The opening scene of "Man with the Screaming Brain" takes place "somewhere in Bulgaria" (which is good enough for me since I've never been there and perhaps never will be).  We see a beautiful brunette holding a piece of paper advertising potential American husbands.  We see her focus on a man in the ad and soon she's sitting next to him.  He tells her she's beautiful but that he's "got a better offer" and isn't interested in marrying her.  She starts to leave, turns to him, and asks him to make love to her.  He chokes on his drink, but decides to take her up on it.  When he gets closer to her, she knifes him in the gut, presumably killing him.  (I guess sometimes it's better to go with your second choice in potential wives.  Fortunately, it worked out for me with my first choice...)

We then see the opening credits, ending on William Cole (Campbell's character) and his wife Jackie coming out of an airport in Bulgaria.  Cole is fuming because a limo he expected to meet him in the airport never showed up.  Now his cell phone doesn't work.  He decides to take a cab to their hotel and begins quizzing the drivers in front of the airport to see if they speak English. (I guess learning Russian or Bulgarian was too much for Cole to consider.)  When he finds one who does, he hires the man.  The cab driver, Yegor, takes them on a rather wild ride through the city.  (Or rather, if you've always lived in the States it's a wild ride.  if you've taken a cab ride through downtown Rio de Janeiro - which I have - this one's pretty tame.)

When he hits a traffic Jam, Cole demands that he find another way to the hotel.  Yegor says the only other way to the hotel is through "Gypsy Town" and cautions against going that way because it's very dangerous there. Cole brushes him off and insists that they go on.  Along the way he lectures Yegor about the customer always being right in America, about smoking in public places being illegal, and about using cell phones in cars being illegal.  (In other words, Bruce plays the "ugly American" role to the hilt.)  Not far into the drive they nearly run over a pedestrian, who gives Yegor a knowing glance and stares at the taxi's occupants sternly.

As they make their way through Gypsy Town, some local thugs decide to steal Yegor's cab.  They ambush him when he's almost out of Gypsy Town.  He pulls a gun from under the dash and says he's going out "to discourage them" from stealing the car.  He fights off the thugs, whose leader (named Uri) he knows somehow, though we're never really told how.  As a parting blow, he breaks Uri's finger.  (If there's one character you really don't want to be in this movie, it's Uri's finger.)

The thugs leave without Yegor's cab and Yegor proceeds without further incident to the hotel. It's clear from her reaction after the attempted hijacking that Cole's wife Jackie would like to have an affair with Yegor.  At the hotel, she thanks him for "a very memorable cab ride" (while flashing him a look that could melt the South Pole).  Cole mentions wanting to buy some jewelry for his wife to smooth her ruffled feathers.  Later, Yegor provides him with a ring that he looks at sentimentally before Cole arrives to buy it from him.

Meanwhile, we're shown Dr. Ivanov (Stacy Keach), a Russian scientist who is working on a drug to prevent the rejection of organ transplants among otherwise incompatible people.  He is apparently very close to perfecting it and hopes to be able to sell it to Cole's company and become rich.

Ivanov's assistant Pavel (Sam Raimi) is hard to read.  He's clearly a buffoon, but seems to have at least enough intelligence to have invented a remote controlled robot (which he calls a "mobile") that can comb its hair, brush its teeth, and do rapper moves.  On the other hand, Pavel dresses like a confused country hick and drinks Red Bull energy drinks. 

At the hotel, Cole hires Yegor to be his personal guide and driver while he's in Bulgaria.  Shortly afterward, Cole goes to a business meeting while his wife hops in Yegor's cab to do some shopping.  He takes a tour of an abandoned Russian subway project that, if he invests in it, can be completed quickly and will modernize the city.

A few minutes later, Jackie tells Yegor she's decided that she'd rather not shop.  What she'd rather do instead is very clearly pictured across her face.  She wants a little action with old Yegor.  About this time, Cole's business meeting is over, so he calls Yegor to come pick him up.  Yegor wants to answer the cell phone, but Jackie's not about to let him.  (She wants to see Yegor's "O" face...)

