Good concept, poorly executed.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

This is a very good, creepy, "horror" movie. Very little credible gore. I enjoy movies where one never really knows whether what they are seeing is real or not?Not altogether unlike Jacob's Ladder...another fave of mine...one can only truly enjoy this movie the first time he watches it. Once one figures out "the twist" the movie loses a bit.Essentially, early on in the film, the brain surgeon is hot by a car...and killed. Everything that happens afterwards is a dream (or rather, a nightmare) of his disembodied brain.

(There are Spoilers) You begin to realize some 15 to 20 minutes into the movie "Brain Dead" that the film must have been badly edited and put together out of sequence. Things happen in the movie that give you the impression that they should have happened before rather then after the event your watching at the time.For example when Dr. Martin, Paul Pullman, meets Vance, George Kennedy, the CEO of the Eunice Corp.it's obvious that Vance has never met Martin before but just some 10 minutes earlier in the film we see both Vance and Dr. Martin together at a board meeting at the Eunice Building. Scenes like the out of place Vance and Dr. Martin meeting are repeated all throughout the film giving it a dream-like quality but without a cohesive plot confusing the audience. like Dr. Martin who ends up like the title of the movie says "Brain Dead", if not all together deceased, if what's happening on the screen is real and not a dream or nightmare on Dr. Martin's part.Being a top brain surgeon who loves his job, and his hundreds of jars of former patient's brains, Dr. Martin is called on by his friend Eunice executive Jim Reston, Bill Paxton, to go to the Lakeside Mental Facility. Martin's to talk to a former Eunice Corp. book-keeper as well as scientist Dr. Halsey, Bud Curt. Martin's meeting with Dr. Halsey is to get a secret formula, or numbers, that's vital to Eunice's future plans and operations. As Dr. Martin works on Dr. Halsey, getting friendly with him,to get the secret numbers hidden deep in his mind things start to go haywire for Dr. Martin with his laboratory. All the brains in Matian's lab were confiscated because the government cut his grants to operate it. Dr. Martin himself not only on the verge of losing his own mind by ending up as part of a dream that originates straight out of Dr. Halsey's sub-conscious. The movie "Brain Dead" starts to get even weirder with suggestions that Dr. Martin isn't even real but a figment, or alter-ego, of Dr. Halsey's imagination. We begin to see Dr. Martin being totally ignored, as if he were invisible, by everyone he comes in contact with even his wife Dana, Patrica Charbonneau. Dana's having an affair with Marta in's best friend Reston as he just stands there unable to do or say anything. There's also a scene that immediately follows where Dr. Martin falls into a body of water that has Dr. Halesy swimming and drowning in it,or being eaten by a shark, that's supposed to be the inside of Dr. Halsey's brain!The movie keeps getting stranger as it reaches it's final conclusion with Dr. Martin, or Dr. Halsey, being unsuccessfully lobotomized where he ends up dead on the operating table without giving the secret formula that Vance and the Eunice executives and shareholders so desperately wanted; as if the film-makers forgot what the original story of "Brain Dead" was supposed to be all about.Nothing made sense in the film and even as a mind-blowing cult movie with a surprise ending, that at least ties a number of loose ends in the film together, it failed miserably. "Brain Dead" leaves you totally confused to what you were watching for the last 85 minutes and wishing that you forget what you saw as soon as possible.

This is a very underrated movie that somewhat reminds you of Jacob's Ladder. The movie starts out with Bill Pullman as a doctor who studies brains and has a lab full of brains in glass bottles. Pullman is friends with Bill Paxton and Paxton is in some trouble with the corporation he works with and tries to get Pullman to help him. Pullman agrees and and he has to try and find out if a brilliant doctor, played by Bud Cort, who went and killed his family is actually insane or not. Pullman says he his insane and Paxton isn't too happy about it because Cort has some top secret information in his head and Paxton doesn't want it to ever get out. Pullman operates on him and then and the next thing Pullman knows he is in a mental ward and his entire reality starts to mess with him and he can't tell what is real and what is not. It's a great movie that should be more well known.

The great Taoist master Chuang Tzu once dreamt that he was a butterfly fluttering here and there. In the dream he had no awareness of his individuality as a person. He was only a butterfly. Suddenly, he awoke and found himself laying there, a person once again. But then he thought to himself, "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?" This quote is being used in the film and clearly illustrates the basis of the brilliant screenplay. The claustrophobia of not knowing reality from imagined reality is very real in this film. Earlier acts by Bill Pullman, and Bill Paxton make for a real viewing pleasure. But the real star of the film is Bud Cort (Harold, from the film Harold and Maude). Set designs and lighting make for a fine surreal experience. This movie is a great one with a fine story, fine actors, fine cinematography, special-fx and direction. The music sounds like synths left over from the 80's. But that adds to the B-effect of the film. Highly recommended.