Brain Dead
Adam Simon (Carnosaur) made his directoral debut with this  mind game of a movie. Based on a decades-old screenplay by formerTwilight Zonecontributor Charles Beaumont, Simon dusted off and  updated the script about an experimental brain researcher (Bill Pullman)  who agrees to dig into the gray matter of a schizophrenic scientist (Bud  Cort), only to fall prey to his patient's psychosis. Or maybe he's just  plain nuts. Spiced with a bizarre sense of humor (Pullman wrestles over a  brain specimen in a jar with a homeless man who tries to grab it: "That's my  brain!"), Pullman's ordeal takes one hairpin turn after another as he  becomes lost in a maze of alternate realities, no longer able to sort  fantasy from reality or paranoia from persecution. This clever puzzle of a film  overcomes low-budget restrictions with a deviously inventive story that echoesBraziland quotes fromThe Manchurian CandidateandNorth by  Northwest. Bill Paxton costars as a smarmy corporate manipulator with  slicked back hair and a get-rich-quick scheme for a chain of brain surgery  boutiques ("The New You, by Eunice!"), and George Kennedy is his bottom-line  boss. Director Simon may be most famous for playing himself in a jokey cameo in  Robert Altman'sThe Player.--Sean Axmaker