Rene Daalder Movies

Dutch cult filmmaker Rene Daalder (Massacre at Central High, Habitat) directed this surreal tale of thought-control experiments on the inmates of an insane asylum. Like his other films, Hysteria is a rich and thematically dense sociopolitical allegory, but this time around the concept is overwhelmed by a particularly risible execution. Patrick McGoohan stars as Dr. Harvey Langston, a mad genius who spouts twisted philosophical nonsense while conducting experiments in universal consciousness and group thought. His latest guinea pig is Veronica (Emmanuelle Vaugier), who hallucinates ants all over her body and attempts to stab her doctor (Michael Maloney) in the eye with a corkscrew. Langston implants a computer chip in Veronica's head, and she enters the group consciousness of a contrived assembly of patients including a mannish Tourette's sufferer who speaks in rhyme, a musician who has separate identities in each of his arms, and Amanda Plummer as a wheelchair-bound dancer. Plummer has the film's most memorable scene, spinning about in her chair as the asylum's inmates copulate in every possible combination for the orgiastic finale. Whether the entire escapade is a dangerous cult or a radical new model for a communal civilization (as in the similarly offbeat Phase IV) is open to interpretation, but most of the time the events onscreen are too laughable for it to really matter. Daalder's unique vision walks a very thin line, and he is capable of taking outrageous concepts and making them believable (as in Habitat), but this time he misses the mark by a mile. Nevertheless, McGoohan does his best and the film is still worth watching, for even if it is a failure (and it is), it's at least an interesting one. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Unlike most teen horror movies, Brainscan relies more on atmosphere and plot than gore and bloodsoaked effects. Edward Furlong plays Michael, a 16-year-old horror movie fan, computer whiz, and misfit who responds to an ad for Brainscan, an CD-ROM virtual reality game that promises to "interface with your unconscious." Once involved with the game, Michael dreams that he brutally stabs a stranger and slices off his foot -- only to awaken and find the foot in his refrigerator. Out of Michael's computer comes Trickster (T. Ryder Smith), a sardonic, malevolent creation who advises Michael to keep playing new editions of Brainscan to evade capture by a suspicious cop (Frank Langella). With a death count that is relatively low and mostly offscreen (amputated feet notwithstanding), Brainscan doesn't make up for its lack of onscreen violence with a particularly original script, although it should be commended for not taking the easy way out. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide

Dutch cult director Rene Daalder's fascinating debut was this unfairly neglected and richly idea-laden political allegory set in an American high school. Derrel Maury stars as David, a new student at Central High School who is shocked at the degree of control wielded by three preppie thugs who run the school with an iron fist. At first befriended by Mark (Andrew Stevens), David is soon the victim of bullying when Mark believes that he is courting his girlfriend, Teresa (Kimberly Beck), and points him out to the "ruling class." The worst is still to come, however, when David threatens the pecking order by foiling the three boys' attempted gang rape of a female student and has his leg crushed for his efforts. Eventually, the crippled David politicizes the underclass to fight their oppressors, and all three are killed by falling (from political power, the analogy clearly suggests). Daalder then takes the film in a different direction, with the newly liberated student body becoming an oppressive force themselves, and David enraged to the point of mass murder, deciding to wipe out the entire school. Stirred to action, it is up to the formerly apolitical Mark and Teresa to stop him. Daalder shrinks the entire political spectrum into the crucible of what seems on the surface to be a standard exploitation film. There are representatives of the extreme left, extreme right, disaffected center, intellectual bourgeoisie, and so forth, and all are nicely sketched without sacrificing the film's visceral appeal. Beyond the portraits, however, Daalder also skillfully shows the transitions which occur in many political movements, notably those which start as populist and develop into oppressively hierarchical castes. Perhaps disheartened by the failure of Massacre at Central High at the box office, Daalder did not direct again for nearly two decades, but returned with two more conceptually challenging (if equally unsuccessful) genre films, Hysteria and Habitat, in the mid-'90s. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide