It’s a double header of delight from boutique Blu-ray label Severin Films! If you’re not familiar with Severin they’re a cult production and distribution company, delving into the properly obscure sorts of movies and polishing them up for a new audience. Their latest two new releases come in the shape of Frank Henenlotter’s 2008 Bad Biology, and Romano Scavolini’s Nightmares in a Damaged Brain (aka Nightmare) from 1981. A true classic of the video nasty era here in the UK!
Bad Biology is a story of two people searching for fulfilment in their lives. A simple enough story, one we can all relate to, right? Well, yes and no. The issue here is that their needs are specifically sexual, complicated by the fact that neither of our two main characters are exactly “normal”. Jennifer (Charlee Danielson) is a nymphomaniac with seven clitorises and Batz (Anthony Sneed) has a monstrously huge trouser snake with a mind of its own and that mind is fixated on that one thing that men always think about.
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This film is… bad. It’s just bad and there’s no escaping that fact. The acting is wooden and flat, the concepts and visuals are grotesque, scenes go on far, far too long – and yet. And yet! Listening to the director’s commentary shows that this film, made for almost literally no money, is exactly the film that Frank Henenlotter wanted to make. He wanted to make something completely out there, something totally wild, something that nobody would ever try to copy, or even want to copy, and in that sense Bad Biology is a triumph. You have to respect that sort of dedication, and in a lot of ways this film is the natural evolution of the things we saw in Henenlotter’s previous films such as Basket Case and Brain Damage. Bad Biology isn’t for everyone, but you can’t say that this isn’t exactly the film he wanted to make. For better or worse.
Speaking of films that won’t be for everyone, let’s talk about Nightmares in a Damaged Brain. The plot is simple enough. A supposedly cured mental patient, George Tatum (Baird Stafford), is released from the psychiatric program that has been treating his many issues with a combination of drugs and what we would now call CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) or, in another world, perhaps the Ludovico Technique? Almost immediately (gasp!) he falls back into his old throat-slitting ways. Who could have seen that coming? What follows is a sometimes muddled and almost dreamlike mix of hallucinations and brutal violence as the audience views events through the lens of George’s tentative grasp on what’s real and what’s not.
It’s a rough watch of a film, with the brutal practical gore effects still holding up really well forty plus years later, made all the more intense by Baird Stafford throwing himself into the role with gusto. Within the first 90 seconds of the film there’s already blood, gore, guts and shrieking that really sets the tone for what you’re about to watch. Nightmare is not big, it’s not clever, it’s not even hugely original, following in the well-worn footsteps of other slashers such as Carpenter‘s seminal Halloween, but it’s executed spectacularly well. The acting is intense, the gore is beautifully visceral, it’s portaryal of the seedier side of New York is right up there with films such as Taxi Driver, and the climax of the film is deeply satisfying.
Severin has done a great job with the available source material, and both of these films look great, with Bad Biology being a new 4K scan from the original negative, and Nightmare being reconstructed from the internegative (which is a movie film duplicate) and various foreign print sources to create this new, complete version.
Both films come with enough special features to satisfy even the most ardent genre fan. Bad Biology comes with not one but two different commentary tracks, one with the director Frank Henenlotter, director of photography Nick Deeg and actor Anthony Sneed. The other is with Frank Henenlotter and the film’s producer/co-writer R.A. The Rugged Man. Both are are well worth a listen and really help shed light on both the thinking and the production process behind this film in very different ways, and Henenlotter’s passion for film making shines through in both. The man truly still in love with what he does and what he creates.
There’s a wide selection of interviews, including ones with director Frank Henenlotter, lead actress Charlee Danielson (and her basketball), Nick Deeg and Anthony Sneed, photographer Clay Patrick McBride and even more. There’s a short film, Suck, by Anthony Sneed, the music video ‘Legendary Loser’ by R.A. The Rugged Man, a montage of behind the scenes clips called ‘Beyond Bad’ and even more content on top of all that! There’s even one featurette called ‘Fuck Face’ and, well, you’ll need to check the disc to discover what that one is all about. All in all it’s about as comprehensive a release as you might want for a no-budget genre film.
Nightmare gets a similar treatment to Bad Biology, with two different commentary tracks on offer, one with producer William Paul and the other with the film’s star Baird Stafford, special effects assistant Cleve Hall, actor/writer Lee Christian and director David DeCoteau. Featurettes include ‘Kill Thy Father and Thy Mother’, an interview with the director, and two featurettes that look specifically at the various controversies that have accompanied this film. First is ‘The Nightmare of Nightmare’, which is an interview with special effects maestro Tom Savini who was incorrectly credited on the original movie posters as “special effects director” for the film, a claim he vehemently denies to this day.
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The other interesting feature is one called ‘Damaged: The Very British Obscenity of David Hamilton-Grant’ which looks at both the video nasty era in the UK, and specifically at the film’s UK distributor David Hamilton-Grant and the controversies and mysteries that surround him to this day. He remains the only distributor to ever be jailed in the UK for the sale of movies like this and this feature-length look at his life is a fascinating watch.
Available in both 4K UHD and Blu-ray formats, these are both films for hardcore genre fans and it’s great to see that in the current world of streaming there are still champions of cult movies and physical media out there like Arrow, Eureka, Vinegar Syndrome and Severin. Both films are well worth checking out. Don’t say we didn’t warn you about Bad Biology though.
Bad Biology and Nightmares in a Damaged Brain are both out now on 4K UHD and Blu-ray from Severin Films.
