Editorials
‘Brainscan’ – This Nostalgic ’90s Gem Doubles as a Waking Nightmare
Brainscan is one of those movies you would stumble on as a ’90s kid watching HBO, Cinemax or whatever other programming you weren’t supposed to be watching after your parents went to bed. The kind that you could tell right away was something darker than society would deem appropriate for someone of your age. The kind you knew would keep you up that night.
All of which made it impossible to turn off, of course.
But there’s a certain quality to Brainscan that felt still even more under the surface sinister than the other horror flicks I was used to at the time. This might sound silly considering the plot is about a misfit teenager who plays the hottest new horror video game advertised in Fangoria and ends up dealing with an almost cartoonish, mohawked, coulda been a guitar tech for Twisted Sister, Little Monsters type villain who crawls out of a TV set.
But it did….and here’s why I think it made such a lasting imprint.
Murder in Suburbia
In John Carpenter’s Halloween, Haddonfield plays such an important role because everything is so average; the town so unprepared for what lay ahead. When Michael Myers shows up it’s as if someone dumped a great white shark into a hot tub full of people on Ambien. In Wes Craven’s Scream, the upper middle class suburbia of Woodsboro is rocked by their children suddenly becoming unsafe in their large, beautiful homes as they are away on business or enjoying date night. There’s something about these settings that feels so realistic to any kid or teenager who’s had the house to themselves on an eerie Fall night or heard the voice of their local TV news anchor describing a shocking murder close to home.
Brainscan is drenched in that same realistic dread.
Michael (Edward Furlong) lives in the type of suburban neighborhood you take your kids Trick or Treating at because you just know they have that full sized candy bar type money. His section of his sprawling suburban home looks as if Richie Rich were a metal, horror and video game fan. Still, you can sense his sad and lonely existence among his ’90s treasure trove. His dad is perpetually gone on business and his mom died in a tragic car accident. He and his only friend, Kyle (Jamie Galen), are the school misfits and the only adults in their lives are the 90 year old, tweed jacket wearing, judgmental, “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” types. Even if they did want to reach out for help, they’d likely be shamed and disregarded.
The community as a whole, given the choice, would probably rather be rid of them both. They are very much alone and susceptible to the evils of the world amidst their quiet suburban town that just feels like it’s about to be the center of a Dateline NBC murder special. And it is.
A Nightmare Come to Life
Have you ever had a nightmare where you committed a crime you didn’t mean to commit? Or even murdered someone? Then had to sit with your anxiety waiting for the red and blue lights to show up in your driveway? No? Well, stop thinking about how weird I am for a second and be thankful. That nightmare sucks. The scariest part of Brainscan is that it successfully recreates the awful anxiety that countless other movies have made an attempt to inhabit. Sure, someone can be framed or wrongly accused. But Michael actually did these things and now has to sit around alone in his giant house and wait for the consequences to darken his doorstep.
Michael pops in the game for the first time and we are suddenly in first person mode (think the opening of Halloween without the eye holes) with a voice whispering “the gate……the gate.” We walk up through a suburban yard and into someone’s home where a man is sleeping; completely vulnerable to anything that stands over him. Which, in this case, is us.
The voice says “do it” and after a moment of apprehension, we stab him in the back. There’s a struggle and more stabbing and we ultimately end up hacking off his whole goddamn foot; but the point is this…..it felt cold. It felt real. The scene elicits the same feeling of the lakeside double murder in David Fincher’s Zodiac. Which, I admit, is a leap of a comparison to make stylistically. The two scenes and movies for that matter are completely unalike. But not in feeling. Both scenes share the same haunting callousness.
Michael wakes up and realizes, thankfully, that it was just an extremely realistic video game. He didn’t kill anyone. Then, on the news the next day he sees the breaking story that the murder had indeed occurred and a city wide manhunt had begun with law enforcement searching for the perpetrator of the heinous crime. No matter how many times I watch this scene, I feel my stomach sink with him at this moment. What a nightmare. It truly freaks me out. Imagine having committed a murder and not remembering it until you see the story on the news.
Of course, it all becomes far less realistic when “The Trickster” (T. Ryder Smith) pops out of the video game through Michael’s TV screen and starts dancing around on his bed like some sort of satanic Howie Mandel and going through his CD collection. But every time Michael is forced to slip back into that game I get that same queasy feeling.
