Brain Breakers- #1- LIGHTWEIGHT movies

Oh boy, that was fun.

Well everyone, I've officially finished the first round of films in the Brain Breaker Series and I will say that these films are definitely a nice numbing agent to aid the mental beating I'm going to be taking thought all of this. Way to start things off on the right foot!

As mentioned in my previous post, I'm splitting all of the films I'm watching; 9 in all- into 3 categories in terms of viewing-harshness. They're broken down into Lightweight, Middleweight and Heavyweight, and as the title of this entry suggests, I just wrapped up the Lightweight category. The movies I lumped into this category are notorious for being low budget, weird, and hilarious in the fact that they are so bad. All of these films have been talked about at length from many other film critics, but they still are pretty interesting and really should be watched at some point- especially if you love so-bad-they're-good movies. Now, I will do my best to not give up any spoilers, but honestly, even if I were to divulge the entire plot of any of these films it wouldn't ruin any bit of the ridiculousness they feature.

Alright-let's get this show started!

 The first on the list was Manos: The Hands of Fate. This film has been hilariously riffed by the likes of MST3K and RiffTrax, and for VERY good reason. Of all of the films I watched in this group it is by far the worst. Having said that, it's still worth checking out.

The film follows a very white bread family who gets lost on a random road, and they find their way to a secluded mansion that is guarded by a pervy gimp named Torgo, who announces that he guards the establishment while "The Master" is away. Eventually you find out that "The Master" is a mustachioed cult leader who has far too many wives, and he wants to punish Torgo and the family for happening upon his pad by way of summoning the vengence of Manos, their weird god-deity-demon-thing.


This film is a train-wreck from start to finish. The dialog in the film is clearly dubbed (and not well), scenes are slow and drag on, you can see a clapper board at one point- it's a good study into what a film should NOT be. But at the same time, the fact that this movie is so off-the-wall bad has cemented it in cinematic history. The film has become a cult classic thanks to the laughable dialog, plot, and cinematic choices the director made.

The main family, consisting of the husband/father Michael, the wife/mother Margaret and the annoyingly useless plot-device daughter Debbie are the literal worst. Michael is basically a walking stereotype for alpha-male WASPs everywhere. This dude refuses to get directions, gets his family lost, and then essentially bullies Torgo into letting his family crash at a place that is in no way a motel, B&B or anything similar, and that's just in the first few scenes of the movie; he never gets any better through the rest of this mess. Margaret is also the worst because she lets her husband push her around through everything when she is clearly the closest thing this movie has in terms of a voice of reason. Debbie, as mentioned is just a plot device. She wanders off randomly which leads her family to have to try and find her, thus getting them further embroiled in all of the wacky cult shenanigans they are trying to stay out of. The whole plot around The Master is one of mystery to me- and by "mystery" I mean I either missed his back story while watching the film or they just decided he didn't need much in way of character development. He's the boogie-man of the film though they try REALLY hard to make the "god" Manos the big baddie but honestly, none of the villains in the movie are all that menacing. The closest thing to menacing in the movie is a portrait of The Master and his doberman that the film really likes to focus on. And I mean there is a good chunk of the movie where the camera rests on the picture while the characters are having a conversation in the background.

The Master's many wives are also ridiculous. You find out that they are suspended in some kind of living-death state between cult rituals, and when all of the wives wake up, literally the first thing they do is sit around a fire and bicker with each other about what to do with the family while The Master just sits off to the side looking like he is a whipped husband wishing he were anywhere else but there. Eventually the wives get into what appears to be a choreographed cat fight scene and it was honestly my favorite part of the movie.

And those things don't even touch on a majority of the nuttiness "Manos" has to offer. Seriously, it's a dumb flick from start to finish, but is worth watching if for no other reason than seeing a cult movie classic.

Next on the list is "Death Bed: The Bed That Eats". This film was made in 1977 and has a very interesting history. The film was written, produced and directed by a guy by the name of George Barry and was the only film he ever made. When the film was completed, Barry naturally wanted to release it theatrically, but was unable to find anyone willing to do that. Later on, there was a company interested in distributing the film on VHS; a tape was made, but the distributor wanted Barry to put ending credits on the film before it could be released. Ultimately, Barry had to decline because he couldn't afford the $3,000 it would have taken to add credits, so the tape was returned to him. However, somehow a pirated copy of the VHS was released in the United Kingdom and Barry had literally no clue that had happened. Over time, the VHS found its way to New Zealand, Spain, and Australia as well.

Barry remained in the dark about all of this until 2001 when he stumbled on a forum post about the film that had been written by a French film journalist. Eventually the film did receive a theatrical release in 2003, and was put on DVD the same year. And as of 2013 it was even released on Blu-ray.

