Review of Nightmares In A Damaged Brain

Introduction

I have to admit this is my first "video nasty". I`ve religiously avoided the things in the past but unfortunately there are times when one finds a nasty surprise in the regular parcel from Reviewer Towers - Charlotte Church videos, UFC Championship - that sort of thing.

"Video Nasty" was a term coined by Fleet Street in the early 1980s to a section of the burgeoning early Home Video market. There was an eager market for pre-recorded video once the novelty of recording episodes of Doctor Who had passed, and although the major studios were initially slow to appreciate the market, they stayed sat firmly on the rights to their movies. Some of the video startup companies who had initially managed to licence movies for the home market started to look around for other materials they could release. Naturally there was a keen market for the kind of stuff you couldn`t get to see on television - sex and violence - and these small, independent labels happened upon the subcultures of Grindhouse and Giallo movies.

Grindhouse was the "perfection" of the exploitation and drive-in movie genre. By the late 1970s, most drive-ins had closed and fleapit theatres in the US were almost exclusively showing the variety of movies beloved by Quentin Tarantino. Even Hollywood was making mainstream (but toned-down) grindhouse in the shape of the blaxploitation movies, but the real grindhouse stuff was raw, violent and bloody. Simultaneously in Italy and Spain, directors such as Dario Argento and Jess Franco were amping up the old horror genre with blood, tits and entrails to become the supremely gory Giallo (Italian for "Yellow") genre. It was a rite of passage for Italian youths to prove their machismo by not up-chucking while watching one of these movies. Typically these movies were made on a minuscule budget, full of over-the-top violence and gallons of stage gore. Oh, and a liberal sprinkling of unclad starlets who would pay the ultimate price for any behaviour that was less than saintly.

Both varieties of movies were both cheap and available for licensing by the early video companies, so soon corner video rental store shelves were groaning with movies like Cannibal Holocaust, I Spit On Your Grave, SS Experiments and of course Nightmares In A Damaged Brain.

The Mary Whitehouses of the UK went ballistic. Because there was no legislation otherwise, children could stroll into a video store and rent any of the abovementioned movies quite legally and without any hindrance. Matters were not helped of course by the willingness of many less-than-responsible video shop owners to encourage their young renters. Fleet Street leapt on the bandwagon, labelling the movies "Video Nasties" and every encouragement was given to Conservative MP Graham Bright to introduce his Private Member`s Bill against the video nasties which was passed in 1984 as the Video Recordings Act of that year.

The Video Recordings Act of 1984 gave the responsibility of protecting the nation`s youth against videographic corruption to the British Board of Film Censors. The old BBFC had been around for decades, certifying (and requiring cuts) in cinema films. Their new remit as the British Board of Film Classification was to certify everything released on video, and the certifications carried draconian penalties against anybody who allowed a child or person below the age limit of the certification to view the video. Although impossible to police in the home environment, it gave police and local trading standards powers to prosecute video stores and their staff for even unknowing or accidental breaches of the Act. In 1995, the stakes were upped by the amendments to the Act brought in by the Criminal Justice Act (following the Bulger case where the press pinned the blame on one of the Child`s Play movies). The amendments required the BBFC to examine films on a basis of harm that the movie might cause to young viewers, and started the BBFC off on its crusade against headbutts and other "imitable techniques".

Well, that`s the background to the whole "video nasty" thing. So what is this movie like? Obviously we`ve all become immured to violence to the extent that this movie, which was banned in 1984 has happily sailed though classification in 2005. Watching the movie, and from the standpoint of somebody who can`t abide the splatter horror genre, I can`t see what all the fuss was about. Yes, it`s an unpleasant experience watching the movie, and there are a lot of gory effects, but I didn`t see anything I haven`t seen considerably worse on a tv show like CSI. Somebody on the effects team obviously had mates who worked at the local abbatoir, but I can`t for the life of me think why anybody should take this crap seriously enough to call for parliament to ban it.

The movie has a cod-psychological storyline to pin its shocks and horrors on, but the direction, editing and acting skills of the participants don`t do what is at best a hack job any justice. This is a budget release in every sense of the word. If you`re an aficionado of grindhouse and giallo, you`ve probably bought the movie already. If you just want to see what all the fuss was about, the price tag for the disc makes it not a pricey exercise. If you`re after a well-acted, atmospheric horror film, move along there`s nothing to see here.

Video

Made in 1981, the movie is fast turning into a period piece full of strange hairstyles and terrible fashions. Presented in 4:3 fullscreen, the movie was probably shot open-matte, so you`ll be seeing more picture than the director intended. The movie is grainy and soft-focus, artefacts of both the stock the movie was shot on and the generation of print used to master the disc. It isn`t pretty, but colours are vivid, especially the blood.

Audio

Made with a mono soundtrack, the disc reproduces the original experience in DD 2.0

Features

Budget disc - that means none.

Conclusion

Extremely graphic, the movie is undeniably strong meat (if you`ll pardon the phrase). Director Romano Sciavolini treats us to an uncompromising and frequently unpleasant gore-fest in the guise of a psychological thriller. Splatter fans will probably lap this up.

Ugh. Mental image. Ew!