Don’t get me wrong, “The Trickster” may suck all the True Crime realism out of the moment but he’s still one of a kind. Entertaining as hell and frightening in his own way as he gouges his own eyes out or breaks his own fingers while laughing like some sort of alternate universe Freddy Krueger. He’s a horror movie all on his own.
Game Over
One of the most fun aspects of Brainscan is the blast from the past that exists esoterically in Michael’s room. From stacks of horror magazines to a life sized whip bearing Alice Cooper fridge magnet; I would love to take a walk through this dude’s room with a VR headset. It’s as if someone let Dokken decorate an Applebee’s.
Brainscan features some yet to exist technology as well with Michael’s virtual helper “Igor.” Igor is a way radder version of Siri that can be summoned to Michael’s TV set by voice activation and make phone calls to his friends, whose faces then appear on the TV as the phone rings. Kind of like the technology that exists today but definitely didn’t back then. These moments of ’90s nostalgia and imaginative technology make Brainscan a bit of a messed up comfort watch for those of us from the time period and will probably be fascinating for those who aren’t.
There’s also no denying an amazing cast featuring Edward Furlong near his peak, Frank Langella as a thoughtful but no nonsense Detective, and of course, the standout performance by T. Ryder Smith as the Trickster. There’s also a kind hearted performance by the girl next door, Kimberly (Amy Hargreaves), who despite being far more socially acceptable of a human being sees something special in Michael and has fallen for him. So much so that she gets naked in front of her window every night because she knows he’s watching. She probably doesn’t know he’s recording it and on his super high def American Beauty VCR setup, though. Again, these weren’t what you would call “good kids.” It’s as if there was a multiverse where John Connor never ran into Arnold Schwarzenegger and instead was still being raised by his foster parents, running around hacking ATMs for arcade money.
All in all, Brainscan is a lot of things. In one moment it has the suburban trappings of Wes Craven’s Scream and the next, the wacky tone of Wes Craven’s Shocker. I think this tonal shift is why it is so often overlooked and disregarded by critics (the film sits with a lowly 13% Rotten score on aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes) but has also become a cult classic (it boasts a 60% Fresh audience score) among horror fans. The film juggles true dread in one hand and a coming of age story featuring a larger than life monster dude in the other. Brainscan is a bit messy in the organization of its tones and admittedly loses some steam by the third act, but one thing you could never call it is forgettable. There’s a lot of films that do some of the elements of Brainscan. But there isn’t quite another one that does them all.
Editorials
Before ‘The Blair Witch Project’, ‘Alien Autopsy’ Showed How Real Found Footage Could Feel
The line separating artist from con man is a lot thinner than you might initially believe. While I think we can all agree that lying for the sake of profit is actively malicious behavior, isn’t it also true that the faux documentary aspect of The Blair Witch Project is half the reason why that film became such a cultural phenomenon? After all, if there’s one thing filmmakers have in common with stage magicians, it’s that misleading and misdirecting audiences is simply part of the job.
That’s why I’ve developed a habit of mostly ignoring the moral quandaries behind many of film and television’s biggest “hoaxes” in favor of appreciating the narrative elements that drive productions like Mermaids: The Body Found and even Animal Planet’s highly underrated The Cannibal in the Jungle. However, if there’s a definitive case of a highly publicized broadcast fooling the world into taking it seriously, it has to be Fox’s infamous 1995 TV special Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction.
It’s been over three decades since that eerie footage first haunted television screens right at the peak of the ’90s ufology craze, and in that time, the video has taken on a life of its own. From countless parodies and references in everything from The X-Files to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (as well as John Dower’s recently released tell-all documentary The Alien Autopsy Scandal, which I’d highly recommend to genre fans everywhere), there’s no denying the legacy of the Alien Autopsy video. However, I rarely see the tape discussed as what it truly is: a highly convincing found footage film directed by a passionate stage magician and brought to life by masterful practical effects work.
That’s why I’d like to invite readers to join me on a deep dive into one of the most infamous broadcasts of all time in an attempt to reevaluate the footage as a fascinating narrative experience rather than a complete hoax.
