"The pounding of the Afterbrain signals vengeance and death!"
The Brain is a 1988 Canadian Sci-Fi Horror film. The film was directed by Ed Hunt (Starship Invasions) and stars David Gale, Tom Bresnahan, Cynthia Preston, and George Buza.
"Independent Thinking" is a pop psychology program hosted by a Dr. Blakely, who claims to be a self-help guru. However, he's actually a megalomaniac. Using a brain-shaped alien, Blakely tries to mind control the world. Only one troubled teenager can stop the madness!
Not to be confused with the 1969 crime comedy.
This film contains examples of:
- Abstract Eater: The Brain eats independent thought, leaving its victims as mind slaves for anybody who feels like having one.
- Actor Allusion: This wasn't the first time David Gale played a character who got decapitated.
- Antagonist Title: Named after the mind controlling alien.
- Alien Blood: When Blakely is finally killed, his blood is green.
- Big Bad: The Brain mind controlling everybody.
- Brain Monster: The main antagonist is a giant brain with a face and mind control abilities.
- Brainwashed and Crazy:
- Inverted; anybody who resists the Brain's hypnosis becomes a hallucinating, violent lunatic.
- Played straight with Mrs. Woods who is convinced to kill her husband because he won't watch Blakely's show.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: James has one of the highest IQ's in his school, but uses it to do elaborate pranks more than schoolwork.
- Chekhov's Gun: James takes advantage of the explosives properties of pure sodium for a prank in the beginning, and kills the Brain with the same in the end.
- Eaten Alive: The fate of the brain's victims.
- The Dragon: Dr. Anthony Blakely, a Psycho Psychologist managing the Brain's mind control operation.
- The End... Or Is It?: The Brain is blown up, and its henchmen are killed. Then one of its hallucinations appears on screen...
- Fanservice: During one of the experiments James is subjected to by Dr. Blakely, James has a hallucination of seeing Dr. Blakely's shapely female assistant topless. When he infiltrates his school later in the film, James once again sees a hallucination of the assistant, again being topless.
- Irony: The mind control operation uses a show titled "Independent Thinking" to get it's mind control out.
- Not Even Human: Blakely is revealed to be an alien.
- The Sociopath: Dr. Anthony Blakely, a psychologist who intends to sell the world to mind control by an alien Brain Monster. Even the reveal that he's also an alien doesn't make him less sociopathic, since we see no indication that that's what all his species are like.
