Brain Damage

On Frank Henenlotter's second masterpiece

The other night I had the great pleasure of seeing an old favorite, Brain Damage, at the Alamo Drafthouse for their Terror Tuesday series. It’s a movie I hadn’t seen in years, one I remembered being profane and moving in the way that only a perfect low-budget slice of genius garbage like this can ever be. A plot summary for this movie is essentially worthless, and really you should just watch it, if this sort of thing is your bag. (I understand very much if it’s not.) But, as these things tend to call for such, here’s a little background for the uninitiated.

Brain Damage is the second feature-length film from legendary New York director Frank Henenlotter. His first, Basket Case, is an untouchable piece of sleaze with a filthy heart of gold, a movie that so shocked and enthralled me as a child (at nine I tricked my dad into letting me rent it, based purely on the iconic cover) it became a touchstone, a gateway into a particular slant of film I’ve never quite escaped. Always grimy, shot in decrepit ’80s Manhattan with wild ambitions and miniscule budgets, Henenlotter’s movies are little miracles that appall and disgust, even as they rarely offer any real scares. They’re also beautiful, heartfelt, and terribly, terribly funny.

The plot centers around twenty-something Brian (played by a very game Rick Hearst), who lives in a small East Village apartment with his brother, Mike. After blowing off a date with his girlfriend Barbara, Brian finds himself sick and blood-slathered, having been zapped into hypnagogic bliss by a supernatural Byzantine entity known as Aylmer, who escaped from his elderly captors next door via the bathtub. (See? That didn’t clarify a thing!) Though Basket Case gets most of the press, Brain Damage is also hailed as a classic, and deservedly so. Henenlotter never really made a dud, and as reported by a friend of mine, he loves his films, hoarding a pint of the fake blood from Basket Case in his fridge to this day. A true American original, and a pretty nice guy to boot.

The temptation for a movie like this is to try and prove its importance, that it makes a powerful commentary on any number of social issues, in order to somehow justify its existence. (Cue morons saying something “transcends the genre,” a truly loathsome phrase.) There’s been a lot of ink spilled on Brain Damage as an allegory for addiction, or as a queer sexual awakening (as Henenlotter purportedly quipped about Aylmer, “Yeah, it’s a dick”), and both readings are valuable and essential. The drug references are less than subtle, with a notable psychedelic junkyard scene, and Brian’s pure addict confession to his baffled girlfriend and brother that he has to leave before he hurts them is genuinely moving. (One gets the feeling that Henenlotter was no stranger to drugs and the carnage they wreak, as well as the bliss.)

But even as it veers toward the high-minded interpretation, Brain Damage is every bit as much about the foot-long, psychedelic, purple, spongy, phallic puppet demon who sings show tunes and injects his host with what looks like liquid Drano. And that puppet is remarkably charismatic, with its googly eyes, dopey grin, and a wicked set of Pennywise-worthy chompers. Voiced by Philly horror host John Zacherle, Aylmer is a dominating presence, the true star of the movie. Aylmer dances, pulsates, quakes. Also, he eats brains, in increasingly hideous ways. Aylmer is a weird triumph, all the more menacing for its goofiness. As pure deranged spectacle, there’s not much in movies—or in any other artform—like him.

The key to the film—for me, anyway, the most moving moment—occurs when Brian and Duane (Kevin Van Hentenryck) from Basket Case are seated apart from each other on the subway, Duane clutching the locked wicker basket hiding his deformed, homicidal brother, Belial. More than mere fan service and the evidence of the expanded Henenlotterverse, it’s a meeting of equals, victims and enablers both. They lock eyes in a moment of mutual recognition, two lone freaks let loose in the world, carrying their own parasitic burdens. It’s fitting this encounter takes place in the subway, flitting through the guts of the city, one glimpse and they’re gone. It’s a moment of deep melancholy. You get the feeling Henenlotter wanted them to meet, as if that would somehow lessen their burdens, allowing them to feel less alone. A rare act of mercy from the creator to the creations.

The final scene shows Brian, having taken an accidental overdose from a wounded Aylmer. We see flashing lights coming from his bedroom window, his brother bursting in to find Brian’s head cracked open, light shining from the hole in his skull, tendrils of electricity pouring forth. It looks not unlike a movie projector, streaming straight from Brian’s broken brain into the rest of the world. A vision of the artist being born.