BrainWaves (1983)
* 1/2 (out of 4)
Rather confusing tale of a woman (Suzanna Love) who suffers brain damage after being struck by a car but a doctor (Tony Curtis) does a strange experiment on her, which appears to bring her back to normal. Soon after the experiment the young woman starts to have visions of another woman who was apparently murdered by someone with "X" tattoos on his wrist. This film comes off as somewhat of a disappointment after reading a few good reviews for it. The film runs a short 77-minutes but it felt much longer as the screenplay is all over the place and never really knows what to focus one. For starters, we have the mysterious woman who is murdered at the start of the movie. We then have Love's character who goes into a coma and then slowly starts to rebuild her life. We then have the nutty doctor doing the experiments. The film never really tells a straight story because it appears no one knew which story to really focus on. For a large portion of the film the murder is forgotten about as the woman tries to rebuild her life. We then get back into the murder aspect of the film but then everything about the coma takes a backseat and is pretty much forgotten. Love turns in another fine performance and makes the character interesting and worth watching. Vera Miles (PSYCHO) plays her mother and delivers a nice performance as well. On the DVD director Lommel talks about Curtis having a cocaine problem at the time of this movie being made and he also mentions that the actor didn't want any dialogue. This explains his horrible performance, which is all over the place and that includes the line delivery. It seems Curtis is extremely mad throughout the movie as he just comes off like he's ready to explode. There are a few nice technical moments including the death by electrocution but in the end I must admit that the film left me bored and unsatisfied. I'm really not sure who I'd recommend this movie to as it doesn't really work as a drama and the horror elements are so minor that most fans will be hitting the eject button early on.