Brain Dead (1990 film)

Plot

Dr. Rex Martin is a top neurosurgeon, who is active in studying brain malfunctions that cause mental illnesses. High school friend Jim Reston, a successful businessman at Eunice, requires Martin's aid in reaching the mind of John Halsey, a former genius mathematician who once worked for the company and is now a paranoid psychotic at a nearby asylum. Dr. Martin's surgery is intended to successfully alter the patient's mental attitude, either unlocking the corporate secrets within Halsey's brain or else leaving Halsey unable to accidentally share them with anyone else. As Martin begins the surgical procedure, he starts to experience the same paranoid dreams as Halsey. The episodes grow in intensity until it becomes unclear whether Martin is a doctor imagining he's the patient, or a mental patient who succumbed to the delusion that he was a brain surgeon. Martin floats further and further from reality, caught between his loyalty to his business colleagues and his own humanity.

Cast

Production

In the late 1980s, Julie Corman got summer interns to go through several hundred old scripts. The best one they discovered was one written by Charles Beaumont for Roger Corman in the 1960s. Adam Simon liked it and updated it for modern times.