"Man with the Screaming Brain" is exactly the kind of feature film directorial debut you'd expect from Bruce Campbell. It's cheap, kind of dumb, and loaded with the physical gags & droll one-liners we've come to expect from him. In other words, it's another vehicle for Bruce Campbell to be...well, Bruce Campbell. As the reigning clown-prince of straight-to-video genre fare, all he really tries to do here is give his loyal fans exactly what they want. For the most part, he's successful, even though this horror-comedy hybrid is a nowhere nearly as amusing as the "Evil Dead" films which made him a fan favorite.

Campbell plays greedy industrialist William Cole, visiting Bulgaria to finalize some subway project. Tagging along is his bored & bitter wife, Jackie (Antoinette Byron), who has a brief fling with the couple's cab driver, Yegor (Vladimir Kolev), who once worked for the KGB. Cole, meanwhile, is seduced then attacked by a beautiful-but-psychotic gypsy, Tatoya (Tamara Gorski, who I think should be my next ex-wife). She clobbers his noggin in an alley and leaves him for dead. Yegor, who was once engaged to Tatoya, confronts her and gets shot several times for his trouble. After Jackie learns of her now-comatose husband, she finds Tatoya to avenge him, but gets pushed down a flight of stairs and dies. While all this is going on, we're introduced to med scientist Ivan Ivanov (Stacy Keach) & his looney assistant, Pavel (Ted Raimi, playing a Russian version of his Joxer character from "Xena"), who have successfully found a way to transplant living brain tissue into another person's brain "like Lincoln Logs." The deaths of Cole & Yegor provide perfect subjects to conduct this experiment. When Cole awakens, Yegor is in his head with him, and can partially control his speech & movements. At the same time, Ivanov places Jackie's brain into a robot's body. Cole/Yegor reluctantly try and work together to avenge their deaths, as does Jackie, who escapes from Pavel and stumbles about Bulgaria trying to find Tatoya. The ridiculous & outlandish plot seems the perfect vehicle for Campbell's trademark slapstick horror humor and deadpan delivery, but we have to wait a long time before the film gets interesting. Once Cole & Yegor are sharing the same brain, there's a plethora of the Campbell pratfalls & sarcastic quips we've come to know and love. He's sort-of coasting on auto-pilot, content to simply go through his usual paces...but do we really want him any other way? Any Bruce Campbell B-movie opus is like a visit from an old friend, and while the overall success of his directorial debut depends on a considerable measure of goodwill from his devotees, he more-or-less delivers what he's promised. The gags are seldom laugh-out-loud funny, but it's agreeably amusing, and never for a moment does the movie takes its goofy premise seriously.

Presented in its original 1.77:1 aspect ratio, the picture sports decent color, a clean image, and looks a bit better than it did when the movie premiered on the Sci-Fi Channel (then again, maybe it was my cable connection). The soundtrack is offered in both 5.1 Dolby Digital & 2.0 Dolby Surround, and it's clear enough, but nothing special.

Campbell & co-producer David M. Goodman provide a wonderful full-length audio commentary; it's fun to hear Campbell happily admit how cheap and cheesy the movie is, but still convey such enthusiasm for his work. There are also two featurettes, 'Brain Surgeons: Making the Screaming Brain' & 'Neurology 101: Evolution of the Scream Brain.' Both featurettes offer more comments and insight by Campbell & Goodman, though the documentaires aren't quite as interesting as their commentary together. Other features include trailers for this and other Anchor Bay titles, storyboard & comic book galleries, and a Bruce Campbell bio. All-in-all, a pretty comprehensive set of extras for such a low budget affair.

"Man with the Screaming Brain" is exactly the kind of schlocky saga you'd expect Campbell to make, offering nothing he hasn't done before. Then again, maybe we don't want him to. Somehow, big budget & Bruce Campbell just don't go together. It's pretty safe to say anyone who doesn't appreciate Mr. Campbell's brand of schtick will absolutely hate this movie, but fans should enjoy it enough. Similar Movies: "All of Me"; "The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant" Useless Trivia: It took 19 years for Bruce Campbell to get this movie made.