Man with the Screaming Brain (2005)

Now the story is that the huge ratings of Bruce Campbell’s excellent SciFi Original, Terminal Invasion, came as such a shock to the Network that Bruce persuaded them to let him direct a movie he’d written, an absurd horror comedy called Man With the Screaming Brain.

Whatever the case, is is a strange and improbable sort of film, like a modern take on those old Forties mad scientist films with a bit of Steve Martin’s The Man with Two Brains thrown in for luck. We even get a lethal but insane Gypsy girl serial killer straight out of some Giallo film and a classic revenge plot stuffed in wherever there’s space.

It’s a heady mix.

Stacy Keach — Mike Hammer himself, of all people! — plays the mad scientist, one of those nicer ones who just doesn’t seem to notice the trouble his latest bit of research is causing; while Ted Raimi — legendary horror director Sam Raimi’s brother and a gifted actor who’s worked with Bruce many times before — has a comic role as Stacy’s downtrodden assistant.

Toss in the silliest Terminator-esque cyborg you’ve ever seen and a former KGB cab driver (still nostalgic for the good old days) who ends up sharing Bruce’s head and you’ve got a decidedly weird mix of seemingly discordant ingredients which proves to be extremely tasty.

Best of all, Bruce gives us exactly what it takes to make a film this broad and silly to work — a broad and silly performance as the most smugly self-confident ugly American you’ve ever met — and a battle between two very different characters fighting for the same space, which ties everything together into a constantly funny piece of B-Movie excess.

Heck, even the posters are in on the fun and look like they came from an old horror comic.

True, no film about brain-swapping and cyborg revenge will ever be a great film.

But who cares when we’re having so much fun.

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