Cole's business associates give him a lift back to the hotel.  When he arrives, Pavel greets him with a poorly written letter about the potential for business with Dr. Ivanov.  Cole thinks it's some kind of a scam, and says that his company spends millions on research, so he doesn't need some Russian quack's help.  He sends Pavel away.

When he gets back to his hotel room, the door is ajar.  Inside, he finds the gypsy woman they almost ran over earlier (Tatoya, played by Tamara Gorksi).  She's a maid in the hotel. 

Cole is clearly attracted to her, and bends down to kiss her.  While he's kissing her, she pickpockets everything he's got, including the ring he'd bought for his wife from Yegor. 

Tatoya tells him that she wants him to marry her.  Cole starts at this and backs away, telling her there must have been some kind of misunderstanding.  He just wants some action, not a new wife.  She pulls out her knife and is about to strike when Jackie arrives.  The maid leaves hastily.  Jackie tells Cole that she's had it with him, that it's over, and she's leaving him "for good this time".  (I guess old Yegor was better than he looked...)  He goes to give her the ring and realizes he's been robbed.  Jackie thinks he's lying and leaves to have dinner by herself. 

Cole makes his way to the employee locker room at the hotel, where Tatoya is looking at the ring Yegor sold Cole and muttering something about "what has that fool done?"  Now we realize that Tatoya and Yegor were once involved.  Cole finds Tatoya and chases her into the alley behind the hotel, where she's waiting to ambush him with a metal pipe. 

He falls to the ground, blood flowing from a wound on the right side of his head.  Yegor is nearby in his cab.  When he sees what just happened to his "meal ticket" (i.e., Cole), he grabs his gun and rushes up to Tatoya.  She drops the pipe, shows him the ring, starts crying, and approaches him slowly. 

Off guard by her tears, Yegor is surprised when Tatoya pulls out a knife and stabs him, just as she'd stabbed the potential husband in the opening scene and would have stabbed Cole earlier.  She then steals his gun and shoots him repeatedly in the shoulder (which apparently is fatal to Russian cab drivers in Bulgaria who were once in the KGB).

Tatoya stomps off like a little girl, presumably heading home, showing no remorse for the two men she's apparently killed and not appearing overly concerned that the police might come looking for her.  (And where ARE the police in this city anyway?  Two people get killed behind a hotel in broad daylight and no one who saw Cole go into the locker room has any inkling who did it?)

The head injury Cole sustains from Tatoya's attack isn't fatal, but it's left him in a coma, on life support.

Jackie (apparently having forgotten that she was going to leave Cole a few minutes earlier - women can sure be fickle at times), cries at his bed side and tells him how she wishes they could have patched things up between them.  Then, she rather matter-of-factly tells the doctor to "Pull the plug" and goes outside to catch a cab to Gypsy Town.  (I guess she's someone who processes her grief very quickly.  She went from "I'm leaving you for good" to "I must avenge your death!" awfully darned quickly...)

Across town, we find Pavel and Dr. Ivanov hearing of Cole's death and seeing it as an opportunity to get the man's attention on Ivanov's "wonder drug".  Ivanov instructs Pavel to pick up Cole's and Yegor's bodies and bring them to him.  

Meanwhile, Jackie has gone into a rage over Tatoya killing her husband.  She makes her way to Gypsy Town and finds Tatoya's apartment.  She bursts in the door, announcing that she's going to kill Tatoya for killing her husband.  (At that point, one of the worst choreographed and staged cat fights of the last decade begins.)

The battle ends shortly afterward, when Tatoya throws Jackie down a couple of flights of stairs.  Jackie hits the floor at the bottom, dead.  (This, too, is an overdone bit of drama.  She falls down a flight of stairs, stands up, then falls down another flight and dies.  Guess we needed to drive home the point that her body is badly damaged.)  Gypsies swoop in and steal everything they can as she lays dying.  (Note that subtle joke below... "Police Unit 54" is likely a reference to the old "Car 54, Where Are You?" TV series from - I think - the 1950s.  I think this is also the only appearance of the police in the film in spite of all the carjacking, stabbing, shootings, and such going on.)

