OK, “Man with the Screaming Brain”. When I read a comment on Netflix that this 2005 production was a 90 minute movie that felt like 5 hours, liking the idea of 3 and 1/2 hours being added to my life, I decided…
Wait, we’ve already begun. “Somewhere in Bulgaria…” appears on the black screen. Cut immediately to a little red car pulling up before a hotel. One shot in and I’m impressed with this made-for-sci-fi-tv flick. The kind of low production values that make bad chocolate raisins taste so good, (even though when that cheap chocolate and raisin combination hits the back of your throat you’re some times left gagging). Accordion music, a tone deaf woman humming. Perhaps the same woman with the red flower in her hair, in the car, who pulls out a paper that reads “Find An American Husband”, a print out from husband.com. She holds loads of delightful maniacal promise too.
Cut to the prospective spouse in his tropical shirt glibly remarking that she’s beautiful but he’s found a better deal. A better deal? This egotistical American scum has found a better deal? Close-up of the beauty with the red flower tucked behind her ear looking like a third world Barbie who watches in real time as on EBay the prospect of the desired designer handbag is swept beyond her grasp by yet another higher bid. No! Not again! “Make love to me, Larry! Make love to me before you walk out of my life forever!” Larry smiles and accepting the invitation walks straight into a griiiiinding knife in the gut. He says, “Wha…” and falls. “I accept your rejection,” she says. And it’s just as flat-sounding and unadorned as it sounds.
Which is as it should be.
Cut to Damienesque/Russianesque music…
SCI FI PICTURES PRESENTS
AN APOLLOPROSCREEN PRODUCTION
OF A FWE PICTURE COMPANY PRODUCTION
IN ASSOCIATION WITH CREATIVE LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT
STARRING
BRUCE CAMPBELL
TAMARA GORSKI
IN
MAN WITH THE SCREAMING BRAIN (title accompanied by a flash of Frankenstein lightning and a scream)
Here now is a suit with a mustache and red tie (Bruce Campbell as William Cole) and a blond woman in pink suit and neon pink scarf at his side (Antoinette Byron as Jackie Cole, bearing a strong resemblance to Heather Locklear) who is so trophy slick that she soft focus gleams the reflected radiance of ten thousand and one salons (or is that my strangled DSL low quality View Now video quality). He’s trying to make a cellphone call. “Can you hear anything?” Jackie asks. “I thought you said all you had to do was…”
Turn it on and dial, yes, that’s what they told Bill, that’s what he did! It’s not working. So how will they get ahold of the limo company!? They’re not in Kansas anymore, not by a long shot. Harumph. And off they go in disgruntled, tense, entitled search of a taxi.
“Hello, do you speak English?” they ask the first taxi driver.
Subtitles. “No, and I don’t want to.”
“OK. Thank you.”
A blond Russian taxi driver who does speak English is swiftly found (and looks exactly like an East European, paranoid, pipe wielding heroin/coke dealer behind whom we used to live, who used to roam his yard at midnight with said pipe), who informs them that they must go with the taxi at the head of the queue or he’ll be killed. So the “crazy rich American” slaps some cash in the hand of the guy at the head of the queue and returns to the English speaking taxi driver who’s been flirting with his wife meanwhile and climbs in the car.
“Capitalism works every time,” Cole brags. What has brought them there? Business. “Shopping,” the perfect blond interrupts. The cab driver informs the couple there are deals to be had as capitalism is still new in Bulgaria and they aren’t as learned in price gouging.
MEANWHILE, ACROSS TOWN
We have a Red Bull addicted (pours it over his cereal), hip-hop obsessed mad scientist’s assistant (Ted Raimi as the dimwitted, Western culture cultist Pavel) programming a robot to brush its teeth and hair.
“Tell me what you see here!” the elder mad scientist (Stacy Keach as Dr. Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov) invites the other to look in a microscope. These aren’t normal cells at all bouncing around down there but cells from two different DNA proteos! And they’re duplicating!
Back in the taxi the rich Americans are befuddled and exasperated that their seat belts have no buckles. As happens in all sci-fi, an argument about capitalism ensues.
“Just so you know, in many states in the US it’s against the law to talk on the cellphone while you drive!” William Cole informs the cabbie (Vladimir Koleva as Yegor).