The film follows multiple people over the span of a few different decades (maybe even centuries- I'm not sure) and their encounters with a demonic bed that, you guessed it, eats people. The movie has a narrator- the ghost of one of the bed's victims, who is now trapped behind a painting in the room in which the bed is kept. Why is he trapped there? Not even he knows. What's the ghost's name? Not a clue- he's only credited as "The Artist"- so we'll just call him Artie for the sake of the blog. Anyway, we learn through Artie's narration that the bed itself was created by a wind demon who wanted to seduce some random human girl for... reasons. So apparently in the middle of their romantic trist, the girl died so the demon cried tears of blood that were absorbed by the bed, thus bringing it to life, and ever since then the bed is insatiably hungry, so it eats whoever lies in it. That's it- that's basically the whole story. Granted, you don't find out any of the bed's back story until at least 30 minutes into the movie. And all of it is through Artie's delightfully British narration. All. Of. It. Even a majority of dialog from the characters that are in a scene are either composed of internal monolog or is spoken when you can't actually see the character's mouth; either their head will be turned so you can't see their mouth move, or they just dub it over the actor as their delivering their lines but sometimes it doesn't sync up properly.

This film was wild- wildly confusing but also wildly hilarious! The movie breaks down each portion of the film into meals- like the beginning of the film is called "Breakfast", then there's of course "Lunch" and "Dinner" and let me tell you- the further into the "feast" you get, the more insane the story becomes. By the time I got got "The Just Desserts" I was dying of laughter. This flick is definitely worth checking out. Out of all of the movies in this group, this was by far my favorite and the one I would suggest the most. I recommend all of them, but if you were to only watch one, hopefully this is it.

And finally I watched a modern so-bad-it's-good classic, Neil Breen's "Double Down".  Originally I had planned to do the seminal Breen classic "Fateful Findings", but his movies are notoriously hard to find and acquire- luckily I found "Double Down" in its place.

Now, for those of you who don't know who Neil Breen is he is an architect and prior real estate agent turned indie film maker who has been getting a lot of attention on the internet over the past few years due to his insanely weird and hard to follow movies.

Breen has been compared to the likes of other so-bad-they're-good film directors like Tommy Wisseau, the creator of the infamous film "The Room" (another movie you should definitely check out). Wisseau has been called the Orson Wells of bad movies; and if Wisseau is Orson Wells, Breen is definitely the David Lynch of bad movies- without a doubt in my mind. When interviewed about his films and a lot of the really weird, random, and confusing things featured in all of them, Breen loves to say that things in his films are "metaphors" that are up to the viewers to decide what they mean. And he literally says this about all of his films. And apparently all of his films (at least the ones that I've seen) are some really confusing and random metaphors! "Double Down" is no exception.

The movie stars Breen himself as... You know what, I don't even remember his character's name. Honestly, I think his character's name is only mentioned maybe a maximum number of 3 times in the film, and I feel like that's being generous. So yeah- it doesn't matter what his character's name is. All you need to know is he is a super amazing computer-hacking, government-overturning, philanthropic military-trained super mercenary who is literally the best at everything he does ever, yet he completely fails at everything in the movie. Seriously- all he does is have conversations with the apparent ghosts of his parents and fiance while running through the desert screaming about who knows what. He lives in his car out in the desert and he lives off of canned tuna. Seriously- that's all he eats and he has the empty cans to prove it. He uses old satellite dishes, old broken laptops and clamshell phones to create some kind of super weapon that kills people with some sort of invisible barrier, and he carries super deadly powder that he uses to kill fish in a lake and at one point he rubs this super deadly powder on a "target" and tells the viewers of the film that the powder "kills on contact" and his victim "will be dead in 5 minutes". Seriously- that's a line in the movie. And then the only real mission he gets in the film he epically fails at- words cannot fully describe what is witnessed in this dumpster fire.

There is so much going on in this movie, yet in looking back at it nothing actually happened. And even though nothing happened, I have SO many questions about the things featured in this movie. Honestly, even if I took the time to type out every question I have about this movie in this blog, I don't think I would ever run out of questions. The questions would breed more questions and eventually I would have a full blown W.T.F. hydra that there would be no way to slay.


In conclusion, these films were bad, but they were definitely the sweet numbing agent my mind will need as we move into the next category. The films featured in this post are harmless in terms of weirdness. All of these films are written, produced and directed by each of their respective creators, and they are clearly something that could be considered passion projects to those who made them. But even though the creators were definitely passionate about their feature films, clearly their intention didn't quite hit the level of fruition other movies have experienced. And really the cause behind that could is probably varied but ultimately, there's a lot of credit due to each of these directors because they had a dream and made it happen; and that's something that I think we can all appreciate.

Well fam, that's all for this round. I'll see you again soon with more brain-breaking films.