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Man with the Screaming Brain
USA/Germany 2005
produced by Bruce Campbell, David M. Goodman, Jan Körbelin, Bob Perkis, Thomas Becker (executive), Jeff Franklin (executive), Peter Jaysen (executive), Rich Tackenberg (executive), Philip von Alvensleben (executive), Jörg Westerkamp (executive), Scott Zakarin (executive) for Sci Fi Pictures, Apollo ProScreen, FWE Picture Company, Creative Light Entertainment
directed by Bruce Campbell
starring Bruce Campbell, Tamara Gorski, Ted Raimi, Antoinette Byron, Stacy Keach, Vladimir Kolev, Valentin Giasbeily, Velizar Binev, Raicho Vasilev, Jonas Talkington, Michail Elenov, Neda Sokolovska, Remington Franklin, Todor Nikolov
story by David M. Goodman, Bruce Campbell, R.O.C. Sandstorm (= Sam Raimi), screenplay by Bruce Campbell, music by Joseph LoDuca, special makeup effects by Chris Hanson, Melanie Tooker, visual effects by Craig Bocchiarro/XFRS, Unreal Productions, Trick Digital
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
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Cole (Bruce Campbell) is a cliché American land developer in a foreign
country (Bulgaria in this case): loud, shallow, narrow-minded, and
convinced he's teh center of the world. Then though he meets Tatoya
(Tamara Gorski), a mailorder bride/black widow who robs him blind - and
when he catches up with her to retrieve his belongings, she kills him,
too. Then she also kills her ex-lover Yegor (Vladimir Kolev), incidently
Cole's Russian driver who also had an affair with Cole's wife Jackie
(Antoinette Byron), and finally, Tatoya also kills Jackie. Luckily, mad
scientist Ivan Invanovic Ivanov (Stacy Keach) lives nearby, whose
assistant Pavel (Ted Raimi) is always on the lookout for new cadavers, and
before you know it, he has combined the brains of Cole and Pavel in Cole's
head and has revived Coles body, while Jackie's brain went into a
breakdancing robot (really). Sure enough, Cole/Pavel and robot Jackie all
escape the scientist to have their revenge on Tatoya - and after an
extended chase sequence, they actually catch up with her and kill her too
- but at the cost of their own lives - which means, Pavel can now collect
even more cadavers for his master ...
Bruce Campbell's first
feature film as a director is not so much gross-out horror as it is
slapstick comedy - with a horror/sci fi subtext of course. And the
greatest asset of the movie is actually Campbell himself - as an actor
that is. He is just cut out for this kind of film and makes each scene
he's in hilarious - and at the same time proves himself vastly superior to
any number of current A-list comedians from Steve Martin to Jim Carrey to
Mike Myers. But even apart from Campbell the actor, Man with the
Screaming Brain is rather funny, Campbell the writer/director manages
to infuse his story with many sight gags and running gags and knows quite
a bit about comic timing. True, the film might not be perfect, but it
works as a party movie and even shows traces of brilliance. A
word to the politically correct crowd: While it's true that the film's
representation of Bulgaria is somewhat clichéd and not to everyone's
liking, one also has to take into account Campbell's portrayal of the
perfect American capitalist, by far the least likeable character in the
film - so go figure.
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