Brain Damage

Now kids, remember what Nancy Reagan told us...If a blue, talking, phallic looking, brain-eating, alien slug parasite just appears in your life and tells you to let him latch on to the back of your neck and regurgitate psychedelic electric blue jizz into your brain stem...you should, "Just Say No".

I knew the movie was great during the ridiculous SURPRISE alien pretending to be a penis fellatio brain eating scene.

For a movie about a drugs-dispensing space turd with eyeballs that eats human brains, I sure got bored quickly.

Another one of those "what did I just watch?" experiences. I found this a lot of fun. The wee beastie actually had some charisma, and the production values were surprisingly good. I haven't seen any of Henenlotter's other films, but I feel inclined to give them a bash now.

There's a great puppet "gag." Ahahahahaha. I really wish you had seen this. That's a great joke.

A Henenlotter film if there ever was one, it's more tame than some of his work but still very odd, eccentric, & weirdly funny. The performances are good enough, particularly Herbst in the lead, & the practical effects are really fun. The kills are entertaining, with one in particular really standing out, & there's plenty of solid gore. Still, this has its problems, with the writing not always making much sense & the ending feeling a bit weak. Still, it's a late-80's classic & is worth a look.

Helenlotter started out with a bang making exploitation films that were wonderfully lurid. Brain Damage is his finest work, a bizarre drug addiction parable about a young man who makes a faustian pact with a phallic like parisitic alien worm (Elmer) that eats brains for sustenance. Elmer injects a hypnotising fluid into his brain in exchange for fresh victims. It's an absurd premise that is gory and blacky humorous, and Elmer is an unusually original movie monster with real personality.

Unashamedly even sillier than "Basket Case", but also more directorially capable, and Aylmer has to be one of the most iconic monsters in the history of cinema. He is 95% hilariously wacky and about 5% genuinely nightmarish. The tag "so bad it's good" gets thrown around a lot, but "Brain Damage" is a real live fantastic terrible movie.

Kind of surprising how well made a film of this nature is - not just in gore effects, but pretty much every area. There's something missing that I can't exactly place to give it the edge over like-minded flicks, though. On the plus, its main guy seems to be channeling Bruce Campbell to a relatively successful degree.

Contains the bizarre ideas and gross out nature of Henenlotter's previous film Basket Case, only here the script is more focused and the production more polished. There's a pleasant matter of fact attitude about this film's weirdness. The premise and its accompanying visuals may be too much for some people, but for sickos like me it's all pretty wonderful. A talking phallic worm monster that induces hallucinations and craves human brains? Sounds good to me!

A parasitic brain sucking alien slug thing attaches to some guy's brain and pumps him full of psychedelic chemicals and turns him into his slave. The guy then goes all over New York finding people to kill so the slug can eat their brain. Very cheesy with a few gross out scenes and plenty of splatter. There's also some cool shots that try to simulate the effect of being under the influence of the alien's brain drug. Of course, see the uncut version.

so homoerotic

Where has this been all my life? If I had seen Brain Damage as a child, I would have watched it three dozen times by now.

Slow, poorly acted, and kind of boring but also really really weird. Watched this with my wife and both of us were like "What the Fuck" are we watching and yet we couldn't look away.

jesus fucking christ what a disgusting, bizarre way to visualise addiction. i'm here for it.

Truly tasteless and hilariously nasty.

Little that makes i actively worth watching. I guess the effects for the brain worm are well done, but otherwise this is a plodding waste of time, with none of the comedy being funny and a bunch of pointless gore. It's not terrible, but it is a complete waste of a solid b-movie premise.

hilarious and gory

Ok, so it's a little tasteless at times but just the look of the film alone makes up for it. The great use of light and color, the long takes, the special effects and sound. It all adds to the already psychodelic and sheer bonkers film experience. As impressive as any gore flick could hope to be.

As a trashy horror comedy it ticks a few boxes and stands up on its own, but this film never aspires or manages to be any more than a very basic genre film. Yes, it's slightly amusing and a little gross and gory, but I need more - a dash of intrigue maybe, a proper story, characters - for the film to work on more than one level. The premise has decent potential but the result comes across as little more than a portfolio piece for a budding special effects artist. Like Cronenberg with a lobotomy.

Bizar but sometimes pretty cool. That ear scene is hilarious and the ending quite strange. Lots of blood, brains and screaming

There's a certain understated brilliance about it. Like a Twilight Zone from Hell.

Grrrreat

Features quite possibly the best scene in any movie: The worm/parasite blowjob. Pure class.

Henenlotter's best. A wonderfully insane horror film that might be summarized as "The Tingler Takes a Trip"

This is your brain on drugs.

Blowjob scene alone is worth like ten points.

Just say no kids, especially if the drugs are from a human-brain eating space-brain parasite.

The brain damage was the friends we made along the way ...

Enjoyable horror comedy that's an obvious drug addiction allegory. The voice of Aylmer is greatly cast, it really is an instinctively trustable voice.

Eu meio que me decepcionei porque esperava que fosse muito mais engraçado do que de fato é, na verdade é bem trágico e é justamente nisso que reside sua qualidade, pois é um dos retratos mais emblemáticos do abuso de drogas em humanos. Take that, Aronofsky! Darkflix TV.

The most effective, and entertaining, anti-drug PSA you'll ever see. This film is a blast in the horror-comedy genre with plenty of horrifyingly great scenes that made me feel terrible for how much I enjoyed watching them. The junkie analogy going on here is very blatant, but it works effectively at portraying addiction and withdrawal kinda similarly to Trainspotting -- no preachiness, plenty of horrendous fun. The ending is also a hoot.

Most amusing.

A gross-out psychedelic trip through addiction, only the addiction is a substance secreted by a phallic alien/monster thing; oh and there's plenty of dark humour in it, I mean how couldn't given the sheer concept.

Fucking wild

Hilarious psychedelic horror comedy that gets nasty on every chance it gets. One of those films that are best watched with a group of friends. Towards the end it gets a bit slow and repetitive. Few scenes, and Elmer, are unforgettable. Recommended for the fans of the genre and druggies.

All hail Aylmer!

drugs are awesome.

Amusing

Sometimes entertaining, mostly off-putting. I found a few scenes objectionable, including one that too closely resembled forced oral copulation (edit: this should be painfully obvious to anyone with even half a brain, regardless of where it currently resides). As usual, weird misogyny ruined an otherwise decent film.