Directed by: Bruce Campbell
\nStarring: Bruce Campbell, Antoinette Bryon, Vladimir Kolev, Ted Raimi, Stacy Keach, Tamara Gorski
\nRated: Not Rated, but could be PG-13 for language, mild sexual content, and gross pseudo-science.
\nParental Notes: There are some mildly disgusting scenes in here, including open-brain surgery, but most preteens will probably be all right. Fans of Bruce Campbell\u2019s other works shouldn\u2019t miss this film.<\/p>\n
| \u201cMan With the Screaming Brain\u201d opens at the Camera 7 Pruneyard Friday, June 17 and will run for one week. Check www.cameracinemas.com for show times. If you miss that, you might be able to catch it at summer film festivals. Or you can wait for the edited-for-TV version that will air on the Sci-Fi Channel on September 25.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n B movies have a certain sort of charm. The second-rate special effects, hammed-up acting, and by-the-numbers plots are dreadful on the surface but there is often an underlying love of entertainment and adventure that appeals to a certain segment of the movie-going populace. Bruce Campbell is a veteran actor of the B movie scene (\u201cEvil Dead,\u201d \u201cBubba Ho-Tep,\u201d \u201cEscape From L.A.\u201d etc.), but \u201cMan With the Screaming Brain\u201d is his first full-length project as a director. Of course, in true B-movie style, he also stars in the film. And he co-wrote it. Oh, and he produced it, too. Between this and the two books he has under his belt (his memoir \u201cIf Chins Could Kill\u201d and a new novel, \u201cMake Love! The Bruce Campbell Way\u201d), Campbell has a lot of hats — but he wears them all with the same cocksure skill.<\/p>\n The story centers around two stereotypical Americans, wealthy drug tsar William Cole (Campbell) and his beautiful but dissatisfied wife Jackie (Antoinette Bryon). The Coles have come to Bravoda, Bulgaria so that William can look into investing in the town\u2019s half-finished subway system. The couple\u2019s marriage is on the rocks, and ex-KGB-agent-turned-taxi-driver Yegor (Vladimir Kolev) only eggs them on when they hire his cab: Jackie finds his resourcefulness and scruffiness alluring while William finds his dislike of capitalism repulsive.<\/p>\n No grade-B horror movie would be complete without a mad scientist, and \u201cMan With the Screaming Brain\u201d provides one in the form of Dr. Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov (Stacy Keach) and his assistant Pavel (Ted Raimi). They\u2019ve been working on an anti-inhibitor drug, one which would let any transplant of any kind be accepted by any patient. Dr. Ivanov hopes William will invest in his work, and he gets the perfect opportunity to show off when Yegor and William meet with an accident. That accident comes in the form of the beautiful Tatoya (Tamara Gorski), a gypsy who used to be involved with Yegor and has now set her sights on William.<\/p>\n By the climax of the film, William has a sizeable chunk of Yegor\u2019s brain in his head, Jackie has been transplanted into the body of a robot, and all three of them want to kill Tatoya. A fairly even mix of horror movie clich\u00e9s and physical comedy, this is classic B movie madness.<\/p>\n Bruce Campbell is a B movie mainstay, from his work in the \u201cEvil Dead\u201d films to this March\u2019s SciFi Channel movie \u201cAlien Apocalypse.\u201d He\u2019s a working man\u2019s actor, just doing his job regardless of the quality of the film. It\u2019s hard to praise a man\u2019s acting when the material isn\u2019t exactly demanding, but Campbell is a true entertainer and that shines through regardless of the quality of the script. The rest of the cast are suitably goofy as well, from Raimi hamming it up as an American-culture-loving Bulgarian to the scenery-chewing Gorski. Fans of Ted Raimi will want to stick around for the credits, which scroll to the tune of a rap he wrote and performed in character.<\/p>\n Is \u201cMan With the Screaming Brain\u201d a good movie? Only in one respect: it is a heck of a lot of fun to watch. The actors throw themselves into their roles with gusto and are unafraid of looking silly in front of the camera. It may not be great cinema, but it\u2019s awfully entertaining.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Directed by: Bruce Campbell Starring: Bruce Campbell, Antoinette Bryon, Vladimir Kolev, Ted Raimi, Stacy Keach, Tamara Gorski Rated: Not Rated, but could be PG-13 for language, mild sexual content, and gross pseudo-science. Parental Notes: There are some mildly disgusting scenes in here, including open-brain surgery, but most preteens will probably be all right. Fans of Bruce Campbell\u2019s other works shouldn\u2019t miss this film. \u201cMan With the Screaming Brain\u201d opens at the Camera 7 Pruneyard Friday, June 17 and will run for one week. Check www.cameracinemas.com for show times. If you miss that, you might be able to catch it at summer film festivals. Or you can wait for the edited-for-TV version that will air on the Sci-Fi Channel on September 25.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[39],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-unrated"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2oSX4-39","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1764,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions\/1764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |