Brain Dead

 Not to be confused with Braindead, which has a lot more zombies and one more kung-fu priest.

 This is a mostly forgotten 1990 surrealistic thriller that I remembered liking, and it keeps up coming up in my streaming suggestions, so... why not? I liked it a lot less this time around, which is always a danger when you do this sort of thing, but even if it's not perfect it's got a lot to recommend it.

 The story behind it is pretty interesting: According to a TFH interview with Julia Corman (Roger Corman's wife), she asked a couple of interns to go through a room full of old scripts - a couple hundred's worth - to see if there was anything worth salvaging. The only one selected was Paranoia, an old script from the sixties written by Charles Beaumont of Twilight Zone fame (he wrote, among other TZ classics, Perchance to Dream; for Corman, he adapted Masque of the Red Death.) Corman had reviewed it in the eighties but discarded it as it seemed too dated. Along comes Adam Simon, and offers to rewrite it, pitching a corporate intrigue subplot to make it more modern. I have no idea if he offered to direct it as well, but it's interesting that he's written quite a few movies since, and directed only documentaries and shorts... except for a couple more Corman productions after this one (including Carnosaur!).

 Dr. Rex Martin (Bill Pullman) is a successful independent neurosurgeon and researcher who's contacted by his old friend Jim (played with maximum smarm by Bill Paxton) to try and recover some important knowledge from one Bill Halsey (Bud Cort).
 Hallsey, a mathematician, had been working on some critical numbers for Jim's corporation. Unfortunately, he went mad and murdered his family before he put down said numbers to paper. Dr. Martin balks at first - the treatment is highly experimental - and then balks again when Jim makes it clear that failure is an option... as long as the knowledge is then lost forever. This would be Adam Simon's addition to the script, then.

 Dr. Martin goes to meet with Hallsey, who is more far gone than you'd think; he believes he works for a mattress company, and that his boss is the one who murdered his family. He does agree to undertake the surgery, though.

 Oh, I'm sure this won't factor in anywhere, but as Dr. Martin is walking down the street with a brain in a jar under his arm, as neurologists usually do, he gets into an accident and smashes someone's windscreen in with his head.

 Wait, that's just a dream, haha, never mind. As I said, unimportant. The next day he performs the procedure on Hallsey in an operating theater off the side of a boardroom, with the full board in attendance (including George Kennedy, who as always looks to me like he just stepped out of the seventies, as the CEO).

 This operation scene is the highlight of the movie; Hallsey is awake during the open brain surgery, and has visions as Dr. Martin prods around in his brain and asks him questions. One of the visions is of his dead family, sitting on a beach as if for a family photo, but as they were when they died.

 It's not just that it's creepy as hell, but the film's sly sense of humor and weirdness are firing on all cylinders here; Dr. Martin's questions are voiced by the mother, and when people from the Board interrupt and start talking, their voices come from the children... much to Hallsey's bemusement. The fact that no one is aware of this except for Hallsey is just the cherry on top. Not coincidentally, this is the only bit I remembered of the movie.

 The operation seems to be a success, but as soon as it's done, Dr. Martin sees a man all in white, covered in blood, laughing at him - the one Hallsey has told him repeatedly has murdered his family.

 And that's just the start of his troubles. Reality soon starts shifting around poor Dr. Martin; He's tortured by insecurities (especially around his wife and Jim), his identity starts mingling with Hallsey's (I imagine this is what got him the role at Lost Highway), and then he starts waking up at the same psychiatric hospital where he met Hallsey.
 The Twilight Zone connection should make more sense now, since all this right up to the 'twist' ending could be a Twilight Zone episode... a very bloated one. Like in all good surrealism there are some neat narrative and symbolic threads running throughout things, but not nearly enough, and the action becomes kind of repetitive.

For a no-budget production, the cast is pretty impressive. Bill Pullman's obviously having a blast playing Dr. Martin as a goofy nerd; I'm not always a fan, but here he's a joy to watch. Bill Paxton does a mean douchebag, as always, and Bud Cort is also fun as a space cadet. The special effects are... well, they do what they can, but some look pretty bad, especially the prosthesis they use to simulate the open brain surgery. It's still a good-looking movie, with the director and the production designer (Catherine Hardwicke!) doing a pretty good job making everything look slightly off-kilter.

 And the script is great. I don't mean the plot, which honestly gets kind of boring after a bit, but the dialog, the tone- It's a very playful movie, merging corporate satire and (what I assume is) Beaumont's lovely old-school, dry dialog and surrealism... it might not all sit together very well, but it's pretty unique and often enjoyable. I'm glad I rewatched it.