This is perhaps one of the most obscure slasher tales that I have had the pleasure of watching, and yes I did say pleasure. They really don't make em' like this any more folks. This is pure, genuine, unbridled gore and brutality at its best portrayed through media and Hollywood. The film has acquired somewhat of a reputation for being a granddaddy of both pushing the envelope and counting its chickens. What I mean by that is, the movie takes every eminence that a slasher movie has and abuses it to the fullest. As for the chicken counting, the movie at its time didn't hale the crowd expected. It wasn't until recently that the film gathered its following. I found it to be standard in many ways but exceptional and note worthy in others.
The film begins with a mental patient who has just escaped from the institution. Nothing new here, standard slasher movie premises. It gets a bit different. We start in a nightmare in the brain of the schizo. He is tossing and turning violently trying to escape his nightmare (Freddy I'm sure) He dreams up something crazy that I honestly can't remember off the top of my head. I do believe it was a woman's head being chopped off, or something to that extent. He wakes up relieved but notices something in the sheets of his bed. He turns down the sheets to reveal a severed head! OH MY DEAR LORD!!! The scene is side splitting, it really keep you glued though.
This is only one of many nightmares that the deranged Tatum (killer) engages within his mind. Side note - Do you think The name Tatum was inspiration for the 95 film Scream? food for thought. Back to the subject at hand. The killer has many nightmares in which he brutally eradicates helpless victims. As I stated before, he was released from the mental institution after being clamed as safe and sane. They've always got it wrong don't they? Well I suppose something triggers his killer instinct that instigated in a viewing of his parents having sex. Violent nipple twisting sex at that. In the dreams we become aware that as a young boy, he murdered his parents with an axe he just so happened to have had. There we receive the visual of the woman's severed head, now manifested as the mother's.
Tatum becomes obsessed with a small family of three. A selfish mother who is just too darn angry to be real, and a couple of the most obnoxious children to grace the screen. He spies on the kids and follows them like a creepy child molester. He does present an uneasy feeling and pulls it off nicely. The young boy of the family plays an important role in the film, he is used as a reference to the past traumas of the killer. Not only do they look alike, they're related. That's something you will come to realize in the film, I'm not giving anything away here. Somewhere in the middle of production I think Romano Scavolini decided that the killer needed to wear a mask. Throughout the entire film the killer rocks it bare faced, however in the closing scenes of the flick he wears a mask that resembles an old black man. What this mask represents I don't know, but it's kinda creepy.
This is a far cry from being deemed as an inelegant film. For that matter, this film is a far cry from being deemed as an efficient film. It is a mess from start to finish. This is basically the prime reason the film is weighed down. Like I said, it was obscure. Unfortunately the time that the film was made didn't have the resources need to make Nightmares in a Damaged Brain the movie it could have been. The film is heavy on dream sequences, and computer animation of brilliant direction was absent from the set on this endevor. The scripting also works the viewers into a stupefied head scratch. Honestly, I was clueless that anything was a dream sequence. It was only with repeated viewing s that I actually got it
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