, he began jonesing like a drug addict who didn’t get the fix they needed. He was suffering through withdrawals. Brian knew that Aylmer was bad for him, so he tried to go without Aylmer’s liquid for a little bit. It didn’t work. It made Brian’s skin pale. He got sick. Other people who had been separated from Aylmer (other people had him at the start of the movie) started foaming at the mouth before going into a murderous rage to get the alien leech-like creature back. Minus maybe the murder, the way people acted and felt when separated from the liquid hallucinogenic that Aylmer provided was a solid representation of withdrawal.

Part of the attempt Brian made to quit Aylmer involved isolation, which was a big part of Brain Damage. Brian was always trying to isolate himself. He added five deadbolts to his bedroom door and the bathroom door. He wasn’t hanging out with Mike or Barbara anymore. He was always locked in either his room or the bathroom, behind those five deadbolts. When he tried to quit Aylmer, he left the apartment and holed up in some rundown motel or something. Even at the end, when he returned to the apartment, Brian told Barbara and Mike to leave him alone because he couldn’t control himself. It was all very isolationist, with Brian continually pushing people away or running away from them.

The isolation that Brian went through was like the isolation that many addicts go through. Families and friends get cut out of an addict’s life as they become more dependant on their vice. They push people away so that they can continue their addiction without any judgement. Or they hide the act of drug intake from the people around them. People won’t be able to comment on their addiction if they don’t see it. They keep the worst of it behind closed doors. It was exactly the sort of thing that Brian was doing to Mike and Barbara. He kept them from knowing what he was doing with Aylmer by cutting all ties he had with them.

That sense of isolation also bled into the non-isolation portion of addiction where it can hurt the people around an addict as much as it can hurt the addict. People don’t like seeing their loved ones going through troubling times. They don’t want to see their loved ones go through addiction. But it can become much more serious. An addict can cause problems that could put the lives of the people they love in danger. They could get someone else addicted to what they’re addicted to. They could get involved in some shady stuff while trying to score their fix, that could cause retaliation of some sort, leading to fatalities. Addiction could lead down a very dangerous path for anyone near an addict.

Brian knew that when he tried to isolate himself. When he told Mike and Barbara to let him go, he knew that his addiction to Aylmer’s brain fluid could lead to some serious harm coming to them. When Brian was under Aylmer’s influence, he had little control over his actions. Aylmer could do anything he wanted, rendering Brian helpless. Aylmer would kill the people around Brian and there was nothing Brian could do about it. Barbara didn’t listen to Brian. She, instead, followed him one night. She wanted to help. However, Brian had already gotten a hit of Aylmer’s juice. He couldn’t control himself. When Barbara approached him on the subway, Brian couldn’t stop Aylmer. Barbara was killed and her body was left on the seat.

This wasn’t the end of Brian’s addiction ways. He had one more step to take before the end of Brain Damage. After getting into an altercation that would involve Aylmer getting strangled and putting an overwhelming amount of blue liquid onto Brian’s brain, Brian was done for. There was no coming back from the dosage he had received. He went home to his apartment, went into his room, and began poking at a protrusion coming from his forehead. Mike came into the room to see what was going on, and Brian was sitting there with the front of his head burst open, bright light spilling everywhere.

It was clear to see that Brian had overdosed on Aylmer. He had taken too much of the drug that he was addicted to and his head blew open. He was beyond help. Nobody could save him because he was essentially braindead. Mike walking in and seeing his split open head was the same as a loved one coming in and finding an addict who overdosed and died. It was the inevitable ending for any story about an addict who couldn’t get help or couldn’t find a way to overcome their demons.

Brain Damage was a monster movie that clearly told an addiction story. Subtlety was thrown out the window as the tale of Brian and Aylmer played out. Brian met Aylmer and let Aylmer put the blue liquid on his brain. He went on a psychedelic trip while Aylmer killed people. From that point on, they were inseparable. Brian needed more of the blue brain liquid. Aylmer needed a host. Brian lost everything. The people he loved. His life. It was all gone because he was hooked on the brain juice. Like an addict hooked on drugs.

Many things can be done to a horror story. It could be a plain old horror tale that is meant to scare the audience. Some movies are simple haunted house thrill rides, meant to push buttons in the right way to get a rise out of people. Fun deaths, jump scares, and a spooky atmosphere. Many horror flicks, however, like to add a little something more to sweeten the pot. They add some depth beneath what a simple horror tale would otherwise be. A character who came back from the war could have PTSD flashbacks. Someone could be suffering from a drug addiction. There could be a divorce or death in the family underlying everything. Or even some racial injustice. The deeper the story, the more people will find something to latch onto.