“Everything’s against the law in the US,” Yegor retorts.
“Yeah, that’s a good one coming from you commies.”
“What’s to be happy about capitalism?” The taxi driver protests he one had a good life with a pension and now works 25 hours a day for nothing and lives in a small apartment.
“Capitalism is the only way to go,” Cole instructs him. “Because from capitalism flows democracy, so your miserable little life will improve eventually.”
Stuck in a traffic jam, Yegor says that the only way to avoid it is to go through gypsy town, which he doesn’t recommend.
So, of course, the rich American insists upon it.
Cut to the lair of the mad scientist where Ivan tells his assistant that with this new drug he’s discovered, two brains can be put together like, “What’s the word for interlocking toys?”
Legos?
“Lincoln logs!” corrects the elder traditionalist. “And our timing could not be better! The CEO of the largest drug company in the world is coming to our fair city!”
Whiff of plot development as (you knew it) the elder scientist displays for the camera a newspaper photo of Ugly Rich American. He winds up an old Victrola and pulls out the booze for a celebration, the assistant opting for Red Bull, because he is “a global citizen.”
“Think of the minds that can be saved, repaired, or even replaced,” the Dr. glories in his prospective success. The next step? Human trials!!
Foreboding music as the camera cuts to a cell dividing into two and those two cells going poof, bye world.
But back to the bright sunny yellow taxi.
GYPSY TOWN
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all, the blond admits, the taxi driver saying anything could happen here, screeching to a halt as the gypsy woman from the opening scene (Tamara Gorski as Tatoya), crossing in front of the cab, yells that the road is hers and slaps his hood for having almost run her over.
I just noticed the name of the cab is HAPPY TAXI.
Tatoya surveying the individuals in the cab, her eyes light up with money lust falling upon the rich American. They drive on, but we know we will be seeing Tatoya again, who appears to have been familiar with Yegor. He says she’s a head case living with her grandparents above the family bridal shop.
It looks like they’re almost free and clear of gypsy town when they are supposedly trapped between two cars, in a street with plenty of passing room, the taxi driver saying that these gangsters are there to hijack the car, so he pulls out a gun and challenges them, reminding his clients they should stay in the car. Successfully running off the petty gangsters, his rise-to-the-occasion manliness impresses greatly Jackie, who suggests to her husband that they “keep him”, Yegor.
And William dim-wittedly agrees despite his obviously strained relationship with Jackie.
Up in the hotel room, the Rich American prepares to go to his meeting. “You know, you could pretend to care,” he reprimands his wife who relaxes, bored, on the sofa, watching television.
“Oh, I can pretend to care. I’ve been pretending for years, William.”
Poor guy. He may be an ugly American but Campbell plays him sympathetically here. I don’t know why the few reviews I’ve read say there’s nothing that makes you care about these people. I don’t know why they say that nothing happens in the first 50 minutes of this 90 minute film. I couldn’t be happier with what has happened so far. A sci fi soap! Sure, there’s a lot to roll your eyes about but there are enough run-of-the-mill turns ending in inspired twists that I’d forgive Campbell’s direction almost anything at this point.
Outside he runs into Tatoya who happens to be a maid at the hotel. “Have I seen you before? I never forget a beautiful woman.”
“My new man,” she promises herself as he walks on.
The cab driver had been asked by Rich Head of Drug Company to keep a look out for something special for his wife as he’s in trouble with her. As he gets in the cab the driver hands him a jewelry box with “something that will make her very happy” but declines to say where he got it.
AND IN OTHER NEWS, BRAVODA HOPES TO BENEFIT FROM THE RECENT ARRIVAL OF UNITECH CEO, WILLIAM COLE…
Back to the mad scientist and his assistant who prepare a letter for “Billy”. Too familiar. “Willy?”
The mad scientist notes that between war, accidents and illness, the world is a dangerous place and how does the CEO know he won’t be the next victim needing a successful transplant, and that this drug may well save his life.
“Yours, in the interest of humanity.”
The elder scientist returning to either his experiments or his vodka, the younger assistant crumples the letter and, chock full of Red Bull, decides to make it better.
Back to the CEO taking a business tour of an aborted subway system that if finished would put the cabbie out of his job. In the meanwhile, the cabbie is ferrying Jackie Cole who complains she never gets to do anything. The cabbie suggests maybe this trip things will be different. She takes his cigarette, which surprises him as he thought no Americans smoke.
