Monday 1 February 2016

#291: NIGHTMARE IN A DAMAGED BRAIN

1981
Directed by Romano Scavolini
Horror, Slasher, Video Nasty.

I first saw this film years ago when I was browsing the Horror section at HMV. The DVD had the most ridiculous artwork and description, with some of the most insane bloody and gory images on the back. I was sold! But unfortunately when I actually got through watching it, it turned out to be a cut version with almost every instance of blood and gore removed. In fact it was so bad that it actually interfered with the flow and plot of the film. In my state of confusion, I studied the DVD sleeve closer to find a tiny bit of writing, half obscured, that read "images may not appear in film". I got screwed.

So thank you to the gorehounds at 88Films for restoring Nightmares In a Damaged Brain in its full uncut glory on Blu-Ray. Fortunately the plot made a LITTLE bit more sense (I can't stress that enough) and yes, it turns out this film has the occasional brutal kill and over the top gory madness!

Even after seeing it restored, this film still brought back bad memories of when I first watched it (nightmares if you will). In true Italian style, it has a headache inducing narrative and the plot of this film is just dumb. Watching it feels like your brain is being bludgeoned with a hammer! But what's worse than, the majority of the film is actually very boring. It plods along at a slow pace, and has very few thrills, which is actually unlike even the stupidest Slasher films. The film looks incredibly ugly and it's vague nods towards Psycho and silly red herrings just annoy. A daft twist ending is the icing on the shit sundae. It's nice to see a film finally restored in it's ultimate form, but this one was probably better off being thrown under the bus!

On a bizarre side note, I was actually lucky to even get the 88Films Blu-Ray, as it ended up getting recalled from stores for mysterious reasons. Perhaps the universe didn't want it to be shown uncut after all! 3/10.

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