Brain Damage (1988)

Basket Case, Frank Henenlotter’s debut film, is one of the best horror movies (and finest indie films) of the ‘80s. The director/writer’s follow-up, 1988’s Brain Damage, is a variation on the same riff: an exceedingly normal guy living in a very pre-Giuliani NYC maintains a conflicted relationship with a deformed, homicidal monster. But, while Brain Damage might be derivative of Basket Case, that also makes it wildly different from just about every other movie ever made. Henenlotter’s second film is a bizarre, ghoulishly comedic take on an everyman’s moral denigration into an urban hellscape of drugs, sex, and violence. Plus, this one features cinema’s first death by blowjob.

Brain Damage follows Brian (Rick Hearst), a pleasant twenty-something with a job and a girlfriend whose life takes a turn for the worst when Aylmer, a talking parasitic slug-looking thing, slithers into his apartment. Aylmer enslaves his new human proxy by getting him addicted to the pleasure-inducing chemicals he injects into the back of Brian’s neck. The mind-altering drug he provides allows Brian to experience an orgasmic sensual overload, in exchange for which Brian must provide Aylmer human brains. You know, that old story.

I consider Belial, Basket Case’s grotesque conjoined twin, one of cinema’s greatest and most memorable monsters. Aylmer may lack his tortured pathos, but he brings his own demented charm to the proceedings, a bizarre mix of googly eyes and game show host voice, psychotronic powers and thousand-year-old backstory. Brain Damage is thrilling gutter filmmaking, with a spirit that is equal parts pre-gentrification Manhattan, punk rock, and psychedelic gore. Henenlotter’s story is an obvious metaphor for substance abuse and the film effectively portrays Brian’s descent into a lifestyle driven by a mindless, shame-inducing pursuit of scoring his next high.