The Man with Two Brains (1983)

Starring: Steve Martin, Kathleen Turner, and the voice of Sissy Spacek, with small roles from Merv Griffin and James Cromwell
Grade: B+

The streak Steve Martin was on in the 1980s was something else.

Summary

After world-renown brain surgeon Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr (Martin) finishes another successful brain surgery, he drives back a man interviewing him about the operation and his life and career. During their conversation, Michael talks about how he wanted to deal with brains because he loves to deal with slime. It always attracted him for whatever reason. Elsewhere, Dolores Benedict (Turner) is with her old husband and reveals that she fed him fish from the man’s fish tank. As he tries to attack her because she’s an evil woman in general, they end up going outside once she taunts him, telling him how she can’t wait until she gets everything in the will once the old man dies. Thankfully, the man reveals that he changed the will months ago, and she’s not getting anything. Now, Dolores realizes she needs a “new man to torture”.

Next, we jump back to Michael and the interviewer, and the guy asks Michael about his deceased wife who he’s still broken up about. After Dolores’s husband dies of a heart attack from all the excitement and she escapes his dog, she runs out into the street, only to be hit by Michael and his car when he was talking about how much he misses his wife. Looking at her on the ground, he refers to her as an “angel”. Afterwards, he takes her to the hospital. Shortly after arguing with Dr. Brandon (Peter Hobbs) about him being too emotionally involved in this operation because he’s the one that hit her, Michael performs the surgery with his signature “cranial screw-top” surgery he invented. Sometime later, she wakes up in the hospital. Michael is there, waiting to greet her. They talk for a bit, with her eventually sucking on his finger. It becomes clear he’s even more attracted to her than ever. Dolores is aware of his status too. After a few more visits to the hospital to see her, and him talking aloud to his deceased wife to promise he won’t take it any further, he continues to visit. Following a few more trips, with flirting, talking, and kissing becoming involved as time goes on, they end up getting married with her still in the hospital bed. Right after it’s official though, she turns down the ceremonial kiss. The first step to Dolores’s plan is working swimmingly and Michael, who’s head over heels in love, has no idea.

They go through their first few days at Michael’s lavish house post-wedding, and Dolores is almost completely uninterested in him, with Michael still thinking she needs to be in a wheelchair because she’s weak after the surgery. He leaves for work one day, and she gets out of the wheelchair to stare at the muscle-bound gardener Juan. Michael comes back to get his hat though and sees her standing, so she falls down and acts as if she was going to wait until he got home to surprise him. Then, she changes the subject by asking a million questions about Juan because she wants to cheat badly. Sadly, he has no idea, thinking everything she’s doing is purely innocent. At work, Michael complains to his co-worker about not getting to have sex with his wife yet and how frustrated he is. Meanwhile, Dolores and Juan have sex at home. Once Dolores is caught by Juan’s boss Ramon, she fires Ramon. During lunch, Dolores tells Michael she fired Ramon because he grabbed her breasts. Michael almost loses it because he hasn’t even done this yet. Going along with this, she told Ramon the same thing. Even though we know none of this happened, it shows you the type of person we’re dealing with in Dolores. She just likes to get a rise out of the men she deals with. They discuss finally being able to have sex to calm his nerves, and she asks how soon he can get home after work (“I can do them fast. They’re just brain operations”).

To speed things along, Michael goes back to work and performs two successful brain operations at the same time. Immediately after, he heads straight back to the house. As the two get ready and Dolores starts teasing him heavy, she tells him she “can’t wait until next Thursday” because that’s when her headache should be gone.

Today is Monday.

Michael acts like it doesn’t bother him, but he manages to break the window with his boner. He goes back to his office to talk to Dr. Brandon (Peter Hobbs), with Brandon talking about how Michael’s been acting on edge lately. To make matters worse, Brandon acknowledges the fact that it’s been six weeks since Michael and Dolores have been married, and they haven’t had sex once yet. He mentions that the Austrian Institute of Craniology has asked many times for Michael to lecture there on his theory of brain transplants. He suggests Michael go, so he can combine his business trip with a honeymoon. Since it may get things started between them, Michael agrees to take her. They get to the hotel after arriving in Austria. Following her teasing Michael once again, he gets off the elevator to meet Dr. Felix Conrad (Earl Boen) who is escorting him to the lecture hall. Felix is surprised he used the elevator though because apparently there’s a serial killer in Vienna killing people on elevators. This is why there was no operator on the one he used. One of the victims was another brilliant brain surgeon by the name of Beckerman, a colleague of Michael’s. Even so, Michael goes to his lecture to talk about some of his radical ideas. The main idea is that he has this theory that the brains of intelligent people can be kept alive and put into dumb people. The crowd isn’t as susceptive to it. Though he tries to demonstrate by using the cranial screw-top method, lemons fall out of the dead patient’s head. Apparently, the brain has been stolen (for the fourth time this month)!

