The Man with Two Brains

Not to be confused with The Man with Two Brians.

The Man with Two Brains
DVD cover
Directed by	Carl Reiner
Produced by	William E. McEuen David V. Picker
Written by	Steve Martin Carl Reiner George Gipe
Starring	Steve Martin Kathleen Turner David Warner
Music by	Joel Goldsmith
Cinematography	Michael Chapman
Edited by	Bud Molin
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release dates	June 3, 1983 (1983-06-03)
Running time	93 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$10,353,438

The Man with Two Brains is a 1983 American science fiction comedy film directed by Carl Reiner and starring Steve Martin and Kathleen Turner.

Written by Martin, Reiner and George Gipe, the film is a broad comedy, with Martin starring as Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr, a pioneering neurosurgeon with a cruel and unfaithful new wife, Dolores Benedict (Turner).

Plot

Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr (Steve Martin), a widowed brain surgeon, is renowned for inventing a method of "cranial screw-top" brain surgery. He saves the life of Dolores Benedict (Kathleen Turner), a gold-digging femme fatale who is accidentally run over by Hfuhruhurr when fleeing the scene of her latest husband's fatal coronary (which her malicious mind-games and scheming caused).

As she recovers, Hfuhruhurr falls in love and they marry. From the moment he carries her over the threshold, Dolores torments Michael by pretending to be too ill to consummate the marriage, citing a continuing headache. On a honeymoon and business trip to a medical conference in Vienna, a city living in fear of the serial "Elevator Killer," Hfuhruhurr meets mad scientist Dr. Alfred Necessiter (David Warner), who has created a radical new technique enabling him to store living brains in liquid-filled jars using the Elevator Killer's victims (Necessiter stating that he is not the Killer but the Killer's method of murder causes the brain to die last, making his victims ideal for Necessiter's experiments).

Hfuhruhurr discovers he can communicate telepathically with one of Necessiter's brains, that of Anne Uumellmahaye (uncredited voice by Sissy Spacek). Hfuhruhurr and the disembodied brain immediately fall in love, with Michael taking the brain away to spend more time with it. Dolores - having learned that Michael has just received an inheritance from an aunt - attempts to reignite their relationship, but catches on to his relationship with Anne when she spots him in a rowboat with the jar. She attempts to kill Anne by putting the brain in an oven, causing Michael to literally toss Dolores out of his house and into the mud when he learns of her actions against Anne and her knowledge of his inheritance.

Hfuhruhurr consults with Dr. Necessiter, who informs him that brains in tanks do not actually survive for long, with Anne being his longest-living one to date. Necessiter recommends transplanting Anne's brain into a new body, revealing that he has perfected a process that could allow him to implant the brain into a gorilla in Necessiter's laboratory. After giving this idea serious consideration for several seconds, Hfuhruhurr replies, "I couldn't fuck a gorilla!" This leaves him with only the option of placing Anne's brain in the body of a recently deceased woman.

Filling a syringe with window cleaner, the substance used by the Elevator Killer on his victims, Hfuhruhurr first sees a crowd gathering around an attractive woman hit by a car, and is seen as odd for hoping she will expire, only to see her regain consciousness. Hfuhruhurr then selects a prostitute with an annoying voice, but his conscience prevents him from killing her. Stepping into an elevator, he finds that Dolores has just been murdered by the Elevator Killer, who turns out to be Merv Griffin. Hfuhruhurr takes Dolores' corpse, and Griffin promises to turn himself in to the police (the film's credits later state that he did not).

Hfuhruhurr hurriedly takes Dolores's body to Necessiter's lab. He is stopped by the Austrian police, who suspect him of drunk driving. After a series of wacky sobriety tests, the police are then convinced Hfuhruhurr was driving sober and permit him to leave, accepting that he was taking a sleepy Dolores home. However, as her body flails, the police realize that Dolores was not drunk, but dead, and now chase after his car in order to arrest him for murder.

Hfuhruhurr makes it to the lab, where Necessiter transfers Anne's consciousness to Dolores's body, which is viewed by the stunned policemen. However, in the process, Hfuhruhurr is electrically shocked by the equipment (part of which consists of an arcade cabinet powered by quarters), and falls into a coma.

Waking up six weeks later, back home, Hfuhruhurr finally gets to meet Anne in Dolores's body. It turns out Anne is a compulsive eater, and that she has now gained considerable weight in her new body. Hfuhruhurr loves Anne for who she is, so they are married. He carries her over the threshold, as he had Dolores, but it is not easy. The film ends with a request for the audience to report the whereabouts of Merv Griffin if they see him.

Cast

• Steve Martin as Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr
• Kathleen Turner as Dolores Benedict
• David Warner as Dr. Alfred Necessiter
• Paul Benedict as Dr. Necessiter's butler
• George Furth as Timon
• Peter Hobbs as Dr. Brandon
• Earl Boen as Dr. Felix Conrad
• Randi Brooks as Fran
• James Cromwell as Realtor
• Francis X. McCarthy as Olsen (as Frank McCarthy)
• Estelle Reiner as Tourist in Elevator
• Merv Griffin as Himself
• Sissy Spacek as Voice of Anne Uumellmahaye (Uncredited)

Reception

The Man with Two Brains currently holds a 76% 'fresh' rating on review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes.

Trivia

In 1987, DC Comics created a Superman villain named Hfuhruhurr after Martin's character in this movie, Hfuhruhurr creating a telepathic Union by placing the brains of his victims in jars on board his spaceship; Superman's second confrontation with him saw the Union turn against Hfuhruhurr and vow to only recruit those willing and near-death, as opposed to Hfuhruhurr's indiscriminate collection.

External links

• The Man with Two Brains at IMDb
• The Man with Two Brains at AllMovie
• The Man with Two Brains at Box Office Mojo
• The Man with Two Brains at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Man with Two Brains at Metacritic