Don't listen to the negative reviews

A lot of fun.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I heard about this movie and watched it George tatum has a wife named susan and 3 kids who are annoying George hacked up his parents as a kid goes crazy gets committed breaks out and terrorizes a babysitter looking after his kids and kills people the director did lift many elements out of Halloween and maniac but this film is good over all and has inspired other films I liked a lot pretty good great blood splash sounds like a better title kim tammy cj and their babysitter Kathy are given hell by George in a effective film susan is good and its scary and gory the only way it could have been better is if Kathy spoiler alert lived

I'd wanted to see Nightmare for years, especially as a young Savini fan, but ensuing controversies and time prevented me from watching it until tonight. Sure, I'd come across it from time to time in a reference or review book but tracking down a copy in the US seemed to never work out for me. Cut to a sick-day in 2012, and internet movies, and finally, this grim little darling was mine for the watching.Tonally, I found Nightmare similar to Pieces, what with it's childhood traumas and bloody ways of dealing with them, but Nightmare has a certain raw charm all of its own. It's not a very *good* movie, but it moves along at a decent pace and is just so bizarre in its execution. Our killer, George Tatum, is one of the more debonair axe-wielders of the slasher generation, but most of Baird Stafford's performance consists of squealing, foaming at the mouth, and giving Ken Doll-esque lingering looks at the camera whether he's killing or sleeping or walking about. George was being treated for his myriad mental issues under an experimental program and when he's deemed cured, he's simply let loose in NYC (delightfully grimy, pre-Giuliani NYC) to go to sex shows (bad idea!) and then head south to kill a very special family. Said family seemed over the top, what with constant prankster/brat CJ and constantly screaming and slapping mom Susan...until I realized I'd seen similar behavior at the local Wal-Mart on more than one occasion.That odd behavior by the "normal" cast members is one of the more delightful things about Nightmare. Very few things happen in a way that they would happen in real life. People over-react to nothing, but are yet strangely unmoved by dead bodies. Children are taken to crime scenes and questioned in front of bloody corpses. There's rarely a clear sense of who any character is at any given time. The doctors never bothered to investigate whether George's traumatic dreams actually happened. Mom often just shrieks for no reason. There's an extended scene of a meeting with the real estate agent, and a C&W bar performance, and lots of local radio DJ chatter. It all just lurches along until a rather ludicrous (but fun!) ending.The gore (by all accounts courtesy of Ed French and NOT Savini) was nice and grim and well done for the most part (not counting a few obvious prosthetics) - rarely these days does soft tissue trauma seem so gooshy. The gore wasn't as wall-to-wall as I'd built up in my head but I suppose there was enough.If you're in the mood to revisit the early 80s via slasher films, you'll probably have a good time with Nightmare as long as you can handle the inherent strangeness of it all. It really is like a bleak little time capsule of an era long-gone.ff

I've heard a lot about this movie that made me want to see it & when I finally got to watch it I never felt a greater sense of disappointment. I believe all the reviews are overrated this movie isn't that gory or creepy, the story is very slow, and I lost interest very early in the movie but waited for it to pick up & was very upset when it didn't. I don't recommend this to any die hard horror fan. This is more for the easily scared & grossed out or the easily amused seeing how the plot wasn't too interesting. The highlights of the movie are the little bit of gore & nudity it has but even that is not enough to bother going out of your way to track this movie down.

This is one of the most prominent films on the legendary video nasty list. For those who do not know, this was a list of videos that were considered obscenely violent by the establishment in early 80's Britain. Nightmares in a Damaged Brain was one of the first to be tagged as problematic and it's distributor even served six months in prison for releasing the thing. The question now I suppose is how does it shape up today? Well, on the one hand, it isn't at all hard to understand how it made the list in the first place. On the other hand, it still works pretty well as a sleazy grind-house slasher movie.The film in a nutshell is about a troubled man who is released from an asylum. Too early it seems, as he pretty much immediately starts committing brutal murders.The film's primary notoriety I am guessing comes from the very mean-spirited violence. There isn't an awful lot of it but when it does happen it's very gory and brutal. Particularly nasty is a knife attack on a woman in her home, while the carnage inflicted by the little boy near the end is pretty intense. The film also has some scenes in New York where the psycho visits sex shows and starts to lose his fragile mind - these sequences resemble an exploitation version of Taxi Driver. So the film is essentially well served on the violence and sleaze fronts. The biggest problem is that it drags in the middle section. In this part the story relocates to follow the goings on of a family, one which our psychopath seems to be stalking for some reason. The pacing takes a dive here when we focus on these none too interesting characters. However, the aforementioned parts that bookend the family drama are certainly not boring.Nightmares in a Damaged Brain is ultimately one of the better video nasties. Unlike many on the list it's actually pretty nasty at times. And that is kind of what you want really.