Dr. Ivanov and Pavel perform surgery on Cole, removing the damaged part of his brain.  Although it's not shown here, the detail of the operation itself is quite graphic in places.  (One wonders how the police in this city managed to allow two murder victims' bodies to be stolen within minutes of the crime.  Doesn't say much for Bulgarian police...)

He later revives Cole and explains that he's replaced the right half of Cole's brain with "donor tissue" from another brain.  (He's also apparently given Cole a receding hairline and some very nasty scars.)

As Cole comes to his senses, he starts to freak out.  (Perhaps he's noticed how much he looks like John Cleese with that moustache?)  He fights Pavel and Dr. Ivanov and escapes from their lab.  Then we begin a scene where Cole scares small children, mimics a statue's pose, and thinks that another stature is staring at him.  To all outward appearances, the man's gone nuts.

Suddenly, Cole's "other half" awakens inside his head and begins to communicate with him.  As you probably expect, it's his old buddy Yegor the cab driver, though Cole never seems to catch on to this.  Cole asks Yegor what they should do now.  Yegor says they need a car, some new clothes, and some money.  Yegor knows where they can get a car (Uri's chop shop).  They head there and find Yegor's taxi among Uri's stolen cache.  They fight over whether to steal it or not, and eventually agree to take the cab. 

They pick up a "slim jim" off the ground and start trying to jimmy the lock.  This is difficult because each of them controls a different half of the body and it takes two hands to do this.  (I guess they build some pretty secure cars in Bulgaria.  Who'd have thought so?)

A young girl rounds the corner to find Cole pushing his body up against the car and thinks he's performing some kind of lewd act.  At first repulsed, she peeks around the corner to watch him.

Now that they have a car, they find a dumpster (or at least what looks like a dumpster) full of clothes.  They argue over what kind of outfit they ought to wear but eventually agree on one.  (Yes, indeed, it's the very height of Bulgarian fashion...)

Next, they need money.  (I guess Cole can't call up American Express and say "Hey, I was dead but I'm better now. Send me a new Platinum card and some cash!")  Yegor tries to convince Cole to panhandle.  Cole refuses.  They argue, which frightens an old woman into think Cole's insane and giving him a bunch of spare change.  Cole then goes to a restaurant to eat.  More arguing ensues, and they decide to leave.  About this time, Cole screams in pain and says that his brain is burning up.  He rushes into the restaurant's kitchen and tries pouring things on his head to cool it off.  Eventually he shoves his head in a bag of ice, which gives off steam, and he feels better.  (If his head was hot enough to turn ice into steam, wouldn't there be some serious skin damage?)

Time to go after Tatoya, they decide.  After all, she killed them both.  They go outside to find that someone has stolen the cab's wheels.  Not to worry. Nearby is a moped (a "Vespa") they can commandeer, which they do.  (I guess Cole couldn't have just called American Express and told them he needed some money and a new card?)  It's off to Gypsy Town to get revenge on Tatoya (on a moped that couldn't be more feminine if it had a tampon dispenser on it).

While all this is going on, we learn that Dr. Ivanov has revived Cole's wife Jackie.  While her brain is intact, her body is virtually destroyed.  They need another body, but they don't have one.  Pavel begs Dr. Ivanov to consider putting Jackie's brain in his "mobile".  To help convince him, he shows Dr. Ivanov that it can dance to hip-hop music.  (It moves fairly fast and fluidly here, looking nothing like the barely "mobile" hunk of junk it looked like earlier.)

Dr. Ivanov agrees to put Jackie's brain in the robot.  The operation is a success.  They explain things to Jackie, but all she can think about is getting revenge on Tatoya.  (I'm not sure I'd be as accepting of having my brain dropped in a piece of Bulgarian hardware that looks like a cheaply made inflatable sex doll, but I guess that's just me.)