In a genre as wide as horror, it can be easy to get lost in the fray. Horror could be blended with comedy, action, drama, or romance. It could be atmospheric, or it could be gory. There could be ghosts, monsters, animals, people, and all sorts of other spooky things to grab an audience’s attention. What makes the movies more memorable, though, is to have some deeper story that can pull the audience in. Some underlying, sometimes subtle, subtext. Regardless of the quality of a horror flick, it’s always nice to have that subtext. It gives more material to chew on. Even in the bad movies. Especially in the bad movies.

Now for a few notes to finish off the post:

• There weren’t any actor or director connections, so I’m just going to link a couple horror movies that came to mind while watching Brain Damage. The Deadly Spawn (week 19) and Killer Condom (week 205) were the two that immediately came to mind.
• Brain Damage was suggested by @erincandy, who previously suggested Glitter (week 22), Ghost Storm (week 97), Zombeavers (week 142), Dead Before Dawn 3D (week 149), Bigfoot vs. Zombies (week 218), Jem and the Holograms (week 238), Britney Ever After (week 258), Aliens vs. Titanic (week 283), and Hellriser (week 309).
• Have you seen Brain Damage? What did you think of it? Did you appreciate the drug addiction story that it told? Tell me what you thought on Twitter or in the comments.
• If you have a suggestion for a movie that I should check out for Sunday “Bad” Movies, let me know in the comments or on Twitter. I’m always open to suggestions. Just look at this week!
• Sunday “Bad” Movies is on Instagram. Head over there to check out the pictures and videos that go up daily.
• Next week is one that I’ve been looking forward to for a while. It’s a movie I saw a few years ago and was pleasantly surprised by. It had a bad reputation at the time, and still does. When I saw it, though, I had a good time and fell in love. A new Blu-ray of it recently came out with an newly released cut of the movie that was only seen at Cannes before now. If you’ve kept up on recent Blu-ray releases, you might already know what I’m writing about next week. Southland Tales! Come back next Sunday to see what I’ll write about that one. Until then, have a good one.

Picasso Trigger (1988) and the Tropes of Andy Sidaris

Andy Sidaris was a prolific director who changed the way the entertainment world worked. Most of that came before his transition into film. He was a sportscaster who won Emmy’s for his work in broadcast sports. He directed the 1968 Summer Olympics, as well as Wide World of Sports. Some of the techniques he pioneered still get used periodically to this day, including his most famous, the honey shot. That shot involved the camera focusing on a good-looking woman in the crowd when there was some slow time during a broadcast. His success in the sports field would lead to his transition into directing scripted projects.

The beginning of Andy Sidaris’s scripted career was in scripted television. Start small and move up to bigger projects. He directed episodes of Gemini Man, The Hardy Boys, and Kojak while still doing some work in sports. In 1973, he made the leap into feature films with Stacey. He had directed a documentary feature about James Garner’s auto racing team, The Racing Scene, in 1969, but Stacey was his first foray into scripted feature films. He would follow that up with Seven, before essentially reimagining Stacey through a film called Malibu Express. That would be the film that ushered in the later part of his career, and the movies that would define it.

Malibu Express kicked off a series that has come to have three different, distinct titles. The one that Andy Sidaris gave it by the end was L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies, since it involved good looking women working for a spy agency called L.E.T.H.A.L. throughout many of the films. Fans gave it a couple different names, however. One of the names was Guns, Girls, and G-Strings, which titled a box set of all twelve movies in the series. The final name, and the one that most people called the series by, was Triple-B. That stood for Bullets, Bombs, and Babes. Three words starting with the letter B, Triple-B.

Following Malibu Express was the most famous of the Triple-B films, Hard Ticket to Hawaii. After that came Picasso Trigger in 1988. Picasso Trigger picked up some time after Hard Ticket to Hawaii. Donna (Dona Speir), Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton), Jade (Harold Diamond), and Edy (Cynthia Brimhall) were back. This time, they teamed up with an agency, whose members included Travis Abilene (Steve Bond) and Pantera (Roberta Vasquez), to take down an evil crime syndicate. It was an action-packed ninety minutes of spy missions.

Picasso Trigger was the third film in the Triple-B series. As such, it contained a bunch of different tropes that would be a part of almost every Triple-B movie. Some of them originated in Malibu Express. Others came from Hard Ticket to Hawaii. By the time Andy Sidaris got to Picasso Trigger, he had a formula built from the tropes. He had perfected the formula. Audiences came to expect the tropes because of the formula. And there would be movie magic that came from Andy Sidaris’s use of the formula.