The TV Special That Convinced Millions It Was Real
Ray Santilli next to Extraterrestrial replica in ‘The Alien Autopsy Scandal’
For starters, regardless of whether or not you believe that there was in fact an extraterrestrial crash in Roswell during the summer of 1947 and that some form of autopsy was performed on the victims, the producers behind the black & white recordings, Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield, insist that their video was a “restoration.” Though I’d argue that the proper word is “remake”of genuine footage that was too damaged to air on television. That’s why the duo went on to recruit filmmaker and eccentric magician Spyros Melaris and sculptor/monster designer John Humphreys to bring their version of the autopsy to life and sell it to the highest bidder.
This is where the story of the Alien Autopsy as a narrative experience really begins. Melaris claims that his approach to the faux recording consisted of striving for extreme period accuracy in both shooting equipment and setting while also planting subtle details that would initially seem like mistakes but could later be revealed to actually fit the time period. That being said, the filmmaker was under the impression that the short would be released for free as a PR stunt, with the team later producing and selling an informative documentary chronicling exactly how the footage was faked and commenting on how easy it is to manipulate public perception with a good old-fashioned magic trick.
This obviously isn’t how things went down, and that’s likely the reason why Melaris has since distanced himself from everyone else involved with the project. Yet, no amount of behind-the-scenes drama can undermine the genuine effort that went into making the short as impressive as it is. From the sourcing of real animal organs from a local butcher to make the organic part of the creature more lifelike to the highly detailed sculpt that made use of a hollowed-out underlayer that could be filled with fake blood and assorted viscera, there’s a reason why so many Hollywood specialists are still impressed with the artistry on display here.
Of course, the believability is only half the story, as I think that the best part of the autopsy is how Melaris builds on the existing tension by obscuring certain details and often embracing the chaos of what a real examination of extraterrestrial life could feel like. The camera often goes out of focus at just the right time to make certain effects hit even harder, and we can only speculate as to what the hazmat-suited doctors are gesticulating about during the operation. There’s a real air of mystery to the whole thing that almost makes it feel like a cosmically terrifying, cursed film containing forbidden knowledge that civilians were never meant to see.
So when Fox’s Fact or Fiction brings in the specialists to comment on the film and its otherworldly subject, it’s no surprise that we end up with one of the most memorable mockumentaries of all time – albeit one where the participants are unaware that the footage they’re commenting on is basically a large-scale practical joke. A joke that the network was obviously in on, as many participants claim that the TV special cut out significant portions where guests point out that they believe the footage to be an elaborate hoax.
The Lasting Impact of the Hoax Turned Cultural Event
Regardless, I remember going to bed terrified after watching reruns of the special and thinking about the respected pathologist who claimed that the body was almost certainly inhuman, with even effects maestro Stan Winston commenting on how difficult it would be to recreate some of these visuals through practical puppetry. That’s not even mentioning Jonathan Frakes’ dramatic hyping up of the disturbing imagery as if he was talking about the tape from The Ring, with his spooky demeanor here likely being responsible for his later role as the host of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction a few years later.
Personally, I’d argue that the Alien Autopsy phenomenon had just as much of an impact on me as a horror fan as The Blair Witch Project, a film that was almost certainly influenced by the success of this immensely popular hoax (to the point where they even produced their own TV special commenting on Heather’s found footage). Even if Fox didn’t intend to produce a narrative feature about the aftermath of the Roswell crash, the end product still holds up remarkably well as a highly entertaining mockumentary exploring the idea that we may not be alone in the universe.
While neither Santilli nor the rest of the production team has ever commented on this, I also think it’s very likely that the idea of a faux Alien Autopsy could have been influenced by Dean Alioto’s The McPherson Tape/UFO Abduction. I’ve already written about how this granddaddy of found footage was co-opted by rogue ufologists who began selling bootlegs of the tape at conventions as if it were real evidence of a close encounter, so it’s not that much of a stretch to imagine that Santilli and company could have heard about this phenomenon and been inspired to come up with their own highly profitable hoax.
At the end of the day, it’s unlikely that the Alien Autopsy film is recreating any real footage from Roswell, but I can still appreciate the short and the accompanying television event as a standalone horror story that still influences the way we see found footage to this very day.
After all, the possibility that something could be real is often much scarier than finding out for sure – and that’s why I think Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction is still worth revisiting three decades down the line.
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