VividSimon Simply Perfect

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Red-Barracuda While I watched The Brain Machine I thought I must be kind of dumb because I had to keep on rewinding it in order to follow what was going on. I thought it was pretty bad that I was having so much bother understanding an exploitation flick. But subsequently, I have read other reviews and discovered that thankfully I was not alone and it seems to be generally felt that this is one confusing sci-fi thriller. It's about a secret government sponsored experiment where four volunteers are put through a series of tests that cause them to relive dark psychological events from their past including murder and war flash-backs. That makes it sound relatively straightforward but boy it sure isn't. It's edited together in such a way that it's difficult following not only what is going on but also who is who. While it's never in the least bit obvious what the point of the experiment actually is in the first place. The Brain Machine itself is sort of vaguely defined, although lawn chairs with sensors do seem to be an important component of it. There is also a room in which the test subjects are located in which the walls shrink in, which is a way of testing the psychological consequences of overpopulation! It's so random and strange. We have good people and bad people but it's not always even obvious what their motivations are, so character actions are also somewhat eccentric to say the least.But despite being very low budget and shoddily made, there is something consistently interesting about this film nevertheless. It's kind of endearing that a film with so little money and made for an exploitation audience is so ambitious. While it may not achieve its goals exactly, it falls short in an entertaining and intriguing enough manner. Its very incomprehensibility actually probably does it some favours too, in that you can watch this again and discover new aspects. Like a lot of 70's movies it has a paranoid thriller element, where the government are up to no good. The mixture of conspiracy film intrigue with science fiction works pretty well. It stars a couple of notable people with James 'The Dukes of Hazzard' Best a pervy priest and Stuart 'Russ Meyer' Lancaster as the Senator. I got to say I liked this one's clunky charm and while the story-line is messy, it was at least a little bit different. And that counts for quite a lot.

Chase_Witherspoon Dull and amateurish z-grade "thriller" concerns an apparently innocent mind experiment being hijacked by shady government interests to test a new brain control concept. Four voluntary subjects (Best, McRaney, Latham and Grapes) have their honesty tested by a trio of intrepid scientists (Collins, Burgess and Peterson) culminating in a population simulation experiment where they recline in fold-out chairs and conjure deep thoughts about a tumultuous event in their past - recollections that are being coaxed by the secret government brain control project, leading to catastrophic results.Sounds innovative, exciting even - note to self, it isn't. The acting is abysmal, the frequent cut-aways of the pool by the mansion and tall grey building are so over-used they become distracting, and the dialogue is laughable. Poor Gerald McRaney had to start somewhere, and director Joy N.Houck, Jnr was his start. All's well that ends well. James Best can do little to redeem the picture with his morally conflicted priest, quivering and stuttering through a series of awkward admissions, and Latham and Grapes, well, their performances are staggeringly bad. Atrocious isn't a big enough word. Others come to mind.Doesn't fit the "so bad it's funny" column, nor would it sustain many Gerald McRaney fans - it's difficult to find a reason to watch this movie, but I guess, one man's trash is another man's treasure so if you're terminally bored and up for anything, let the "Brain Machine" take control.

dbborroughs You know you're in trouble when the film your watching has numerous alternate titles. Generally it means that they tried and retried to hide the turkey in various markets. Such a turkey is The Brain Machine which has seven different titles.Its about some super secret government project that is suppose to be able to use a computer to read people but instead it drives people to kill each other or themselves, or something like that. Its filled with B level TV actors sitting in paneled room with lawn chairs trying to act a script that makes almost no sense.Its a turkey of the untastey kind. Avoid it.

michaeldouglas1 Let's see, here are the "highlights" of The Brain Machine: 15 establishing shots of a pool and a house; 15 establishing shots of a nondescript office building; 5 countdowns by a bland technician; 7 close-ups of a menacing guard; and a myriad of technical babble to show us this is a high-tech experiment.Various posters have commented on the discrepancy between the copyright date of 1972 and the release date given on the DVD box of 1977. That's an easy one to explain. This dog simply sat on the shelf unreleased for five years, until someone dusted it off, thinking it fit in perfectly with the post-Watergate mood of distrust in government. After seeing The Brain Machine now, my only wonder is that it ever got released at all!