In the late 1970s and early 1980s, veteran comedy writer Carl Reiner teamed up with Steve Martin to co-write a direct a quartet of films, all with varying degrees of fantastic content, that transformed Martin from successful stand-up comic (he’d been a mainstay of Saturday Night Live (1975-)) into a comedy film star – The Jerk (1979), Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982) and All of Me (1984) and arguably the pick of the crop, the science fiction spoof The Man with Two Brains. Taking aim at those B-movies that featured pickled brains preserved in jars (a clip from Felix E. Feist’s Donovan’s Brain (1953) turns up). The Man with Two Brains is an affectionate and very funny send-up the plot of which is merely an excuse for a non-stop succession of ludicrous jokes, witty references to old films, bad puns, surreal sight gags and unforgettable, endlessly quotable lines (“Into the mud, scum queen!”)
The ludicrously named Dr Michael Hfuhruhurr (Martin) is a successful brain surgeon, creator of the revolutionary “cranial screw-top” technique who saves the life of the gold-digging Dolores Benedict (Kathleen Turner) after he runs her over with his car. Hfuhruhurr falls in love with Dolores, unaware that her manipulative scheming has already killed her physically fragile previous husband, and the two are soon married after Dolores learns that Hfuhruhurr is to inherit a fortune. Pretending to be too ill to consummate their marriage, Dolores keeps Hfuhruhurr on a leash until he flies her to Austria on a combined honeymoon/business trip. There he meets fellow scientist Dr Alfred Necessiter (David Warner) who has developed a technique for transferring human brains from one body to another (though he hasn’t had much success with his experiments) and the disembodied brain of Anne Uumellmahaye (the voice of Sissy Spacek), the only person able to pronounce his tongue-twisting surname correctly. Hfuhruhurr falls in love with Anne and determines to find her a body so that they can be together – but Austria is being stalked by the mysterious Elevator Killer who will soon cross paths with Hfuhruhurr is a way that could benefit almost everyone…
Utter madness from beginning to end, the gag hit-to-miss ratio is satisfyingly high. It’s all very silly, with its inane poetry (“Pointy birds, pointy, pointy. Anoint my head, anointy, nointy”) to the many film buff in-jokes (for no reason whatsoever, The Lone Ranger and Tonto join doctors observing one of Hfuhruhurr’s operations). The Gothic interior of Necessiter’s condo, a paper-thin, bigger-on-the-inside recreation of the Universal Gothic horror film sets, complete with man in a gorilla suit and Kenneth Strickfaden-like props suggests that Reiner and his co-writers Martin and George Gipe are au fait with the sort of films they’re spoofing (not always a given in this sort of thing), just as their clear love of 40s film noir and crime thrillers had informed Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. The Man with Two Brains is the perfect double-bill partner for Young Frankenstein (1974), a similarly affectionate send-up written and directed by Reiner’s long-time friend Mel Brooks.
The film is of course a showcase for Martin who had largely left behind the “wild and crazy guy” persona by this stage and his stand-up career was largely over, his transition into film having proved hugely successful. His manic, breathlessly energetic playing of Hfuhruhurr is a constant joy and he understandably dominates the proceedings but he’s given a good run for his money by Kathleen Turner who had made her screen debut just two years earlier in Body Heat (1981) and who displays an unexpected flair for physical comedy – her role here may have paved the way for her box office hits Romancing the Stone (1984) and The Jewel of the Nile (1985). David Warner is great fun too as the not-quite-mad but not-quite-sane Dr Necessiter, brilliantly playing his role with an utterly straight face and an uncredited Sissy Spacek is marvellous as the disembodied voice of the naïve but charming Anne Uumellmahaye.
The presence of Merv Griffin, host of the hugely popular American chat show The Merv Griffin Show and creator of the game shows Jeopardy! (1964-) and Wheel of Fortune (1975-) in a small but pivotal role was a bit of a head-scratcher for non-US audiences who wouldn’t have had the first clue who he was. It’s one of the very few jokes that doesn’t work for the uninitiated and is likely to leave younger audiences as baffled today as non-US viewers were in 1983.
Steve Martin’s career would hit higher heights in later films but few were as funny as the quartet of films he made with Reiner. He frequently dabbled with fantastic subjects (The Three Amigos (1986) features a singing bush, Little Shop of Horrors (1986) speaks for itself, in L.A. Story (1991) the eponymous city itself communicates with Martin via a road traffic sign and Leap of Faith (1992) features a possibly real miracle). All of Me won Martin a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, was the bigger box office hit and if anything has an even more successful gag rate but The Man with Two Brains retains a special place in the heart of genre fans for its clever and never dismissive or patronising spoof of the genre and its more idiotic outer limits.
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