“It’s strong,” she says, “like everything in Europe. Coffee, beer…men.” She looks in a make-up mirror, flufffing her hair. “Ever wish you could get a new body and start all over again?”
This time, when she asks what his association with the gypsy girl is, he reveals that he used to be with the KGB and was assigned gypsy town, and that he and the gypsy girl used to be engaged but he broke it off.
The bored blond suggests they forget shopping and instead explore the city, via the “scenic route”. While they get more familiar, the CEO husband returns to the hotel, where he is encountered by the mad research scientist’s assistant, he eagerly handing him the letter and requesting he reads it.
He does.
“Mr. Cole, if you’ve ever wanted more than you have today, if you’ve ever looked at your successful friends and said, hey, my friends are successful, a really famous research scientist has developed a powerful wonder drug that will change history and he want you to be a part of it!”
Though William Cole rejects the offer…whoever wrote that, my heart is thine.
Cole goes up to his hotel room to find the gypsy girl. And, well, we know what happens next, she also pickpocketing him as they embrace.
Except we didn’t know what would happen next! No coitus for Cole, for the gypsy girl foolishly pronounces the oracle that one day they will be married.
What? Cole steps away. Does she think he would ever leave his wife for a gypsy freak?? Tatoya is in the process of pulling out her knife when a certain satisfied blond wife bursts in through the door and berates her husband for unfaithfulness, then declares that she is leaving him, this time for good! And flees the building.
Finding that he’s been pickpocketed, the CEO goes in search of the gypsy, chasing her out a service entrance of the hotel, where she beans him with a pole. Down he goes. The cab driver approaches his ex bride-to-be, asking what she’s done. She holds up the jewelry box. “How could you give our ring away?!” He protests that he didn’t, that he sold it. “I loved you! You were the most beautiful man I ever saw! I’d do anything for you! I’d kill for you! If I cannot have you forever, can I at least have you one last time?”
Yegor takes Tatoya’s well-manicured hand in his hammer and sickle tattooed hand and she knifes him. As he lies dying on the ground, she cements the deal by blasting him once, twice, thrice with his own gun, then piteously wrenches the jewelry box out of his hand.
As she stalks off, we have a shot of the cabbie in his blue jogging suit lying near the prostrate CEO.
You need to rent this film if only for this shot. It’s beautiful.
Seriously. You can’t tell from the below picture, but it’s beautiful. Classic. I about fell over laughing. As you can see, I was so impressed that I reached for the camera. It made me that happy.
Why every review I’ve looked at seems to not like this film much, if not actively hating it, I don’t know. It’s got lovely subtleties and a beautifully understated allure.
Sirens. Hospital. “I’m sorry to say, Mrs. Cole, but the news isn’t good.” Because of the severe brain injuries her husband has been deprived of all five senses and is unable to live independent of machines. They could keep a pulse going, but “it’s not much of a life.”
Another woman might have said, “Good, let him live.” But Jackie meaningfully whimpers over William that she’s sorry they didn’t get a chance to retrieve what they once had before he died. Then walking out, matter-of-factly she faces the obvious and declares herself the winner. “All right, pull the plug.” Grabbing a cab she requests to be taken to Gypsy Town.
The scientists, learning of the tragedy, are elated as this will enable them to show Mr. Cole the value of the mad scientist’s idea! The elder instructs the younger to fetch for him the bodies.
Oh my! The blond hasn’t gone to throw herself in the arms of the cabbie. No, she’s gone to Tatoya’s home! She bursts through the doors. “You killed my husband, bitch! Now I’m going to kill you!” Ensues now a wonderful fight scene that beats out anything Tarentino flogged the audience with in “Kill Bill”, polished off with the gypsy woman throwing the blond down a flight of stairs, who had moxie but just not quite enough of a combination of brains and street wiles, overestimating her Rodeo Drive survivalist savvy.
Cut to the lair of the mad scientist with blue lasers pulsing and the top half of the CEO’s skull laid bare for all to see. He must be alive because he’s dreaming of fighting with the cabbie! The “inhibitor” is injected.
“Now, all we can do is wait and see.” The scientists snap off their gloves while gypsies loot the blond of her jewelry before the police arrive.
