Man with the Screaming Brain
Directed by: Bruce Campbell
Written by: Bruce Campbell
Starring: Bruce Campbell, Antoinette Byron, Ted Raimi, Tamara Gorski
You would think that a movie with this much Bruce Campbell would be the greatest thing since the Evil Dead Trilogy (which topped slice bread a long time ago) but apparently there we can have too much of a good thing. The Man With The Screaming Brain(TMWTSB) starts with Bruce and his wife going to the fictional country of Bravoda on business. They meet former KGB cabbie Yegor and they spend the next half hour of the movie in the cab. Meanwhile, in a mad scientist’s lab, Stacy Keach and Ted Raimi are discovering things that will be vital to the plot later. The fun sort of begins when the long boring cab ride ends.
Yegor, Bruce and his wife all end up dead and guinea pigs in Dr. Stacy Keach’s science project. Bruce ends up with half of Yegor’s brain and his wife in a robot body. Realizing that they were killed by the same woman, Tatoya, the hybrid Bruce/Yegor hunt her down while trying to look normal. Normal is the farthest thing from Bruce’s wife as she freaks out and escapes. Lab assistant Ted Raimi(who uses a horrible eastern European accent) goes after her and ends up witnessing the showdown between Bruce/Yegor, Tatoya and robot wife. Hilarity ensues – not. Long story short, Bruce and Yegor decided to share his body and robot wife transferred her brain to Tatoya and they live unusually ever after.
Bruce Campbell is a legend. We’ll always love him for the Evil Dead films and Bubba Ho-Tep but I’m afraid he was wearing too many hats in this production and it shows. You can tell that his heart is in the right place though; TMWTSB has all the elements of an entertaining film it just never gets it quite right. There are one or two scenes where you can see all of its hilarious potential, but most of the time it falls flat on its unfunny face. I’m disappointed, not just because the film didn’t live up to my unrealistic expectations of a film written, directed and starring Bruce Campbell but because the brain didn’t even scream. And that’s something that I’d hope Bruce would at least get right.
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