Like Cole, Jackie escapes from Pavel and Dr. Ivanov.  (How she escapes, I'm not sure.  She moves about as fast as a senior citizen with a bad hip and a walker.)  She has a single thought in her mind, getting revenge on Tatoya.  She boards a bus headed for Gypsy Town.  (There's a scene with Pavel and the girl you see here sitting next to Jackie, but you'll have to watch the movie to find out what...)

Meanwhile, we see that Tatoya's mind is really slipping fast. She utters a poem about how all the men she loved are dead and there's no one left to marry her, so she's going to marry herself.  (I guess if you pick a man's pockets or stick a knife into one every time he gets close to you, the altar becomes a very lonely place.)

She says some modified wedding vows to herself and slips the ring from Cole/Yegor onto her finger as Jackie enters the bridal shop.  They struggle, but Tatoya pulls Yegor's gun from a nearby table and fires a couple of rounds into Jackie.  Her electronic circuits are now malfunctioning. 

While Jackie is recovering, Tatoya escapes and heads for her car outside. Cole pulls up on his moped just as she's pulling away.  Cole gives chase, but is literally "clotheslined" by an old woman hanging her laundry up to dry. 

The Vespa moped sails away and hits what looks like a Yugo (or worse).  It bursts into flames.  (I thought the gas tank on one of these was behind the seat.  Why's it blowing up at the foot rests?)

Fortunately for Cole, he doesn't need the Vespa anymore because Tatoya's close at hand.  He dives on to her hood and tells her to stop.  She refuses.  (Go figure.)   Pavel, coming from another direction, crashes into her (with Cole still on the hood).  Tatoya's car flips and lands on Cole's foot.  (He's pretty lucky it didn't land on his recently-opened head.)  It also starts leaking fuel at an alarming rate. (Tatoya's car may look like a hunk of junk, but she must have had a fortune invested in the gas tank...)  Cole begs Tatoya to help him.  Her idea of help is to drop a lighter on the spilled gas leading to the car.  (Is it just me, or are those some serious heels on her shoes?)

Suddenly, someone's lifting the car off Cole's foot.  It's Jackie!  She's still alive (or whatever you call a disembodied brain in a Bulgarian sex-bot).  Cole hastily and awkwardly apologizes to her for "every bad thing he ever said or did to her".  (Yeah, I'm buyin' that apology.  Sounds about as sincere as the thank-you I got at the convenience store last week.) He scrambles to his feet.

Jackie tells him she loves him and tells him to run.  He runs. Tatoya's car explodes, with Jackie in the middle of the flames.  Cole rushes back to the car to help her, but he can't find Jackie.  She must have perished in the explosion.  No time to worry about that now.  Cole sees Tatoya in the distance.  She's run into a biker bar.  Cole follows her in, whereupon she bursts into tears and tells the bikers that Cole raped her on her wedding day.  The bikers surround Cole and attempt to beat the crap out of him. 

He manages, with Yegor's advice to "fight dirty", to overcome them.  On his way out the door, he sees Uri, who insults him.  He breaks Uri's finger (I hope Uri's HMO is good).  He rushes outside to see Tatoya running away across a bridge.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Jackie appears and rushes Tatoya on the bridge.  They fight briefly, with Jackie ending up over the railing into the ravine below.  (This fight might be even more poorly choreographed than the one in the apartment, if that's possible.)

Cole chases Tatoya into some kind of underground industrial facility, catching up to her on a high scaffold.  They struggle, and Tatoya ends up dangling from the edge.  She begs Cole for his help. 

He stares at her, and then reaches down to her.  She thanks him for saving her.  He tells her it wasn't her he was saving, it was the ring on her finger, which belongs to him.  He removes it and throws her off the scaffold into the water below. She's dead.  She floats away on the water.

Cole is really beginning to feel badly now, probably for lack of a dose of Dr. Ivanov's "wonder drug".  He makes his way out of the underground facility and into a ravine, which turns out to be the same ravine where Jackie's robot body fell.  He rushes to her side.  She's in bad shape.  He apologizes more sincerely now, tells her he loves her, and puts the ring on her finger. 

