CheerupSilver
Very Cool!!!
Bergorks
If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.
Kamila Bell
This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.
Kimball
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
Michael O'Keefe
A university research psychologist, Dr. Phillip Rothman(Terry Londeree) convinces a group of college friends in taking part in an experiment to see if changing colors and patterns of a computer game changes behavior. The software company providing the games figures to use the experiment's results in recouping and making money with expectations the games will become popular among colleges students and would eventually control them. But bad thing is... the students in the experiment are already becoming very violent. A pretty tame thriller. Nothing redeeming. The cast includes: Farrah Forke, Donna Bostany, Heather Ann Barclay, Shura McComb and Joe Lombardo.
gavin6942
An experiment in computer-generated mind control goes berserk... and the body count is rising! Who is behind this and what are they trying to accomplish? The film has an interesting lecture with props on lobotomy, awesome early 90s metal and dance music, but that's the only good things I can say about it.The video game shown is really, really poor for 1991. As another reviewer said, it looks like a Commodore 64. (This same reviewer said the professor is more wooden than Keanu Reeves and that could not be more true.)I cannot recommend this to you or anyone. By this point, even bad films should at least look good, but this one just does not. I wish it had never been made at all.
Navajas
This is definitely a forgotten piece of cinema from the early 90's if ever there was one. I found Brain Twisters as part of a recent Mill Creek DVD boxed set and, while the twelve-movie sets aren't nearly as daunting as those with fifty, when I purchase a boxed set I watch them all, no matter how painful.In all actuality, this is not as bad as the other reviews would suggest. That's not to say this is a good movie, either; it just doesn't have anything especially interesting going on with it to fall into that So-Bad-It's-Good category. It does have some blood, but it could have used some more meat and maybe an exposed breast or two.The basic premise is this: a college professor named Dr. Philip Rothman (Terry Londeree, in one of his only film roles--his acting is even more wooden than Keanu Reeves) is working with a private company to develop a mind-altering software, and uses his own workstudy students as lab subjects. The testing consists of the subjects watching some colorful four-bit graphics that look like they were made on a Commodore 64 or some other piece of hardware that was outdated even by the standards of the early 90's. Very pretty, yes, but in this case the colorful squares also turn the subjects into vicious killers. Sometimes they kill themselves, depending on the needs of the script.Most of the story revolves around the life of one of Rothman's students, Laurie Stevens (Farrah Forke, who actually did go on to get some decent work on television). She's not exactly a "final girl" in any sense, though, just to note--I noticed other reviewers calling this a Slasher film, which it is not by any stretch of the imagination. Laurie is just a lead character, but she is written very thinly; she is, for example, apparently able to resist the mind control aspects of the pretty lights, but that is not very well conveyed through either script nor acting.Behind the poorly executed plot is a conspiracy involving a video game developer (I think) that is (for some unknown reason) using the pretty light software to put into commercial games with the intention of making kids go crazy and kill people (I guess). There's also this uncomfortable romantic sub-plot with Laurie and a cop (Frank Tun, played by Joe Lombardo, whoever that is). Really, the whole thing is one big mess.I honestly can't recommend this flick for anyone, but it was moderately amusing, if only because it was so bad.
Tom DeFelice
College students are being turned into killers by a large corporation when they watch a video screen. This is the premise of "Brain Twisters". The basic problem with this low budget horror/sci-fi film is that it is just so middle-of-the-road. Too good to be bad and not bad enough to be a guilty pleasure, it is just mediocre. The film is "G" rated for all but the last five minutes when it turns "PG". Such stalwarts of this low budget genre as gross-out violence, naked young bodies and serial sexual acts are completely missing. The killings are either off-camera or back to camera. The only attacks fully on camera are a fake beer bottle to the head, fingernails to the throat, and cooked spaghetti to the face. And when someone is killed, there is virtually no blood! The language is entirely sanitized except for two words near the end ( a f__k and a s__t). There is no nudity. The one bath tub scene has enough bubbles in it to cover Mt. Everest. This film proves once and for all that gratuitous nudity, sex and violence may not help a low budget horror flick...but it won't hurt it either.