Triskaidekafiles

Triskaidekafiles is a love letter to cheesy cinema from the 80s and 90s, with the occasional dip into other eras.  if you're a fan of MST3K, Elvira, Joe Bob Briggs, or just bad horror movies in general, Trisk is the place for you.

Filtering by Tag: Brain Machine

Brain Damaged

Hello, horrorheads!

What was I thinking?  Seriously, what WAS going through the addled mind of the master of Trisk?  Why the heck did I review Brain Machine?  It's not horror!

I said in a few places that I did it to do something special, something different (And boy was it different!), for Friday the 13th of May, and while that's true, it isn't the whole truth.

First of all, horror and scifi are like the bastard cousins of genres.  They almost always go hand in hand, or at WORST are walking on opposite sides of the street, glaring at each other unhappily.  But you know they secretly love each other.

Sometimes, the lines between the two are very clear, and other times they are very blurry.  You can't have your Scifi Channel without your bad horror movies.  Most of the movies I think of for this site, I first saw on Scifi in the 90s.  Even to this day, they do love their monster movies.  Hello, Mansquito.

How often did you go into the video rental place, or store, and see scifi and horror lumped into the same rack?  Hello, Alien.  Hello, Species.  Name your own examples.  The line is often very blurry.

I'm also always looking for something that isn't a slasher movie.  There's only so many Friday the 13th clones you can watch.

So that's plenty of justification for something more sciency and fictiony appearing here, but the deepest, truest truth?  I stumbled.

I was looking for a movie to fill that slot in the schedule, I knew I wanted to do something from one of my 50 packs since it had been an age and a half, and especially wanted to do something from the Scifi set, which has that mix of pure scifi and pure horror stuff.  It took me quite awhile pouring over synopses to try and find just the right movie, and a few leapt out at me.  Brain Machine was one of them, and it had a few factors I liked; it sounded cheesy, it had a number of recognisable names, and the plot SOUNDED like it had a nice body count in a murder mystery type deal, which is very much in the wheelhouse for Trisk.

And then I watched Brain Machine.

We all know how well that went over.

I took a week debating whether or not to let it go up on the site, or look for something else, and as is obvious, I decided screw it.  Review it.  The work was done, I might as well post it and see what happens.  And that's why we're here.  I want to know, 'what happened'.

I've long felt that scifi had a home here, albeit a smaller home.  I've already reviewed Species and a few other more science based movies.  I have plans of doing more, and ones even more sciency than Brain Machine turned out to be.  I've nicknamed these side-trips into science fiction as "Xenofiles" reviews, even if there aren't explicitly aliens.  I just didn't know when I'd do something more in that vein, and I didn't expect it to sneak up on me so suddenly.  But once it wsa done, well, might as well drop the hammer and see what happens.

So what did you guys think?  Did you like visiting the science side?  Saying hello to horror's kissing cousin?  I definitely plan to revisit the genre, but it is ultimately up to you guys, the audience.  Do you want to see more?  Do you want me to stop now?  Let me know!  Make your voice heard!  I do this for you guys.  I'll even take suggestions if you have a bad bit of scifi you want me to look at.

I won't do them often, like the next 'Xenofile' won't be until sometime in 2012, but I will definitely do them if there's demand.  Or I'll scrap those future plans if the screams are loud enough.  Horror will always be our bread and butter.

But we do so love our cheese.  Of all kinds.

And great.  Now I want a grilled cheese.

So that's my half-apology, half-explanation for Brain Machine, depending on if you liked it or not.  If you want more, leave a comment, an email, or post on the Facebook group.

And see you in a week.  With something that is definitely bloody.

J