This is an updated version of a review that was originally published in Bleeding Skull! A 1990s Trash-Horror Odyssey.
Have you ever spent time with a 3-year-old? No? Well, this is what happens: Let’s say the kid has to get ready to leave. This requires putting on socks and shoes, in that order. The kid says, I want to put on the socks myself. He manages to shove his foot into a sock, but of course, the sock is on the wrong way. The kid cries. You go to help him put the sock on the proper way, and he cries even harder. Didn’t he just tell you he wanted to do it himself? You are a raging butthole. You apologize. You wait. He puts on the other sock. Slowly. It is also on the wrong way, but you shrug. Life must move on from this. So now comes the shoes. After an agonizing deliberation, he picks the sneakers with dinosaurs. The shoes are too tight. There is a meltdown. You loosen the Velcro. There is another meltdown on top of the current meltdown, because the child wishes to loosen the Velcro himself. Hey, you know what, maybe the kid is hungry and that’s why he’s being a jerk. Let’s get a snack. How about some dry cereal. No. How about applesauce? No. How about string cheese? No, he hates string cheese. But he literally said he loved string cheese yesterday. How about crackers? OK. But the crackers must not be broken. They must be whole. They must not be touching other crackers on the plate. Otherwise, life is a tragedy not worth living. More than two hours later, the kid is ready to leave the house.
Science Crazed is exactly like a tiny human with a strong sense of entitlement and self-righteousness and absolute no sense of time. This film has no understanding of how the world works, and it does not know how to be a functioning member of society. It does what it wants to do and no one can tell it otherwise. It has its own logic—if you can call it that—and it does not care about your feelings. Science Crazed requires an inhumane amount of patience and tolerance to experience it. Like children, Science Crazed is not for everybody.
Dr. Frank is a scientist who wears sunglasses inside, presumably because of his brilliance. He is getting fired for his unconventional methods.
“My science experiments are important to biological science.”
He scoffs and returns to his lab which is definitely not a storage room. He injects a woman with a serum.
“In exactly three hours you will be pregnant. In twenty-one hours you’ll give birth to a fine, healthy baby boy.”
Twenty-one hours later, the woman does give birth. But she dies. The baby dies, too. The baby appears to be a tube sock with some blood on it.
Suddenly, a heavy-breathing fiend with a limp attacks Dr. Frank. It is an unceremonious death, meaning there is no blood. The Fiend limps down a hallway. Then he limps up a hallway. He then limps down a different hallway, and limps up another hallway. This is a movie for people who love hallways.
Meanwhile, two dancers practice. They stretch and perform vaguely aerobic moves. Together they count out loud slowly, sounding each one out methodically. It is obvious the dancers just learned how to count. This scene takes about 15 minutes, but feels like an hour. Just when you think you cannot handle watching any more dancing, you watch more dancing. Then you watch the Fiend limp up and down a hallway again. Eventually the Fiend strangles the dancers, which is satisfying, but there is no blood, which is not satisfying.
Women seem to be drawn to the Fiend; he is a hypnotic creature with jacked biceps and a sculpted chest. It is obvious the Fiend spends time at the gym blasting his quads. He’s a hunk, except he’s got a bloody bandage covering his face. Turns out, Dr. Frank had made a “synthetic man.”
“Instead of creating a man, he’s created a monster!”
The Fiend continues to strangle victims and now a team of scientists and an inspector must stop him. But can they? The answer is discovered through the fast-forward button on your VCR.
Humans were not involved in the making of Science Crazed. The actors seem like they just learned how to talk or have never seen or heard other people talk before. In every scene, one actor very, very slowly says something and the other actor pauses for a very, very long time before responding very, very slowly. The reaction shots last an eternity, as if the actors are performing in slow motion. The pause between lines of dialogue feels as if you’ve been underwater for too long—a sense of panic seeps in and you wonder, am I going to drown in this silence? Then you drown. The stilted performances give the film a surreal sheen and pushes it away from horror and toward Dadaist performance art.
Acting aside, Science Crazed suffers from repetition, more repetition, even more repetition, and a droning soundtrack. You spend most of this movie watching the same thing you just saw moments before. This film is a true test of patience and willpower, and not everyone will be able to rise to the challenge. Somehow, it is magnetic. But also agonizing. You can’t stop watching these absurd performances and you genuinely want to see the plot unfold in its bizarre way. And yet you are bored. You’re just sitting there, watching and waiting for something to happen, and your level of irritation begins to rise. Science Crazed feels like an itch, but one that you can never scratch. Recent amputees sometimes feel phantom itches and pains in their removed limbs. There’s no way to address the tingling, tickling, irritating sensation in a limb that is no longer there. I understand this feeling because I have watched Science Crazed.
