Average User Rating: 5 Vote(s)
 
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
There is no coverscan for Schizo
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Distributor Palace Explosive
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Printed Classification R
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by Lee James Turnock
Here's one of the true bad boys of the video nasty scare, a cause celebre by virtue of the startling fact that its British distributor (David Hamilton-Grant, no stranger to controversy, having tried - and failed - to secure a UK cinema release for Last House on the Left as early as 1974) actually went to prison for releasing the uncut version. Fair enough, the accompanying advertising campaign - which invited punters to guess the weight of a damaged brain and win themselves fifty quid - didn't help either, but the fact remains Hamilton-Grant was the last person in Britain to be jailed for publishing obscene material. So, is Nightmares in a Damaged Brain really obscene? Of course not. It's a maddeningly diverse pick-and-mix of divergent styles and influences - everything from Hallowe'en and the Shining to any one of a vast number of Times Square-set grindhouse flicks gets a look in here - tied to a defiantly grubby, tasteless, trashy and misogynistic story of a traumatised youngster, released back into an uncaring society after years of supposedly successful therapy, to go back to his old murderous ways - all set to music that sounds like a wedding band running ragged and unrehearsed through the Pink Floyd songbook. Baird Stafford is effective as the wandering maniac - though the 'frothing at the mouth' scenes are more likely to evoke laughs than chills - but really, the whole thing stands and falls on its gloriously gory finalé, a delirious, once-seen-never-forgotten blood-soaked double murder partially supervised by effects ace Tom Savini. If it's sleazy, greasy, cheesy eighties gore you're looking for, this one delivers the gross-eries.