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.