BrainWaves (1983)

So much average

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Absolutely Brilliant!

The first must-see film of the year.

BrainWaves (1983) * 1/2 (out of 4)Rather confusing tale of a woman (Suzanna Love) who suffers brain damage after being struck by a car but a doctor (Tony Curtis) does a strange experiment on her, which appears to bring her back to normal. Soon after the experiment the young woman starts to have visions of another woman who was apparently murdered by someone with "X" tattoos on his wrist. This film comes off as somewhat of a disappointment after reading a few good reviews for it. The film runs a short 77-minutes but it felt much longer as the screenplay is all over the place and never really knows what to focus one. For starters, we have the mysterious woman who is murdered at the start of the movie. We then have Love's character who goes into a coma and then slowly starts to rebuild her life. We then have the nutty doctor doing the experiments. The film never really tells a straight story because it appears no one knew which story to really focus on. For a large portion of the film the murder is forgotten about as the woman tries to rebuild her life. We then get back into the murder aspect of the film but then everything about the coma takes a backseat and is pretty much forgotten. Love turns in another fine performance and makes the character interesting and worth watching. Vera Miles (PSYCHO) plays her mother and delivers a nice performance as well. On the DVD director Lommel talks about Curtis having a cocaine problem at the time of this movie being made and he also mentions that the actor didn't want any dialogue. This explains his horrible performance, which is all over the place and that includes the line delivery. It seems Curtis is extremely mad throughout the movie as he just comes off like he's ready to explode. There are a few nice technical moments including the death by electrocution but in the end I must admit that the film left me bored and unsatisfied. I'm really not sure who I'd recommend this movie to as it doesn't really work as a drama and the horror elements are so minor that most fans will be hitting the eject button early on.

"Brainwaves" is an excellent horror movie. Its story, dramaturgy, cinematography and acting - and thus the main branches of the requirements of film theory - are not only satisfactorily, but very well fulfilled. However, Ulli Lommel - to whom we owe, amongst many other movies, also the brilliant "Tenderness of the Wolves" (1973) with the unforgettable Kurti Raab in the main role - is unfortunately subject to what I call the "Ed Wood Effect". This effect contains in blindly giving very low votes to a film director who once had the misfortune to become known as a B-picture maker.In Ulli Lommel's special case this Ed-Wood-Effect is the more astonishing as the B-pictures that he produced after "Bogeyman" (1979) are not worse than this movie which was a success around the world, although or because it was filmed in the style for which nowadays people like to criticize Lommel, i.e. the use of video cameras and the "journalistic" cinematography which imitates the eye movement of a visitor who would be by chance witness of the crime that is filmed. If Rosa Von Praunheim takes a video camera and walks around on the streets or in bars filming just what he sees, the voting of these products are in the average higher - probably because Von Praunheim's topic is the gay-scene, and who would dare making respect-less comments against such a controversial topics without risking to get criticized not for his real critique but for his alleged attitude against a minority? As one can see, the Ed Wood effect implies that one measures with different measuring systems. To cite only one example: The "Underworld" movies are as silly as Lommel's younger horror flicks - and not a iota better, although they are produced with a guessed amount of ten times as much money as Lommel's productions. Perhaps one would achieve a juster judgment, if Ulli Lommel would release his older German movies - especially the wonderful "Adolf and Marlene" with Kurt Raab, Margit Cartensen, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and others - on DVD. But it also could be that even these movies would fall immediately under the spell of the Ed Wood Effect.

And a self-admitted one to boot. At one point the doctor's assistant refers to himself as Igor.Working with the increasingly plausible idea that computers could be used to replace or reconstruct brain functions, this movie doesn't spend enough time exploring the premise. Most of the screen time is split between girlfriend-in-a-coma domestic strife and chasing down the brain donor's killer. It attempts to be a sci-fi/drama/thriller but fails to deliver on any of the three.As a Frankenstein remake this one is missing everything that made the original good. Nobody calls the doctor insane or even threatens to kick him out of the hospital. The transformation scene consists of a coma victim opening one eye and the amazing computer that makes it happen isn't even shown. When the experiment works there is no praise, and when it starts going wrong there is little reaction.Any suspense over who the killer might be is shattered by progressively showing him in the same room with all of the possible suspects. Finding the killer is as easy as opening one file and interviewing one person.San Francisco as a setting is both overplayed and underused. The opening sequence hammers home the point that this is happening in SF, a cable car plays a significant role, the leads live in a hilltop Victorian, Pier 39 makes an appearance, and the final showdown happens at Golden Gate Park. More specifically along ten feet of cliff side at the park - just enough to keep the bridge in the picture at all times. Once the obvious scenery bases are rounded no other attempt is made to explore the city.The acting is the only saving grace here. Keir Dullea shows a good range and pulls off a couple of genuinely emotional scenes. Suzanna Love portrays recovery from a coma well. Tony Curtis only gets a handful of lines and twice as many evil guy stares with most of the Frankenscience explained away by his assistant. The little blond kid hits his cues fairly well also.I also gave it one extra star for the scene where the husband drives south from the bridge, it cuts to a U-turn in an unrelated parking lot, and then he's instantly back on the bridge driving north. It takes a whole lot of something - bravery, ignorance, deadlines - to try and slip that one by the viewer during the one single car chase.

Glossy looking but very slow and ponderous 'thriller'.A young accident victim receives a "transplant" of deceased accident victim's brainwaves in an innovative new procedure. Before long she begins to experience flashes of the other woman's memory that indicate the death was more than an accident, and which identify the perpetrator. The main problem with the film is that the plot is just too thin. The story is very straightforward, is predictable, and lacks any twists or surprises. It plays like an episode of television's "Quincy", or perhaps even "Murder She Wrote", but even those shows packed-in more twists and unexpected plot developments.Certainly it appears a lot of footage was shot in all sorts of interesting San Francisco locations and we are treated to a constant repetition of these establishing shots throughout the movie. The camera-angles do look nice, but the heavy use of these travelogue sequences slow the film's pace down to a deadly level. There is also a lot of unnecessary character development; we learn all about the lead couple and their son and the grandmother but these details are all irrelevant to the plot. And Vera Miles' character of the grandmother (named Marion!) is utterly superfluous. She gets one good dialogue scene (though it is irrelevant to the plot) and basically provides background chit-chat in the various family scenes.Many viewers may feel they need their brainwaves revived after sitting through this one.