The first piece of the Andy Sidaris formula was to have a male character with the last name Abilene. This trope began in Malibu Express. The main character was Cody Abilene, a sort of detective for hire who was tasked with solving a mystery surrounding a well-off family. He went off to Hollywood sometime before Hard Ticket to Hawaii. His cousin, Rowdy Abilene, played a major part in the second Triple-B movie. When the time came for the third movie, Picasso Trigger, Rowdy was out, and Travis Abilene was in. The characters were interchangeable. They all served the role of male action hero in a series that was about the women being more dependable in action situations. They were so interchangeable, in fact, that they all shared some common attributes. They could not shoot at moving targets with a handgun. They possessed a boat called Malibu Express. They also liked the leading ladies of their movies.

Cody Abilene was a ladies’ man. He had a lot of women as friends and acquaintances and slept with most of them. They were as attracted to him as he was to them. But when it came to Hard Ticket to Hawaii and Picasso Trigger, there was something more specific that the Abilene men shared in their sexual ways. They shared Donna, the leading lady. Throughout Hard Ticket to Hawaii, Rowdy Abilene had a relationship with Donna. It felt like more than a simple sexual relationship. They seemed to care about each other beyond their bodies. They were an item. In Picasso Trigger, Travis Abilene hooked up with Donna a couple times, and that was it. He didn’t have the same connection that Rowdy had with Donna.

The character of Donna brought up another one of Andy Sidaris’s tropes. Well, maybe not the character. The actress playing Donna was the trope. Donna was played by Dona Speir. She was a Playboy Playmate who had been Miss March in 1984. Andy Sidaris usually cast Playboy Playmates and Penthouse Pets in his female action roles. Dona Speir was the main one from Hard Ticket to Hawaii until Fit to Kill, but the supporting cast around her was filled with other Playmates. Hope Marie Carlton, Cynthia Brimhall, and Patty Duffek also joined the series during Hard Ticket to Hawaii. They were Miss July 1985, Miss October 1985, and Miss May 1984, respectively. They were joined by Roberta Vasquez (Miss November 1984), Kym Malin (Miss May 1982), and Liv Lindeland (Miss January 1971 and Playmate of the Year 1972) in Picasso Trigger.

But to get the true origin of the Sidaris casting in the Triple-B series, Malibu Express must be looked at. This was the first movie of the Triple-B series and the one before Sidaris found his footing. It was before the tenure of Dona Speir. Malibu Express featured Playboy Playmates in many of the supporting roles, much like the later installments. Lorraine Michaels (Miss April 1981), Kimberly McArthur (Miss January 1982), Barbara Edwards (Miss September 1983 and Playmate of the Year 1984), and Lynda Wiesmeier (Miss July 1982) filled out much of the supporting cast. Some of them (McArthur and Edwards) were there simply to pad out the eroticism that Sidaris wanted. The others (Michaels and Wiesmeier) had supporting roles that actually meant something to the story.

The final trope in the casting area was Andy Sidaris putting himself in a bit role in each of the Triple-B movies. Malibu Express featured Sidaris as the driver of an RV who picked up Cody Abeline and his friend June Khnockers (that’s with an h) after a helicopter and car chase. He came back in Hard Ticket to Hawaii as the floor director of a sports show. In Picasso Trigger, he may have been reprising that Hard Ticket to Hawaii role. He was a man playing golf against Jimmy John (Wolf Larson), the host of that sports show. It was never explicitly said if his character was the floor director, now off work. Either way, he was there.

There’s a chain reaction thing here with the next trope. In the writing process of the Triple-B movies, a few things continually came up. One of those was sports. Andy Sidaris liked to toss sports into his movies. It made sense, coming from a guy who had directed so much sports content. Picasso Trigger had the golf scene, featuring two characters from the previous film. Hard Ticket to Hawaii had the sports show, where Jimmy John interviewed football players before a football conference. Malibu Express had some sports, as well. June Khnockers (with an h) was a race car driver. Her race car was a major part of the chase scene with the helicopter near the end of the film.

