From the depths of the slasher/video nasty era comes Nightmares in a Damaged Brain, hailed at the time as the grossest of the foulest, to the extent that it actually got one British distributor imprisoned. Now rereleased in stunning hi-def (seriously – it actually does look good for a film of its era and budget), how does Nightmare, to give it its original title, hold up?
Well, after a very strong opening in a very bloody bed, Nightmares in a Damaged Brain – or Nightmare, as it’s known everywhere outside the UK – introduces us to its thin plot. A patient in an experimental drug programme loosely inspired by MK-Ultra, George Tatum (Baird Stafford), manages to escape and makes his way from New York to Florida in order to murder his own family.
If the film is motivated by anything other than the pursuit of a tawdry profit, it’s a distrust of psychiatry and the governmental-societal authorities of which it is assumed to be a tool, and indeed its anti-authority attitudes seem in line with the New Hollywood and underground movements of the time. In our most memorable sequence, Tatum strolls, in profile, down the same manner of sleazy New York City streets so memorably depicted in Taxi Driver or The Driller Killer as we are told in voiceover of the complete success of the programme. Since the film is entitled Nightmares in a Damaged Brain and since we’ve shortly beforehand read the title card “The First Night: New York”, it’s easy to assume that this is not the case.
Actually, The Driller Killer is an apt comparison, for, as also with Peeping Tom, Norman Bates or Mr. Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer, Tatum is, for the most part, our viewpoint character, making this more of a study of a disintegrating or, you might say, a damaged brain than any kind of slasher film.
What it does have in common with the slasher, and what most likely earned it the label, is its reliance on cheap tricks and fakeouts, its sleazy tone, and its sheer boringness – there are interminable stretches of boating and beach trips, and surely the dullest “forensics computer” sequence ever filmed. The inspiration, most likely, is Ripley’s interaction with the ship’s computer, MOTHER, in Alien, except here there is no payoff, tension, or even sense – for this is not a science-fiction 1981 and this computer seems suspiciously advanced in its natural-language processing, especially as seen from 2024 where Alexa and Siri still never work as advertised.
Aside from Alien, scenes and ideas are cribbed from Halloween, Friday the 13th and The Shining; there are worse places to steal from, provided you’re stealing right. Floppy-haired child hero C.J. may even remind you of Cory Feldman’s Tommy Jarvis in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, though this is pure coincidence as this film predates that one by three years. While Tommy used a machete to kill Jason, young C.J. outdoes Tommy by firing revolvers and hunting rifles into Tatum over and over in scenes that surely pleased the censors. Hey, kids have to learn firearm safety at some point, so we might as well make it sooner rather than later.
But listen, aside from its possible educational value, there’s very little reason to watch Nightmare. It isn’t even recommended to gorehounds; it would have made more sense to ban it on the grounds of protecting the British public from going out of their minds with boredom, rather than from obscenity. An argument can be made that the film is of historical interest, but it’s more educational, here, just to watch the excellent selection of extras than to actually sit through the film.
Among those extras are two commentaries; the first one, with actor Baird Stafford and effects assistant Cleve Hall, lets you know all you could ever want about early 1980s Florida, despite some memory difficulties; while the second, with William Paul, one of many credited producers, is the best thing on the disc. He brings an incredible sense of frustrated sarcasm as he dryly recounts how lies, incompetence and an Italian hardcore porno director turned “a very interesting idea” into, well, Nightmares in a Damaged Brain. This may be one of the great audio commentaries, and yet another reminder that the most fascinating stories of behind-the-scenes madness can often result in totally lifeless pictures. Feel free to watch the film first-time with William Paul’s commentary, and never bother watching the film a second time.
Also a notable inclusion is Damaged: The Very British Obscenity of David Hamilton-Grant, a feature-length (71m) documentary, directed by veteran of horror-docs Sarah Appleton and narrated by Jack Davenport (The Talented Mr. Ripley, Pirates of the Caribbean), taking us through the mysterious life of the titular distributor, from his origins in Soho sleaze, both as a club owner and film producer/writer/director, to his move into distributing violent horror film on VHS, through his trial and subsequent imprisonment during one of the UK’s more embarrassing moments of moral panic, to the murky circumstance of death – or, possibly, faked death and subsequent exile. It’s all very exciting.
In the hour-plus “Kill Thy Mother and Thy Father: Interview with Director Romano Scavolini”, the director takes us through the film’s writing, production, release and aftermath. He is oddly serious, passionate even, about the artistic value of the film and clearly brought that attitude to its filming, to the frustration of the aforementioned William Paul. Scavolini touches on most of the key topics surrounding the film, including its second-most significant controversy: the crediting of gore wizard Tom Savini (Dawn of the Dead, Friday the 13thet cetera) as special effects supervisor. Needless to say, Scavolini insists that he did no wrong and Savini was merely kicking up a fuss, whereas Savini tells it differently in “The Nightmare of Nightmare”. “Dreaming Up a Nightmare” features various members of the cast and crew speaking about different facets of the production; some clips are new, some archival.
We also get one deleted and one slightly extended scene, present, we’re informed, only on the Dutch and Australian VHS releases. Neither would be of interest to anyone outside seriously devoted (brain-damaged?) fans of Nightmare; fans who will also, no doubt, be checking out the standard stills gallery and trailers, most notable for their continued promotion of Savini’s alleged involvement.
It’s hard to know whether or not to recommend Nightmares in a Damaged Brain, the dichotomy in interest between the film and its extras is so extreme. But this is certainly an excellently put-together package.