In short: Nightmare In A Damaged Brain (1981)

Science! Science is so great, it can help even someone like George Tatum (Baird Stafford). George, you see, is a paranoid schizophrenic with homicidal urges who has already killed a family in Brooklyn. Fortunately, his psychiatrist Paul (Bill Milling), wielding the mighty sword of movie science, has a nice new experimental drug to make Paul's problem go away. Too bad that the rest of Paul's science isn't up to snuff, or he would probably have understood that George's recurring dream about killing his parents with an axe is not a dream but a memory. That way, he would probably have thought twice about letting his patient walk free as soon as he shows a dubious amount of stability (or not, see "Brooklyn family").

One New York peepshow and an epileptic episode later, George goes on the lam, making his way to Florida for some reason his doctor (a man who blew his research skill check mightily) doesn't understand.

George has already started killing again on the way, and when he arrives in Florida, he divides his time between a little more killing and the stalking of your typical American family consisting of a single mom (Sharon Smith), her beardy boyfriend (Mik Cribben), two normal children and young C.J. (C.J. Cooke), a compulsive liar, cruel practical joker and obvious future serial killer.

On paper, Nightmare in a Damaged Brain is your typical, at once rather nasty and low body-count, part of the big slasher craze,an impoverished mix of too small a budget and too little shooting time with no originality to speak of.

In practice, it is quite a compelling film. It might be Romano Scavolini's direction (and man, does this guy have a strange body of work) that elevates the film. Scavolini was valiantly doing his best to not let the film look as cheap as it should, often achieving a creepy mood, a feeling of something being slightly off, through judicious use of classically weird camera angles.

Or it might be Baird Stafford's rather intense performance as George. He's not going for bigger than life evil or killer machine, but tries to keep his serial killer human in a way that is probably not in the script. This doesn't make George a nicer person, yet it adds an additional dimension to the film you don't find in slashers too often.

Or it might be the film's tense finale that is a little at odds with the leisurely pace of much of what goes on before; or the film's ruthlessness in touching certain aspects American films usually don't dare to touch (blame it on the Italian writer/director).

Whatever the exact reason is, Nightmare in a Damaged Brain is very much worth watching, probably even loving, if you are inclined to love a cuddly little homicidal maniac.

 

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