Dr. Alfred Necessiter (David Warner) is seen leaving the audience during the loud murmuring of the crowd, and he later introduces himself to Michael following the lecture. They go for a drink where Alfred calls Michael’s theories “old-fashioned”, offending Michael who disproves Alfred’s point by showing him several news articles he carries on him that say otherwise. Alfred tells him he still highly respects him and wants to show Michael his own work. Since his lab is at his home, he takes Michael to show him. After they leave, Vienna’s “Elevator Killer” claims another victim, though we can’t see who it is.

Alfred takes Michael to his condo. On the inside, it’s designed like a castle. After showing him around the place, Alfred walks him to the laboratory. There, we see numerous brains enclosed in glass jars. They’re alive too, and the liquid inside each jar that Alfred developed is what’s keeping them alive. Alfred reveals his own radical idea. He wants to transfer the thoughts and data from a dying brain and transfer them into another body without opening the skull. He gets the bodies from the morgue if they die the “right way”, which is if they’ve been injected with window cleaner in the ass because it causes the brain to die last. The only person who does this is the Elevator Killer, and Alfred is kind of happy about the killer’s existence because it makes his work possible. They argue a bit because Alfred is basically condoning murder, but the wonder continues to grow once he implies that Michael’s former colleague in Beckerman may still be alive because of his experimenting. Before he’s able to show Michael anything though, he gets a phone call to tell him they have another body for him at the morgue, so he leaves after inviting Michael and Dolores over for dinner later. After going back to the hotel to see some guy try to pay Dolores $15,000 to grab her ass, Michael announces a “citizen’s divorce” and angrily goes back to Alfred’s castle condo. Later, Dolores gets a phone call from the attorney of Michael’s recently deceased step-grandmother, saying they need his signature on some documents to claim his share of the estate.

If she wants that money, she can’t let this marriage die just yet.

Sitting in Alfred’s castle, sadly singing an old song him and his previous wife used to sing to each other, he hears a woman’s voice singing it with him. He follows the voice into the lab, and it leads him to one of the brains in a jar. He can hear her, and she can hear him! The person is Anne Uumellmahaye (Spacek), though she doesn’t know she’s just a brain in a jar until Michael tells her. Just then, Alfred gets back. Michael tries to have Anne sing for him, but Alfred can’t hear anything. Anne can’t hear Alfred either. The telepathic communication can only happen between the two of them. After realizing this, Alfred shows Michael what he did to Beckerman. He put the contents of Beckerman’s brain inside of a gorilla. Shocked, he goes back to the hotel, only to find Dolores’s “suicide” note. He saves her before she jumps off the ledge of the hotel, even though she had no intention of doing so. They have sex right after, saving the marriage. Though Dolores’s evil self is back in the picture, Michael can’t stop thinking about the brain of Anne, giving him a dilemma most would think to be beyond belief.

My Thoughts:

Going along with the same idea that Steve Martin and Carl Reiner had by parodying the old detective movies with Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, here the two tackle the old monster/mad scientist movies with The Man with Two Brains. Though it isn’t on the level of the 1982 hit, this movie is still full of laughs.

Steve Martin had a lot of underrated comedies that don’t get talked about enough. This movie is definitely one of them. With a dedicated performance as the sex-deprived brain surgeon on the brink of insanity, Martin hits on almost every gag in the movie. Along with the obvious gags that are in-your-face funny, Martin and Reiner never miss an opportunity to give us something amusing in the smallest of lines or moments, covering every inch with this sharp screenplay. Some of it may even go over your head because of how quick and consistently funny everything is. Martin’s deadpan approach really brings the humor of the film together too, making up for any dry parts. If one joke doesn’t work, we move to another and that one usually does. From the murmuring in the lecture hall, to Michael failing to break a vase after it bounced back into his hands because it was rubber, to yelling at his nurses for shaving Dolores even though she’s getting a brain operation, to him asking for a sign from his old wife Rebecca that he shouldn’t pursue Dolores and the whole house turning upside down in a haunted fashion with a ghostly voice telling him “Noooooo!” and him completely ignoring it, I was laughing on a consistent basis. Once you get past the overacting of Kathleen Turner, who’s doing it on purpose to overdo her evil character in a parody of those old horror films, you start to understand the style of the film. Sure, it’s a little uneven, but once the two get to Austria, the fun science fiction elements start to shape the movie for the better.

