Nightmares In A Damaged Brain

1st sitting:

Nightmares In A Damaged Brain AKA Nightmare, 1981 97mins (NTSC): Successfully prosecuted

KEV 'S BLOG: 

Initially we thought we'd do the list in alphabetical order, starting with the 39 films successfully prosecuted by the Director of Public Prosecution in the "Video Nasties" witch hunts of '83 and '84 and then doing the 33 that were on the list but that the DPP either failed to get convictions on or just ended up not bothering with. But, partly due to the fact we couldn't necessarily get easy access to all of the films in that order and the fact that my 30th Anniversary edition of Nightmare turned up, we thought sod it, let's just crack on in any random order, I mean Christ, it's a ridiculous OCD thing we're doing anyway, and I haven't seen Nightmare for over 12 years since I lent my bootleg copy to a mate who never saw again (honestly, although fairly entertaining it's neither that offensive or good, so it must have been me) and I'm right up for it soooo....

The copy we're watching is Code Red's (a fine company who's name, like Blue Underground, Media Blasters, Shriekshow and Shameless you are likely to see crop up a fair bit over the course of this endeavor) recent 2 disc, region 0, NTSC dvd. The set contains a staggering 3 different prints of the film (Code Red were keen to make available the best prints they could and were all set to release both the  2008 hi-def master, matted to 1.78:1 widescreen print and the 2005 colour corrected telecine 1.33:1 ratio unmatted version, then at the last minute found a better widescreen telecine print, so threw that in for good measure on a second disc) and this release has been awaited for a couple of years now by devoted fans of this sort of thing. Of the 3 versions we have opted for the 1.33 unmatted full frame version, partly because it is apparently director Romano Scavolini's intended viewing ratio and also, being 1.33 and a bit more of a scraggy print, it also makes the whole experience a bit more like watching it back in the 80s (did I mention OCD tendencies?).

Basically, I liked this quite a lot, although I do have to say that the film does really "weight" the, urm..., excitement at the front end. It's reasonable disorienting (ie confusing) and gory for the first 15 minutes, as a psychiatric patient lurches from nightmare to nightmare, but are we watching nightmares, some things that are actually happening, or flashbacks - who can say? Anyway, as psychiatrists often do, the patient is released having seemingly been a successful trial in some new breakthrough methods of treating psychopaths and he obviously heads straight to New York's 42 street for some great shots of dens of iniquity and some nice seedy encounters with some of the girls who work there... all the usual stuff really and all the better for it, but then when the bodies start turning up and he decides to head back to his family home in Florida...

Enter two idiot generic cops and a fairly dreary middle patch and suddenly you are praying for the potential victims to wander in to the killers path, to the point where I felt like offering to help. Funnily enough, I think my old bootleg may have been from the UK nasty edition as I have read that it was about 10 mins shorter, losing a lot of the exposition and none of the seediness or the gore, because thinking back I can't particularly remember either the cops or the boredom, anyway, gets better when the hilariously slimey, boat-dwelling hippy boyfriend of what looks like to be a sure-fire blond corpse in waiting turns up, nice big gory end as the nutter's background is explained, blame firmly leveled at the psychiatrists for letting the bloke out and we're done. Pretty good, but maybe not quite as much fun as I'd remembered.

In some ways it is fitting that we kicked off proceedings with this, as it is the only film on the list of 72 that someone (a chap called David Grant) in this country went to jail for distributing... terrifying days in the 80s, never mind the millions of unemployed, the loss of industry and the closing down of work and communities - lets blame it all on low budget films and send a small independent distributor to jail for it - the masses are appeased, the Daily Mail has its circulation figures and we're all happy... 

JASON'S BLOG:

 Ok, Kev is the expert on these films - I have always taken an unhealthy passing interest but he's the Don..we're using his collection. Mind you we're using my 'viewing room'. Which to set the scene is little more than 3 old cinema seats from the forties in a dank, dark basement underneath my house with a reasonable sized telly and multi region DVD player. Horrible but fitting!


Ok so Kev was excited about seeing this one....me?....not so much, and I can't say I enjoyed it. I also can't  understand what it was that upset the DPP so much back in the eighties, there was no real sense of dread or bad taste about the film. It did however contain the other hallmarks of a classic nasty - poorly made, confusing and slowly paced. I must admit I am writing this some days on and I am struggling to remember much about it. I do know that I wanted the killer to murder his ex wife by the end of the film...she was possibly the worst mother I have ever seen (and I have seen the ones that frequent Friar Street in Reading!), seeming to go out to see her hairy boyfriend leaving the kids home alone at the drop of a hat. She was impatient with them and full of self pity....so in my mind was prime for a killing. Apart from that I can only remember feeling very confused by the endless nightmare scenes.


Oh come to think of it - it did contain a scene when a kid axes his mother whilst she make loves to his Dad......maybe that's why it was banned. 

 1 down 71 to go....