Brain Damage

Queerness manifests in a multitude of ways and cinematically speaking Frank Henenlotter’s underground production Brain Damage is one of these. What about upstanding youth Brian whose hunger for the ‘juice’ from a micropenis-shaped parasite can scarcely be contained? After its release in 1988, Frank Henenlotter’s second gore comedy was only screened at New York’s sleaziest cinemas. These were the days of the crack epidemic, AIDS was laying waste to the gay community and New York hadn’t been gentrified yet. Upstanding young man Brian (Rick Hearst) has his life upended when he is given a strange creature called Aylmer by his neighbour. The former looks like a mutant micropenis, attaches itself to Brian’s neck and injects him with a liquid hallucinant (the juic