BrainWaves

1983 "They have violated the human mind."
4.8| 1h17m| R| en
Details

After a traffic accident Kaylie is in coma for months and her doctors want to try a new procedure on her. To regain her consciousness, they stimulate her brain with the neural patterns of a woman who has just died. It works and Kaylie fully recovers. However, she begins to relive the dying moments of her donor and realizes that she was murdered! Along with her husband and mother, she tries to find out what happened.

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Reviews

Scanialara You won't be disappointed!
Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews
ShangLuda Admirable film.
Cristal The movie really just wants to entertain people.
PeterMitchell-506-564364 I love a movie with an interesting story. This has a real story behind it, we almost want to believe it to be reality. Brainwaves is a tight, solid psychological thriller that some medics out there would get a kick out of with their analogies. A young girl is murdered in a bath, while listening to music, ear plugs on, again proving that water and electricity don't mix. Of course she didn't hear the intruder. As he picks up her radio placed behind her, while standing above her, he raises the radio above his head, although he's faceless to us. Then in slow effective motion we see the radio drop, following by her electrocution. Full on too. Later a young mother walking across a steep San Francis street, gets one of her heals caught on the railway track in one of those grooves. And a slow moving train is coming right towards her. Barely evading a flattening, inturn she's knocked up on the hood of this car, her skull knocking up against the windscreen, spider webbing the glass. She goes into a coma, but there is one way she can by pulled out of it. A thing involving the clavious process, where one can use electronic devices to transfer impulses from one brain to another. This becomes an experimental success. Unfortunately for that girl's killer, this isn't good as the mother is giving the dead girl's brain. How cool is this story. Now she starts acting strange, seeing images that the dead girl saw, like the killer wrist tattoo, while in the gym, where eventually the killer's identity becomes full circle too her. If you enjoy these psychological thrillers, this is something different in the thriller department. It's backed by a cast of great actors, including the late Tony Curtis as the respected genius doctor of the hospital, a kind of dark and a little enigmatic, this fine actor plays so well. This is a story that leaves you wondering if this really could possible. Who knows in today's times. A thoroughly engrossing thriller, one of those little movie surprises.
Michael_Elliott 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.
CPF And a self-admitted one to boot. At one point the doctor's assistant refers to himself as Igor.Working with the increasingly plausible idea that computers could be used to replace or reconstruct brain functions, this movie doesn't spend enough time exploring the premise. Most of the screen time is split between girlfriend-in-a-coma domestic strife and chasing down the brain donor's killer. It attempts to be a sci-fi/drama/thriller but fails to deliver on any of the three.As a Frankenstein remake this one is missing everything that made the original good. Nobody calls the doctor insane or even threatens to kick him out of the hospital. The transformation scene consists of a coma victim opening one eye and the amazing computer that makes it happen isn't even shown. When the experiment works there is no praise, and when it starts going wrong there is little reaction.Any suspense over who the killer might be is shattered by progressively showing him in the same room with all of the possible suspects. Finding the killer is as easy as opening one file and interviewing one person.San Francisco as a setting is both overplayed and underused. The opening sequence hammers home the point that this is happening in SF, a cable car plays a significant role, the leads live in a hilltop Victorian, Pier 39 makes an appearance, and the final showdown happens at Golden Gate Park. More specifically along ten feet of cliff side at the park - just enough to keep the bridge in the picture at all times. Once the obvious scenery bases are rounded no other attempt is made to explore the city.The acting is the only saving grace here. Keir Dullea shows a good range and pulls off a couple of genuinely emotional scenes. Suzanna Love portrays recovery from a coma well. Tony Curtis only gets a handful of lines and twice as many evil guy stares with most of the Frankenscience explained away by his assistant. The little blond kid hits his cues fairly well also.I also gave it one extra star for the scene where the husband drives south from the bridge, it cuts to a U-turn in an unrelated parking lot, and then he's instantly back on the bridge driving north. It takes a whole lot of something - bravery, ignorance, deadlines - to try and slip that one by the viewer during the one single car chase.
brandonsites1981 Woman (Suzanna Love) involved in a terrible accident nearly dies, but an experimental surgery saves her life. She is given brain waves from a recently deceased woman who was murdered, but as Love starts to feel better she feels sudden urges to find the woman's killer and to bring him to justice. Handsome looking, glossy thriller is well directed and well cast right down the line, but predictable and unmemorable.Rated R; Violence and Brief Nudity. Later edited to PG.