Brainstorm (1965) (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Sep 16, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
William ConradRelease Date(s)
1965 (July 29, 2025)Studio(s)
Warner Bros. (Warner Archive Collection)- Film/Program Grade: C+
- Video Grade: B+
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: C+
Review
I’d seen the neo-noir Brainstorm (1965) on DVD when Warner Archive released that back in 2011, but so forgettable is it that watching their recent Blu-ray was like a first-time viewing—I literally remembered absolutely nothing about it. Directed by actor-turned-director William Conrad (later highly enjoyable as the star of TV’s Cannon), Brainstorm isn’t exactly bad, just highly derivative, with huge plot holes in its second-half, and star Jeffrey Hunter’s acting chops aren’t really up to the demands of his character.
Filmed in Panavision and black-and-white—one of the last regular big studio films not in color—the picture borrows liberally from Gaslight, Double Indemnity, and Nightmare Alley, but most particularly (though possibly coincidentally) Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor, released two years prior. (Spoilers) In that film an ambitious journalist fakes mental illness in order to be deliberately institutionalized to track down a murderer, only to go insane for real in the process. In Brainstorm, Hunter’s character fakes mental illness in order to be deliberately institutionalized to beat a murder rap, with the same results.
The picture opens well, with scientist Jim Grayam (Hunter) stopping his car in the middle of the night at a railroad crossing, where unconscious Lorrie (Anne Francis), slumped over in the front seat of her own car, her vehicle on the tracks, is about to be hit by an oncoming train. He rescues the apparently suicidal woman, returning her to the stately home of her cruel and controlling husband, wealthy Cort (Dana Andrews), coincidentally the owner of the electronics firm where Jim works.
Jim and Lorrie fall in love while Cort is away on a business trip, but Cort’s spies are aware of the affair, and as with Lorrie’s past would-be rescuers, he obliquely threatens him in various ways, first by sending a woman (Kathie Browne) to the police, claiming Jim is sexually harassing her. When that fails to stick Cort presses forward with a grander plan: convince everyone Jim is insane. When Jim confronts Cort and urges Lorrie to pack her bags, Cort threatens to take custody of Lorrie’s daughter.
With Lorrie’s apparent support Jim plans a complex (i.e., absurd) counterstrike: shoot Cort dead, plead guilty but authentically appear insane, so that after a couple of months he’ll be released a “cured” man and the two can live happily ever after. Jim’s scheme isn’t exactly credible, even though we see him brush up on criminal law and psychology at the local library, and build up an immunity to the effects of sodium pentothal so that, if necessary, he can lie under heavy sedation. (Perhaps for legal reasons, the actual drug is called something else in the movie.) In a particularly ridiculous scene, Jim, under the influence of the drug, looks a children’s picture book of animals, struggling to insist a zebra is actually a tiger. Not only is this scene unintentionally funny, with Hunter struggling to blurt out “Ti-ti-ti-ger!” the concept is medically ludicrous, a complete misunderstanding of how sodium pentothal works.
Brainstorm was shot immediately before or after Hunter starred in The Cage, the original Star Trek pilot, with Hunter playing the original captain of the USS Enterprise. After NBC greenlit a second pilot, Hunter bowed out, reportedly at his wife’s insistence, as she saw her husband as a movie star, and not a lowly TV actor, though Hunter had already starred in the one-season TV Western Temple Houston. That series was contractually tied to this production, the modestly-produced topper of a double-bill that included the thriller The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die (a British production originally title Catacombs). After this Hunter mostly headlined minor, forgotten films, though he did have a big part in the Cinerama epic Custer of the West. He died of a brain hemorrhage following a fall in 1968 at age 42.
Hunter was a handsome, reasonably good actor, but not really up to the demands of his character here, who is supposed to be grounded and rational in the first-half, though with a history of mental illness, adept at faking insanity in the middle, and then slowing descending into real madness but with a kind of ambiguity intended to keep movie audiences guessing. In that last regard particularly, Hunter lacks subtlety. He tends to be overwrought, overheated in these scenes, and in a very actorly, unbelievable way—an actor acting insane unaware real insanity is creeping into his psyche. That’s a hard part to pull off.
The much-missed (at least by me) William Conrad was a diversely talented actor on radio, film, and television, and like most actor-directors got good performances from his cast, Hunter’s limitations notwithstanding; both Anne Francis and Dana Andrews are excellent, as is Viveca Lindfors, playing a psychiatrist. Unlike many actor-directors, Conrad has a good camera eye for set-ups, with strong Panavision compositions and camera angles, though Brainstorm is overlong and Conrad overuses the device of linking scenes with a line of dialogue or a prop to connect them. After helming a lot of television in the early-‘60s, he did three features for Warner Bros., all 1965 releases, so pleasing studio head Jack L. Warner with his efficiency that Warner gave him a camera-used Black Bird from The Maltese Falcon, which Conrad kept for many years. Ultimately, though, Brainstorm is sluggish and unmemorable.
Warner Archive’s Blu-ray of Brainstorm presents the film in its original 2.35:1 Panavision aspect ratio and black-and-white. To my eyes the video transfer is overly dark and somewhat soft. There’s a lot of night-for-night scenes, but even daytime interiors seem too dark and rather washed out, and only intermittently as sharp as it should be. The DTS-HD Master Audio (2.0 mono) is better, and optional English subtitles are provided. The disc is Region-Free.
The ho-hum supplements consist of two Warner Bros. cartoons: The Hypo-Chrondi-Cat (1950), a good short directed by Chuck Jones; and the awful Well Worn Daffy (1965), featuring Speedy Gonzalez and his rodent pals inexplicably lost in the Sahara Desert (Daffy rides a camel). A trailer advertises the double-bill, co-featuring The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die.
Some critics in recent years have extravagantly overpraised Brainstorm, but while slickly directed by William Conrad, the screenplay is poorly thought through and far inferior to Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor. No contest there.
- Stuart Galbraith IV