The sports didn’t stop there, though. There were important moments in Hard Ticket to Hawaii and Picasso Trigger that used sports as a weapon. In what was arguably the most famous scene from Hard Ticket to Hawaii, Rowdy Abilene weaponized a frisbee. The drug gang that was taking over Molokai killed a couple police officers. The main henchman, Shades, played frisbee with a woman on the beach every day. Rowdy crashed the frisbee toss and got into a competition with Shades over who could throw better. He quickly swapped frisbees for one lined with razor blades and tossed it into Shades’s neck, killing him. Picasso Trigger didn’t have as much setup to the use of weaponized sports equipment. After a dirt bike chase, Donna and Taryn cornered one of the henchmen. Taryn pulled out a boomerang, stuck a small bomb to it, and threw it at the henchman, blowing him up. It was the Picasso Trigger version of the frisbee moment from Hard Ticket to Hawaii.

One last bit of the story that Andy Sidaris put into his movies, for some strange reason, was remote-control vehicles. He must have been extremely fascinated by anything with a remote control in the mid-80s. They always seemed to be there. Okay, not always. There may not have been one in Malibu Express. But he didn’t perfect his style until Hard Ticket to Hawaii and each of the movies that followed used remote-control vehicles as pivotal parts of the storytelling. If they hadn’t been there, certain things in the story couldn’t have happened at all.

Hard Ticket to Hawaii began with a remote-control helicopter. Donna and Taryn flew their delivery plane to Molokai, where they dropped off a couple passengers and a snake. They walked around for a bit and heard a noise. It was an RC helicopter landing in the field behind them. They approached and found two cases of diamonds in it. This began the conflict between the women and the drug gang as the gang wanted the diamonds back, while the women wanted to stop the drug gang. The entire story hinged on a remote-control helicopter delivering diamonds.

Picasso Trigger doubled up on the remote-control mayhem. It began with a remote-control plane flying circles around Donna and Taryn’s rented boat. It dove down and exploded, blowing up the entire boat, and “killing” the women while they watched on from the beach. Later on, when Donna and Taryn stormed the base of some local thugs, Taryn strapped a bomb to a remote-control car and jumped it off a surfboard into a house, where a large explosion erupted. The car might not have been essential, ending up being a cool visual and nothing more, but the plane was something that pushed the story in a new direction. It was the event that pulled Donna and Taryn back into the spy world. Without the remote-control plane, they never would have been involved in the story.

Andy Sidaris was a writer and director who figured out a formula two films into a series and kept using that formula until the day he died. Malibu Express started things, but Hard Ticket to Hawaii figured out what a perfect Andy Sidaris movie was. From that point on, he kept using the blueprint he laid to churn out movie after movie. His final movie came out in 1998, ending the Triple-B series at twelve movies. He didn’t make another movie until he passed away in 2007. The series was done, and so was Andy Sidaris.

Some filmmakers find themes in their movies that they keep hitting home with time and time again. They find actors who they like to work with, and they stick with those actors. Andy Sidaris did that throughout his career, especially when it came to the Triple-B series. The movies wouldn’t be the same without Sidaris’s sincere way of sticking to what he knew and what he wanted. That’s perfectly okay. The twelve-film Triple-B series was a fun action series with equal amounts of bullets, bombs, and babes. Nobody makes movies like Andy Sidaris anymore, which makes his legacy all that much more important.

Now for a few notes:

• Andy Sidaris directed, and was featured in, Picasso Trigger, Hard Ticket to Hawaii (week 352), and Malibu Express (week 383).
• Picasso Trigger saw the third appearance of Keith Cooke, who was previously in Mortal Kombat (week 140) and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (week 140).
• Kym Malin was in both Road House (week 200) and Picasso Trigger.
• Ten people appeared in both Hard Ticket to Hawaii (week 352) and Picasso Trigger. They were Rustam Branaman, Cynthia Brimhall, Hope Marie Carlton, Harold Diamond, Patty Duffek, Wolf Larson, Richard LePore, Rodrigo Obregón, Erick Schrum, and Dona Speir.
• Finally, John Brown and Abb Dickcon returned from Malibu Express (week 383) to be in Picasso Trigger.
• Have you seen Picasso Trigger? What did you think? What are your feelings on the Triple-B series or Andy Sidaris in general? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.
• You can find me on Twitter if you want to suggest a movie for me to watch as part of a future Sunday “Bad” Movies post. Or you can put that suggestion in the comments. I’m always looking for movies that haven’t yet popped up on my radar.
• Head on over to Instagram for some Sunday “Bad” Movies fun all week long.
• To finish things off, let’s look forward. Another week, another movie. Next week, I’m veering back into horror. This one comes from the 1980s. Same year as Picasso Trigger, actually. 1988. I’ll be checking out Brain Damage. Not sure how I’m going to feel after it. You’ll find out next week. See you then.