Housesitter: The Night They Saved Siegfried’s Brain (1987) Review
Housesitter: The Night They Saved Siegfried’s Brain (1987) Review
Combining 1980’s horror and 1950’s sci-fi, it is the story of Andy (Richard J. Gasparian), an idealist medical student with a serious Elvis obsession, who is determination to perfect his rat-to-rat brain transfer to “help mankind and change the face of modern science”. After his final experiment fails and blows up, Andy loses his chance to travel abroad and study at the prestigious Reinhardt Institute. With his future in doubt, and with no place to live, his future looks bleak. Little does Andy know that his beloved professor and mentor, Doc Crosby (David Karsten), is actually a mad scientist who has been murdering people and stealing their brains for experiments in his makeshift “black and white” laboratory.
When Doc realizes that his own brains so severely damaged from experimenting on himself, and that he will be dead in a matter of hours without a successful brain transfer, he hatches a scheme to acquire the thirteen human brains needed for his “brain pyramid”. Knowing that Andy is homeless and that college kids can’t resist having big parties, Doc invites Andy to housesit while he goes away on “business”. After he frees his deranged lab assistant from the insane asylum, and with his house now full of healthy unsuspecting college kids, Doc’s trap is set. When the party begins, so does the deadly game of cat and mouse. Will Andy save his friends from the scalpel of a madman, or will Doc succeed in his murderous plot to save his own life by completing the first even human brain transference procedure?
At the time of writing I am currently putting together a book on overlooked genre gems from the Eighties that I plan to self-publish, so when the opportunity to review HOUSESITTER: THE NIGHT THEY SAVED SIEGFRIED’S BRAIN presented itself for review I was more than a little excited. Perhaps this unreleased, until now, flick from 1987 would make the grade for inclusion into my writing project. I really wanted to like it, after all there’s nothing like coming across THAT flick that few may have heard of and giving it a hearty recommendation to fellow genre fans to seek out and enjoy, unfortunately, on this occasion, that turned out not to be the case.
Directed by Robin Nuyen, who co-writes with the film’s star Richard J. Gasparian, there was potential for this Eighties comedy-horror that leans thematically to the mad-scientist flicks of the Fifties, to deliver the goods. It started off promisingly with a leather clad motorcyclist entering into the mad doctor’s abode only to end up literally losing his head. From that point on the film suffered from pacing issues and had far too many comedic moments lacked that didn’t work. There was definitely potential for Nuyen’s movie to be more than the sum of its parts but there’s too many scenes that outstay their welcome and the humour feels forced rather than fresh. On the plus side HOUSESITTER did indulge my nostalgic fondness for the Eighties with the decade’s fashions and bad haircuts but that’s as far as my enjoyment of this flick went.
TRAILER
