Aug 06 2021
Sorry it took us a while to get to this baker’s dozen, but life got in the way of letting this Scrantalaicious sci fi horror thriller out of the oven until we were truly ready for it! (Blame our respective employers for actually wanting us to do work for a change.) This session’s movie is the 1991 thriller: Brain Twisters. Also released as Fractals, we are watching the version featured in the Cult Classic Gorehouse Greats Collection, (and for free on Youtube!)
We got a lot of lucky 13s on this episode, the time, the audio engineering, the episode number….. just wow. This movie is the only full-length feature by director Jerry Sangiuliano, and filmed Entirely in Scranton, PA, (as artfully noticed and researched by our dutiful hosts…) If you liked Brainscan and thought Brainstorm was too artsy, then this might be the Brain-movie for you. Chock full of questionable Italian representation and baffling MPAA ratings, this movie has everything you need to have a fun B-movie romp.
The film opens with a mysterious car accident that isn’t touched on ever again, (or is it?) We then follow noted Brain Professor and absolute sex pest, Dr Rothman, as he goes on a journey finding out his experiments are driving his subjects crazy; a fact that his financiers find out far sooner than he does. This movie features an astounding amount of what would now be considered sexual harassment and Italian racism, but it is far too disjointed to be taken seriously. Brinker calls Jerry the Don Dohler of Scranton, and Weyant says this is the closest thing he’s seen to a True Crime re-enactment made into a feature film; it’s a fun romp that has lots of weird regional details, which adds to its ambience.
Proposed Drinking Games:
— Drink when someone uses The Machine or has it used on them
— Drink when someone hangs up a phone
— Drink every time Dr Rothman is creepy (normal difficulty,) or a sex pest, (Irish difficulty)
— Drink every time someone wigs out and completely loses it
— Drink every time you feel like it might be a little bit racist against Italians
Podcast Intro —
Music from https://filmmusic.io
“Sonata 17” by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Podcast Interlude —
Music from https://filmmusic.io
“Narcissus” by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)