Synopsis
The Dream You Can't Escape ALIVE!
A drug-treated schizophrenic plagued by horrible nightmares is released from the hospital and goes on a killing spree.
1981 Directed by Romano Scavolini
A drug-treated schizophrenic plagued by horrible nightmares is released from the hospital and goes on a killing spree.
Nightmares in a Damaged Brain, Nightmare in a Damaged Brain, Cauchemars à Daytona Beach, Blood Splash, Flucht aus gnadenloser Hölle, Violencia se escribe con sangre, Pesadillas de una mente enferma, Pesadilla - La última, Baño de sangre, Pesadelo, Pesadillas de una Mente Enferma, סיוט, 噩梦, Кошмары больного мозга
'Nightmare''s great strength lies in its real-world scuzziness. This is what low-rent drifting from motel-to-bar-to-times-square-peepshow-to-psych-ward-straitjacket must have felt like in 1981. Shot in a series of rooms, out of windows, on the highway from the back of a car, in and out of seedy roadside establishments, along the rows and rows of Times Square theatres, the camera's action is unambitious, content with filling the screen with enough information to tell the story. This is what works, because the unhinged main performance and the very realistic gore effects stand out in near-verite. Less a slasher, and more the bridge between 'Maniac' and 'Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer', if Henry had escaped from a secret psychotropic drug experiment, or if 'Maniac'…
Spooktober II: To Hell With the 80s
What's a horror marathon or list without an obscure film that few know about and which caused quite a stir at the time, even leading to its director's imprisonment? Furthermore, for some strange reason, the producer were selling this lie that Tom Savini did the makeup, although that is not true.
As for the film itself, it is strange in many ways. There is plenty of gore and violence, eschewing the style that was typical of American cinema at the time for a style more in line with "giallo" films. The editing and the whole narrative structure is entirely experimental, which is fitting since it makes you feel as if you're stuck in…
I don't think I have ever seen this before yet I have a vivid memory of that weirdo kid in the bowtie chopping the women's head off with an axe. Nothing else about this was familiar and I think I'd remember how awful the kids were in this. Just the absolute worst, I was willing for that CJ kid to be butchered the little shit!
A mental patient who is put on an experimental drug is released onto the streets, what could go wrong? Quite a lot as he is released onto the sleazy scumy streets going from the institute straight to the peepshows of New York City so it's not long before the drugs that have made him a…
#SlasherSaturday video nasty style
From the blood soaked opening moments, you’ll know exactly what you’re in for. This was great. Supposedly, on initial release Tom Savini was credited with make-up effects. He was apparently only a consultant though, and made them remove his name from subsequent releases. This certainly lives up to the video nasty label. One thing I love about 80’s movies is it perfectly captures parenting of the era where punishments ranged from “Go to your room until tomorrow” to “Go watch TV”. (I got a lot of the latter, obviously).
Stellar pick, Clark!
Degrees of Kevin Bacon: 2
1. William Kirksey and Irwin Keyes in Squeeze Play
2. Irwin Keyes and Kevin Bacon in Friday the 13th
I feel like I lack the vocabulary to explain what's so compelling about this movie. Somehow, it's so cold and clean and detached, in the way it's photographed. The way the titles cleanly segment the action. It's so quiet. It's ambient. Dialogue increases as we move closer to the family, but for much of the film, speech just comes in snippets. We feel the space breathe or we're violently wrenched through diabolical montages. Especially to start, it's a parade of nightmare imagery. Just flashes of central murder-trauma with tremendous power or the quiet sky by the sea.
The detachment compels me. It's disorienting. Felt in the bank of computer monitors watched by the man with the cigar. In…
"Nightmare" is a 1981 slasher film directed by Romano Scavolini. With an observational build of hearing stories on mental patients being experimented on with psychiatric drugs, Scavolini wrote a script about what would occur if one such person got loose upon the world. In that, the formulated plot on the onset of things is fairly simple in terms of viewership getting hooked into the scenario, but once viewership is set in, the film easily gets more dynamic for a multifaceted experience. We learn the dark etched secrets of our escaped patients past that amazing intermixes with the plot of the current state of things in a quite appreciated full circle experience that many of these films can have a tendency…
A thoroughly disgusting slasher that indulges in the violence for maximum shock factor and has more in common stylistically with Italian horror and the 70s grindhouse descents into perverse madness (including a walk down the 42nd St. peep shows) than it does where the genre eventually went in the 80s. There's a very effective, uncommercial cheapness to it that exacerbates both how strange and scary it feels.
So you're freed from a ward after decades of tangible nightmares of a double murder committed in childhood. The doctors claim they've fixed your brain—what to do now? Go to the apex of New York City's seedy underworld, 42nd Street, and literally froth at the mouth over flesh...of course. The delusions flourish and you're soon following women home to plunge knives into their guts.
Nightmare sounds easy, just go with the usual misogyny after that setup. Exploitation heaving high-impact violence, most charged sexually, at wincing eyes. A roughie trying to out-disgust well, everything. Writer-director Romano Scavolini succeeds but his psycho is more complex than expected. Baird Stafford's George Tatum fully grasps his need for help—even during the acts. More terrifying…
What a delightfully sleazy film! In every scene, everything just looks dirty or covered in a layer of grime. You feel like you need a shower after watching it and that’s my kind of horror.
The gore really isn’t that bad and that decapitation is absolutely exquisite! There are some overly talky parts but the atmosphere and grungy vibes make up for it. I kinda dig that house. Give it a bit of cleaning up and I’d be ready to move on in!
Nightmare in a Damaged Brain certainly lives up to its title - a grimey sleazy slasher about a mental patient who escapes from asylum New York and heads down to sunny Florida in pursuit of his ex-wife and son. The film takes obvious influence from Halloween and follows a similar plot path - though with more psychological elements. Key to all of this is the gore, which is bright red and plentiful...though in honesty rather fake looking. It was enough to get the film banned in the UK though. Despite the positive elements, the film does fall down somewhat on the plotting - which meanders and really makes the film feel quite long. The plot and characters really aren't all…
"Nightmare" is a sleazy splatter flick somewhere between psychological terror and slasher. At times the movie is very reminiscent of "Maniac". "Nightmare" will be most likely remembered for some insanely gory kills and the nasty atmosphere.
56
Didn't impress me as a slasher but its commitment to grime and filth is absurd and the thread that holds the narrative together.