The design of Alfred’s castle was really cool. It has this Svengoolie-like vibe to it and honestly, this is exactly the cartoonish fun I was hoping for in the set design for a plot like this. I was itching for some “sciency” fun up until that point and seeing Alfred’s castle did exactly that. I loved the deadpan conversation about the decorating of it all, with Michael and Alfred talking about it in such a nonchalant manner. Having the walls and doors being made out of paper was a sidesplitting detail that I couldn’t get over either. Not only did it look amazing architecturally, but it was an uproarious idea that added a lot to the humor of the movie. The castle was awesome as a whole though. I felt like I was transported directly to one of those old horror movies that The Man with Two Brains was trying to emulate. If you were still weirded out by certain elements of the story, don’t be scared off. Martin leads this imaginative story in true Steve Martin fashion, making it worthwhile because of his comedic style balancing out the evil scientist stuff to where it wasn’t too much for someone not necessarily into the main plot. For example, at one point we see Michael start to lose it and beg for his brain to be put in a jar with Anne’s, but Alfred suggests they put the brain in a gorilla like how he did to Beckerman. You start to get a little antsy because you’re expecting the weirdness to start coming. Realistically, these both sound like options that the lovestruck Michael would consider. However, he takes us out of it and gives us the hilarious line of, “I couldn’t fuck a gorilla”. It reminded us that though this movie is getting crazier as the minute goes by, it’s still a Carl Reiner/Steve Martin picture at heart. They’re still here to have fun.

Going along with this, I like that the big thing that makes this whole plot work with the serial killer, Alfred, and his outlandish brain idea is simply window cleaner. The killer uses window cleaner and injects it into his victims. When they die, the brain is affected last. This is why Alfred is able to operate on these brains of dead victims. This is such a simple plot device that works in the context of the movie, and it was both stupid and ingenius at the same time. I loved it. I didn’t bat an eye when it was revealed because I was fully invested in the story. My only thought at the moment was, “Alright you fucking goofballs, let’s see how this all ties together.”

This movie made me notice that the evil scientist character doesn’t get played with enough. We’ve seen this type of character a lot, but it doesn’t get parodied enough. Alfred plays the character we’re expecting outright but seeing Michael tiptoe the line between sanity and insanity is a fun one to watch. When he starts to lose it, even Alfred takes a step back, leading us to a great second half of the film. Michael seems alright, and we still like him because Dolores is so evil, but can you imagine stealing a brain from a mad scientist to take it out on dates so he can talk to it, knowing no one else can hear its voice? This is when the insanity starts to creep in to say the least. He even puts wax lips on the jar so he can kiss it, giving us the hilarious scene where Dolores calls him out, and he denies it, saying there must’ve been someone else kissing a jar with a brain inside of it. Another underrated element of The Man with Two Brains is that of Sissy Spacek, beautifully voicing the brain of Anne Uumellmahaye. I never realized how soft and memorable her voice actually is. It stays with you, and her singing of that song with Michael (“If you like-a me, like I like-a you…”) is enough to ring in your head hours after watching the movie.

I’m not going to say that I understand why Michael falls in love with this brain, but I do understand why he can’t get her out of his head.

With recurring jokes about a cat finding its way into the surgery room (“Get that cat out of here”) and him repeating his last name (Hfuhruhurr) for people that can’t pronounce it, as he argues that it’s exactly how it sounds, Martin proves again how he can make some of the stupidest jokes funny. It takes a special talent to pull it all off, but this is why Steve Martin is a comedic legend. As you read this review, you’re probably thinking that some of the jokes sound too stupid, especially with the last name. It seems forced at first, but I’ll admit he got me, especially because they go back to it several times. If you don’t laugh at first, they’ll get you by the ending. It’s that type of absurd Steve Martin humor you have to be reminded of for the sake of comedy history. This scene is a great example.

Though she doesn’t quite match Martin’s energy or entertainment levels, Kathleen Turner plays the evil gold-digging whore role very well. She’s not shy to it either. In the first scene she’s in, she’s basically laughing about how she cooked a man’s pet fish and served it to him to eat. She is responsible for his death (and the guy’s dog) and says out loud that she needs to find a new man to torture. That is straight out of the script! As I said earlier, this is that over-the-top style of acting commonplace in those old movies. It’s what they’re making fun of, so though it may seem like Dolores as a character is somewhat one-dimensional and a bit much in her wanting to ruin a guy’s life and take all his money because she’s bad, Turner plays the role asked of her very well. She makes it clear she likes watching a man suffer, pointing that out to the guy that dies in the opening and later with Michael. Dolores can’t get enough of it. It seems to supersede the money in importance. Did you see her face once she tells Michael to wait until next Thursday to have sex, after teasing him for ten minutes leading up to it? Dolores is picking apart her man for fun! Even though we see Michael get close to losing his mind at one point, searching the streets for the perfect body of a woman to kill for Alfred to use in his transplant experiment in the climax, you still understand what he’s going through. Plus, it’s just hard to hate Martin in these types of movies no matter what he does.

Shout out to the blonde prostitute with the annoying voice that he almost picks. Her obnoxious rendition of “Duke of Earl” was hysterical.

With a perfectly placed small role by Merv Griffin, a great climax where we see how crazy Steve Martin can get, an ending that wraps everything up nicely, and in totality, it being a very amusing movie that pays homage to the genre it parodies, The Man with Two Brains is a very good 80s comedy. It doesn’t fire on all cylinders per say, but it is woefully underrated. If you’re a fan of this era of comedy, I suggest you try this cult classic on for size.