By Alex King
Many years ago on Cinemax I watched a film that completely caught me off guard and forever etched its glory into my childhood. This was during the hay days of when watching horror movies on Cinemax was a big deal. In fact it was most times the only place you could catch some of these films. That movie was The Brain (1988)
The story goes a little something like this. “With the help of an alien organism, a man brainwashes audiences through television; a troubled high school student is determined to stop them.” It goes a bit more bat shit than that though. The movie was directed by no stranger to the genre Ed Hunt and starred Tom Bresnahan (Mirror Mirror) as the main protagonist. With David Gale (Reanimator, Bride of Reanimator) playing a Doctor and talk show host of “Independent Thinking”. Even had George Buza (X-men) in it as a axe wielding psycho.
Anyways, this movie was part thriller, creature feature and Videodrome wanna be and a giant man eating brain. All in one messy fun movie. It’s not the best movie ever made but this movie really took you places that most films really didn’t have the guts to take you. Not to mention fans of this film are pretty ravenous (myself included) and have been waiting a long time for this to get a proper release. There have only been a few VHS DVD reprints out in the wild and I don’t think they were official. So the only memory most have of this is from the VHS copies that littered stores everywhere.
Fast forward to today and a buddy of mine Patrick Lemke who is a regular of our regular Twitch Stream each week hit me up in discord about a place holder on the Canadian Amazon for none other than The Brain (1988). I jumped out of my chair in excitement. Many of us horror fans who know of this movies wonder have been asking just about every damn distribution company to release it. I always see it pop up in Vestrons Facebook or Vinegar Syndromes comments or even on Synapse. It’s been held up for some time but it looks like one of the big ones may have just acquired the rights.
Screen cap from the Canadian Amazon listing here. (Click on snap to go to listing)
Shout factory aka it’s sub category Scream Factory looks to possibly have picked it up. This is of course via the amazon order notes here and not from Shout Factory / Scream Factory directly. I would assume it would fall into their Scream Factory for obvious reasons. I couldn’t see what other reason it would be up there for any other reason.
Further more the date says February 19th! [Edit] After posting this another comment brought a post about this very discussion to my awareness. Someone recently just asked scream about this very date on FB and apparently. They stated. “There’s no release of The Brain planned for Feb”. Which doesn’t mean it’s not coming. So will it be coming later? We certainly hope so as it’s been a long time coming. [Edit]
So I guess we will find out soon enough.. I just had to share this with you guys and hope those few horror fans out there that love this will regale with their favorite moments in the movie. Sound off with your favorites and if you are excited about this possible news below! Is it really finally happening?!
Check out a scene from the movie below!
When I am not putting together the Beyond The Void Horror Podcast, writing music, videos, streaming horror games on twitch or creating anything. I will occasionally write a thing or two. I love to be creative.
www.twitch.tv/dekonreighn
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