BRAIN DAMAGE - Frank H's follow up to 'Basket Case' is a victory for low budget slime. Actually, it's made with verve, passion and wit, so I question my own use of the term 'low budget slime', but, like all of Henenlotter's films, its heart is clearly in the gutter. My love for this film has grown over the years. I actually remember feeling disappointed when I first saw it at age fourteen or whatever. I was expecting something really transgressive and bleakly disturbing, and ended up with what I thought was yet another comedy horror. Time has unveilled 'Brain Damage's hallucinatory twistedness, and, watching it now, it seems very far removed from standard genre fare of its era. It may throw a few gags at the audience, but it's a trip into NYC's heart of darkness, with Henenlotter serving up a side order of sleazy vignettes and warped characters to complement the main course, the tale of a young guy being driven mad by a wise-cracking, brain-eating psychedelic parasite. There's no flab on this killer baby - it just rattles along with relentless intensity. Maybe one of the eighties' best and recommended for sure (dunno whether I'd say the same for 'The Swimming Pool Qs').
THE GRAPES OF DEATH - Super but in some ways atypical Rollin flick from the late seventies. Gorier and less sentimental than most of his others - what it lacks in romantically doomed female vampire double acts swooning for each other on windswept beaches it makes up for in pseudo-zombie action. It still has the unmistakable vibe of a Rollin film - hard to define, I can only resort to cliches such as 'dreamy', 'desolate', 'languid but menacing' etc etc, but you'll all know what I mean. I like the weirdly political thrust of it all, and the ham fisted left vs right debates of the protag's rescuers struck me as being hilarious the first time I saw it, and, horror stuff aside, scenes like Bridget Lahai looking imperious in a room full of animal skins with a stuffed owl in the corner are somehow the essence of Rollin.
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