The Brain Machine

Someone mentioned editing. This is edited badly and what started out as somewhat intriguing became an incomprehensible mess. For starters, let us know what it is you are trying to do with these experiments. Why are these people the best choices for the type of experimenting they are involved in? And, what exactly are they testing? Apparently there is some grand plan that some agency is going to exploit. The acting is pretty bad. Everyone is emoting. Everyone is keeping secrets. They frequently mention that if it weren't for the money, they'd hang it up. There's a deranged minister who spouts scripture. On and on. But, again, the biggest hang up is the lack of laying out a playing field for the actors. There are some really cheesy elements. Those little rooms and those chaise lounges. The awful wallpaper (was it wallpaper?). It was interesting, but didn't seem to go anywhere.

I bought this (it was only $3, ok?) under the title "Grey Matter". The novelty of seeing Sherriff Roscoe in a non-DukesOfHazzard role intrigued me. As the other reviewers warned, it's a pretty boring tale of a top secret government experiment gone awry.

And yes, there are plenty of establishing shots, especially of a house with a pool in front of it. Some of the characters and interiors are so nondescript I guess the filmmakers worried we might forget who is who, so they keep tipping us off by first showing the outside of the buildings. It's actually kinda funny. After awhile the pool shot feels like a tv channel's station identification logo, reminding us that we are watching "Grey Matter".

I also enjoyed two bouts of name-calling. At one point an angry test subject taunts somebody in charge by calling her a "Scientific b*tch!". It's just a very inadequate insult. Several scenes later a different subject lets off steam by muttering about that "scientific b**tard!". It just sounded very awkward to me.

Someday this movie will disappear forever. Another decade from now it will likely be impossible to find any copies of it. Almost like it never happened.

After watching The Brain Machine in stages because I was fighting fatigue to complete this movie I'm still not sure of what I saw. Four people James Best, Ann Latham, Gerad McRaney, and Marcus Grapes all of whom have no close family volunteer to be paid lab rats for an experimental mind control machine. Two firm prerequisites for these people, no close family and they have to tell the absolute truth in that closed environment that they live in now.

Somebody should have told them to watch The Forbidden Planet and how those far superior Krells couldn't deal with monsters from the ID. My guess is that this top secret experiment was to develop some kind of ultimate interrogation machine. That's why so many sinister forces seem bent on achieving success with the experiment, however success is to be measured. The Brain Machine isn't really clear on what's going on.

The whole thing will leave you bored and confused.

I thought watching employment videos on corporate compliance was tedious. This movie went nowhere fast. What could have been a somewhat cheesy half hour twilight zone episode turned into a seemingly endless waste of film on people parking their cars, a picture of some dude's swimming pool (he really needs to answer his phone by the way) a dot matrix printer doing its job, and Heuy and Louey sitting in a yellow lighted control room repeating "T minus 10 and counting" as if something exciting is going to happen. It doesn't so don't get your hopes up. The best thing about this movie is to see James Best and Gerald McC, in something other than there famous TV personalities, and that is stretching to find anything good. And do NOT get me started on the music which was totally composed of a Tympani, some large marine mammals, and microphone feedback. This movie is as close as I have given a one yet, but it gets the 2 because I actually was able to finish this insomnia cure, and didn't have to leave in the middle. AVOID AT ALL COSTS.

This is a low-budget 70's film which stems from the cinematic crazes of both the 'evilly-implemented mind control' ('The Manchurian Candidate' and 'The Ipcress File') and 'paranoia about government conspiracy' sub-genres that were fervently expressed in the Vietnam/Watergate era of American cinema. For me, growing up watching James Best as Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane in 'The Dukes of Hazzard', it was intriguing to watch him here, as a priest selected as one of 4 paid volunteers for an experiment supposedly run by the ECC, an environmental organization. It ends up that it's just a cover to test an experimental mind-control 'Brain Machine' that the U.S. government wants, in order to keep it's citizens in line, in the name of 'keeping social order'. Admittedly, when one of the directors says that the future is surveillance, I couldn't help but shudder at the parallels to society today, in this post-9/11 era. Unfortunately, the more time that passes, the closer these Orwellian cinematic views of civilization and its discontents come to mirroring the way life has become.

No spoilers, but the machine forces the person to tell the truth. Growing up, I have learned that honesty is not always the best policy. In fact, life has to endure the 'little white lie' in order to have things run peacefully. While no cinematic masterwork, this film more than suffices as Exhibit A for evidence. Definitely worth a watch, especially if you can handle 1970's, TV-movie-style filmmaking.