Long ago down Mexico way an impressively evil baron was burned at the stake for being a heretic and coauthor of heretics, a dogmatizer, for having used witchcraft superstitions and spells for clumsy and dishonest purposes, for dedicating himself to necromancy invoking the dead, and for trying to foretell the future through corpses. 300 years later he comes back from outer space and sometimes turns into a weird brain sucking monster to get revenge.
I respect Mexico and its people for their love of lurid horror movies. Italy can siddown for a minute; do you even realise how many of these things the Mexicans have cranked out down there, going all the way back to the 1930s? And they're not at all popular so nobody seems to be minding the copyrights and you can watch almost all of 'em for free on the internet. Let's go!
The real Mexican title is El Barón del Terror. "Brainiac" is an American pun, in this case not referring to the baron's brain but that he's a maniac for brains, in his belly. Hope you didn't have your heart set on for graphic scenes of skulls being cracked open and the brains messily gobbled out though. El Barón is too refined a gent for that sort of thing, preferring to keep the grey matter in a fancy goblet that he occasionally excuses himself to take little bites from with a spoon, while looking embarrassed.
In fact the whole movie is a study in creepy looks, punctuated by frequent staring contests between the baron and his quarry. The antagonists will square off at about five paces and the exchange of unwholesome face pulling will begin, as brow and eyes cycle through peeping tom, constipated, farted in church, ashamed porn-watcher and mental undresser until the victim is literally petrified by the willies.
Now it may seem that I've just described a dull and mildly ridiculous movie, and that might be true if not for... no, I will not show a picture of it here. You must see for yourself and blow coke outta your own nose when it congeals onto the screen. Undeniable proof that a movie monster doesn't need to look real or not like a big dumb paper mâché mask and hand appliances in order to be awesome.
Oh sweet braingasm of kiddie nightmares, the anteater snouts for hands, the obscenely erect rubber tongue, the massively oversized and yet still microcephalic head that they sometimes pump air in and out of so it pulsates like a gasping octopus, the big weird...everything. It's like something primal man might have fashioned out of mud and animal parts to use in some devil dance that ends with all the performers being fed to snakes, and yet dressed impeccably in a suit. I'm saying you'll come for the monster, but you'll stay for the monster.
When shooting in Mexico however bear in mind that the Mexican police not only have flamethrowers but are perfectly willing to bust in with 'em and stop your movie like the freaking Gong Show if it goes over 77 minutes, so Brainiac almost completely dispenses with the usual drawn out affair of double exposing the plot. The more I think about it the more I feel there is wisdom in this. Consider how much of your horror viewing career has been spent watching people figure out stuff you already saw happen. Like right at the start the movie will show you a Blair witch conjure the demon Pazuzu out of a black goat's ass, then spend an hour making you wait for protagonists to read the Necronomicon, consult Crazy Ralph and play the tape backwards to slowly piece all that together. Film auteurs out there please take the cue and just have a monster kill people until you run out of money, then ring the Mexican cops.
