In a small town in the USA/Canada, a psychiatrist runs a popular local television show that is secretly being used to control the minds of all its viewers via the powers of an enormous brain-like alien with a hunger for human flesh. Unfortunately the effects aren’t entirely 100% on some teenagers, and it comes down to teenage rebel Jim Majewelski to save the world…if he can get past his hallucinations of the psychiatrist’s nurse walking around topless. Which, frankly, I’m not sure he should. She’s…nice.
Anyway it’s a movie about mind control via the mass media! Yes, I know, it’s not really original. It’s like if The Stepford Wives had a love child with Fiend Without a Face, only with little budget and a whole lot of sodium. Yes, sodium. Chemistry saves the world, folks, from a giant man-eating brain creature that apparently can make you hallucinate giant tentacle tongues coming through the walls, like some kind of freaky Japanese porn only way less fun.
So what is entertaining about this movie? The mistakes! The main character’s clothes change in how dirty they are throughout. In some shots it has snowed recently, while in others it is dry as a bone. Pretty much everybody is walking around with a gun, even the guards at the local mental institution, and that just seems like a bad idea. There’s also a scene near the beginning where a teddy bear’s eyes are supposed to bleed, but the piping was way lower than it should have been, so instead it just looks like it has a pair of oozing ink spots. Oh, and you can even see a foot behind the giant monster brain from the guy moving it around at one point!
But David Gale does play the evil psychiatrist, and he gets his head knocked off, just like in Re-Animator. Actually now that I think about it, there are a couple of decapitations in this film, along with at least one chainsaw mutilation, and a tube of caulk can be used to stop a giant monster tongue. But most importantly, bolt cutters can apparently solve all of life’s little problems. I highly recommend you go buy some, folks.
Movie Reviews by a Mook 