POLICE UNIT 54 REPORTING. WOMAN FOUND DEAD IN GYPSY TOWN. CAUCASIAN, BLONDE, AMERICAN PASSPORT.
The scientists pick up the news over their radio.
“Blond woman found in gypsy town?”
“Very unusual.”
“You want me to pick her up?”
“In this world you never know what you’re going to get. Yeah…”
Three days later they are testing the sensory and auditory responses of the CEO, his back to us. All are positive! Cut to the front of CEO to show him with…well…someone needs sewing lessons.
“Where am I?”
The scientists introduce themselves. Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov and Pavel. They illustrate with crudely drawn pictures on a blackboard how the right side of William’s brain was severely damaged and they have united his brain with tissue from the right side of the brain of a donor. Like Lincoln logs. They promise his brain will eventually overcome the donor’s portion and he will function as a whole…
Wait, the CEO has a flash of memory…of him being beaned, only he’s observing himself! That’s not his memory!
“The hypo campus is experiencing cerebral flushes. Waves of chemical being released from the other brain tissue. You are suffering from Post Shock Stress Disorder. Don’t be alarmed.”
Then they drag an increasingly agitated William off for routine adjustments to his temporal lobe, only with the strength of the cabbie he fights them off and rushes outside into the light where, mad with the confusion of his capitalist brain having been united with a commie cabbie’s, he plunges through the streets and squares of the town, frightening innocent children. Lost and bewildered he berates communist culture staring at him, then collapses in a ready, empty chair beside a monument to grief-stricken communist humanity, only to quickly flee the prospect of reflective misery.
“Don’t be afraid comrade,” the cabbie addresses him, citizens fleeing in horror as he and the cabbie take turns maneuvering his body in clumsy yin rejection of the yang and vice versa.
“I suggest from now on we stop using I or me. It’s we,” the cabbie says. And William accepts the proposal.
“What do we do now?”
“We need clothing, food and car. Follow me.”
The cabbie leads the CEO to a lot holding cars intended for the black market, including the old Happy Taxi. When the CEO rejects the car as a piece of shit, he and the cabbie do the requisite crazed man strangling himself. Which I don’t mind. A lot of other reviewers weren’t impressed and tagged this as an old gag, but come on, how many science fiction movies have united a capitalist’s brain with a communist one?
The cabbie wins.
“Don’t forget. You hurt me, you hurt yourself,” William reminds the cabbie.
When Marty got home, I made him sit down and watch the movie with me, which was my second time through. Even he said, “That’s funny”, though I expected him to side with the reviewers on the fight scene being a weary old gag.
Next, William and Yegor settling their clothing differences, I fall in love. Don’t ask me why.
Love is irrational.
Now, time for work! Or not! The CEO refuses to beg (now this I don’t believe) but the cabbie forces him into it.
Back to the mad scientist’s lair, we find that the heart of the blond is kaput and her spinal column is shattered. She needs a whole new body, which they have! The mobile mot!
Cut to William/Yegor entering a restaurant and taking a table. A difference in culinary tastes leads to…well, people, needless to say, start leaving the restaurant. William/Yegor picks up a newspaper intending to read like “normal people” and is greeted with a news article of his death and his wife’s! For the first time he realizes who he is, and who his body’s cosponsor is. A bond is forged between the left and right sides of the brain of revenge to be had on the gypsy woman who killed them both.
Finding the tires on the cab stolen, they make off with a pink Vespa.
Back to the lab where the brain of the blond has been installed in the mobile bot which has been outfitted with a blond wig. The scientists attempt to explain to her that an accident had befallen her. “No accident!” her mechanical voice intones, and she sweeps away the mad scientist and assistant to plunge boldly, if mechanically, out the door into the street, her heart set on revenge. Their task now is to find her before her power pak runs out and her brain dies from lack of oxygen!
Cut to Gypsy Town where the resourceful blond finds a power boost in the auto body shop of the gangsters.
Cut to the lair of the mad scientist who is drunk and angsting over his inability to get his little cells to accept other little cells that are foreign to themselves. If only he could build a wall between them so they could live together without even knowing it!
“A wall! That’s it! A wall of protein that binds them but separates them at the same time! That’s it!”
There, on the blackboard behind Stacy Keach, you can see the cells with the wall of protein binding but separating the two at the same time.
Which is commentary on every wall ever built but more specifically the wall being erected between the United States and Mexico. Because I say so. Even the Great Wall of China is commentary on the US/Mexico Wall, the Chinese seeing it as a symbol of tyranny until Westerners came along and resold it as a magnificent achievement. The folklore of the Chinese was that it was filled with the bodies of dead peasantry and represented only pain and misery.
May 21 2006 REUTERS/Jeff Topping
Cut to the gypsy singing about how all the men she loves are dead, so now she must marry herself, lighting candles, dressed in a bridal gown!
Cut to the blond in her yellow jumpsuit making her way to the bridal shop.
Cut to the gypsy woman placing the ring on her own finger.
“If anyone objects, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
“I do!” the mobile bot blond objects, kicking off another battle. Or is the multi-layered film suggesting that Jackie is, with those words, marrying Tatoya, uniting them both thusly until the day their brains die?
* * * * * * *
Guess what? I’m not giving away the end of the film! I’m not gonna blog it! But we’re nowhere near the end with one more fight scene between Jackie and Tatoya and several more chase and fight scenes involving William/Yegor and Tatoya.
* * * * * * *
“See, see why I love this film?” I kept saying to Marty, encouraging him to say, “Yes, yes,” or “No, not really”.
“Yeah, it’s subtle,” he repeated what I’d been telling him, with no hint of sarcasm. “I just wish the actors were more than adequate…”
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” They’re perfect and I’m not even a Bruce Campbell cultist. I’ve never watched Evil Dead. I’m not a fan of modern horror flicks, not of the horror genre in general. I don’t watch television. We don’t have the Sci-Fi channel. We don’t have cable. Yes, around 1996/1997 I used to sometimes watch Xena but that was mostly in company with some friends of mine who routinely had Xena watching parties, but I wasn’t personally a fan, was largely unimpressed, and I don’t recollect Campbell if I saw the episodes in which he appeared. Again, I didn’t watch Hercules. Or The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. By now you’re thinking I’m hopeless, but I’m willing to admit my cluelessness in order to counter reviews that give this only as a film that could be appreciated by die-hard Bruce Campbell cultists. Because I was sold on this film from the first frame on.
But even Campbell cultists didn’t heap much love on this film. The Flick Filosopher seems to state most succinctly the disappointment had by Bruce Campbell geekoids:
How could this be less than geeky perfection?…I wanted, was expecting, had been promised intentional badness, some sly and subtle and silly self-aware commentary on the legacy of B-movies and terrible science fiction that has shaped the mindset of an entire subculture, a big pile of winking, ironic fun. And I got unintentional actual badness…There’s nothing inherently ridiculous about Cole or Campbell’s performance except that we’re all supposed to automatically find him funny cuz he’s Bruce Campbell…mostly it’s inexcusably lazy and hoping that we won’t notice how lazy it is in the dazzle coming off our idol Bruce Campbell.
So why was I sold from the first frame on? The culty infamy of Bruce Campbell wasn’t leading me by the nose, but hadn’t set me up with any preconceptions of what to expect either. Instead of unintentional badness I saw a sendup on badness that was droll, dry and insanely self-deprecating, even dangerously so in order to explore, with subtle commentary, the bad that is so bad…perhaps even refusing to ingratiate a self-infatuated audience in love with their idea of what makes bad bad.
Variety.com doesn’t care for it. eFilmcritic recommends it only for fans. Filmcritic finds the (hilarious) first half to be tedious, as do most. Foster on Film doesn’t like the first half either and not the second much either. Jame’s Movie Blog doesn’t care for it. Matt’s movie blog doesn’t either. Quipster gave it 2 out of 5 stars. The Aisle Seat calls it tedious. And so on and so forth.
So why did I love it so much that I watched it and blogged it and then had Marty sit down with me the day after to watch it again? And now I’m actually going to order it from Netflix so that I can watch it with commentary, too?
* * * * * * * *
Having read several reviews, I’m surprised that so far no one has brought up Jackie the Robot being partly a take-off on Uma in Kill Bill. No one has noticed how Jackie, in her yellow jumpsuit, struggling with the Gypsy bride, is Uma/Jackie fighting with Uma/The Bride. This is rather disappointing.
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