The Brain Machine

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.

"The Brain Machine" SHOULD have been an interesting movie. After all, it's about a top secret project where people are told they'd explore mind reading and memory. Of course, there's a darker reason for the experiment...but I was practically comatose from boredom so I really stopped caring after a while. This is because the film is very low energy, has some poor acting and really could have used some serious editing. Instead, it just goes on and on....and you keep waiting and HOPING something happens. Eventually, the subjects all go mad and start doing bad things...but it was frankly too late when the film actually picked up!

The most problematic thing about this film isn't that it's bad...but it's BORING and bad. Some bad films are so bad they're unintentionally funny and fun to watch. As for this one, nothing happens for so long that you have to force yourself to keep watching...which doesn't happen if you watch bad films like "Plan 9 From Outer Space" or "The Room". So, you'd never want to sit down with your friends and watch "The Brain Machine" to laugh at it....you'd just turn it off and find something else...anything else.

I rented this as part of a weekly movie night with a friend of mine. We got this, "The Supernaturals," and "Blood Splash," also known as "Nightmare" or "Nightmare in a Damaged Brain." This was the worst of the three.

We got this under the name "Mind Warp," and decided to get it only because it looked like it could be okay. (Well, why else would we rent it?!) The story is pretty basic. Two doctors stick four people in an underground lab and start doing mental tests on them with these Star Trek computers. (Spare the constant "beep-beep...beep-beep" from the TV show.)

Nothing really happens. The film's first twenty minutes is about an escapee from the lab who has a file showing all that goes on. Apparently, these tests are pretty much illegal. He eventually gets caught and killed off. Then the four people (a war veteran, a priest, a girl, and some other guy) are tested on. It's all really boring until finally they all start going mad and either killing themselves, or each other, until the abrupt and pretty unsatisfying ending.

I say...avoid this. Really. It isn't very good at all. I found it in the horror section, and hopefully if you do, too, you will just pass it by. It has nothing to offer.

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.

James Best (Rosco From "Dukes of Hazzard") plays an emotionally tortured clergyman who volunteers for a secretive government experiment in this tepid, badly-edited thriller. The other participants in the experiment are: a fat slob, a hillbilly woman, and a wimpy guy played by Gerald McRaney. They seem like normal (if annoying) folks at first, but they all have terrible secrets in their past. The government wants to put these people in something called the "E-Box," which looks like a big cubicle filled with lawn furniture. While inside, their darkest, most embarrassing memories are dredged up for the world to see. Of course, the experiment goes horribly, horribly wrong, and there's a lot of pain, suffering, and death in the last half hour of the movie. The rest is just a rather confusing series of scenes showing big office buildings and people in lab coats. There are about 372 shots of a swimming pool for some reason. If you love establishing shots, THIS IS THE MOVIE FOR YOU. They establish the HELL out of these scenes. The exact point of the experiment remains a mystery to me. Surely, there are cheaper and more efficient ways for the goverment to make people feel bad about themselves. So in summary, "The Brain Machine" -- rent it, won't you?