They try to recharge her batteries (which Dr. Ivanov tells her must happen or she'll die), but no good.  The damage is too extensive.  She dies.  Cole collapses next to her.  He's looking dead, too.

Pavel talks to Dr. Ivanov on the cell phone.  Ivanov wants him to bring back "all the bodies" immediately.  Pavel sees Tatoya's body float past.  He tries to stop it.  (Wait a minute.  If he had to climb up from underground, and Tatoya fell even farther below where he was, how the heck did her corpse wind up floating up into a ravine that much higher up?)

Fade to black.

A title tells us it's six months later.  We see Cole, looking quite normal now with only a slight scar on his forehead, behind his desk, writing a million-dollar check for charity.  Yegor is still there in his head, talking to him.  He gets up to put on a tie, but has trouble doing it.  He calls to Jackie.  In she comes... in Tatoya's body!  They walk off together, apparently back in love again and back together.  (Wonder how they explained this one to Jackie's family?  Here's your daughter.. No, it isn't!  No really, her brain's in this body now.  Yeah, sure William.  We're callin' the cops...)

The End.

Bruce's performance in this movie is everything you'd expect it to be.  In typical Hollywood fashion, he portrays character William Cole as a rude, arrogant, jerk who believes everyone has a price.  Cole spouts phrases like "Capitalism's the only way to go" and "In America, we have laws against ___".  I expect this movie plays extremely well outside the USA, since I get the impression that a large portion of the world views us this way.  That's probably the point of Campbell's portrayal of Cole.

Antoinette Byron, who played Jackie, starts off with a slight Australian or New Zealand accent, then seems to lose it at different times during the film, then get it back.  She plays the spoiled rich wife well, and her come-ons to Yegor in the cab definitely smolder.  Her cat-fighting is slightly better than that of Tamara Gorski.

Stacy Keach as Dr. Ivanov is absolutely brilliant.  I didn't realize that Ivanov WAS Keach until a good bit of the way into the film.  His Russian accent was perfect, and he played the role of "Bad B-Movie Mad Scientist" better than anyone in recent memory.  Though he'll never get one, he deserves an award for his performance.  It's that good.

Ted Raimi, the actor playing Ivanov's assistant Pavel, is quite good, too.  Though his character is little more than a charicature of a "glo-bell citizen", his mannerisms, facial expressions, and physical comedic skills are fantastic.  I've left out a lot of "Pavel stuff" here because physical comedy doesn't translate well into written descriptions, and also so that you'll have a few laughs to look forward to when you see this film.

Tamara Gorski, who played Tatoya, wasn't very convincing as a psychotic killer.  While she looks good on screen and delivers her lines with passion, her physical coordination makes her more comical than frightening (and perhaps that is the point).  Instead of walking like an enraged homicidal maniac, she walks more like a teenage girl having a temper tantrum.  During the big "cat fight" in Tatoya's apartment, her movements looked extremely amateurish and fake.  (Which I realize may have been the point.)  I'm guessing Bruce Campbell knew her from their mutual work on the "Hercules" TV series.

All things considered, I'd say this is one of Bruce's most "fun" and "funny" films.  It's no A-list film, to be sure.  It's low-budget, low-tech, and campy as all-get-out.  It's everything you expect from a movie written, directed, and starred in by Bruce Campbell.  If this is what Bruce can do on his own, I really hope the Sci-Fi channel lets him do more of it.  While it lacks some of the subtlety and artistic vision of Bubba Ho-Tep, Man with the Screaming Brain is more accessible and more humorous overall.  

If I rated "Army of Darkness" on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being excellent, I'd give it about a 9.  On the same scale, "Man with the Screaming Brain" is probably an 8.  If you've stayed away from this one because you weren't that impressed with his other Sci-Fi Channel movies like Alien Apocalypse or Terminal Invasion, don't.  Man with the Screaming Brain is definitely worth watching at least once, and at least twice if you're a Bruce Campbell fan.