Steve Martin. Brains in jars. A serial killer who uses window cleaner.
Honestly, if you tried to pitch The Man with Two Brains today, a studio executive would probably have you escorted from the building. It is a movie that lives and breathes in the specific, wonderful madness of 1983. It’s weird. It’s loud. It’s undeniably smart while being aggressively stupid.
What is The Man with Two Brains actually about?
Most people remember the "brain in a jar" part, but the setup is pure 80s satire. Steve Martin plays Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr—a name he insists is pronounced exactly as it’s spelled. He is the world’s greatest neurosurgeon and the inventor of the "cranial screw-top" method.
The plot kicks off when he accidentally hits a woman named Dolores Benedict (played by a peak Kathleen Turner) with his Mercedes. He saves her life, falls for her, and they get married.
Here is the catch: Dolores is a literal "man-eater." She’s a gold-digger who has already tormented her previous husband into a fatal heart attack. She spends the honeymoon in Vienna torturing Hfuhruhurr by refusing to consummate the marriage, claiming she’s too ill while actually hitting on every other man in sight.
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It’s during this trip to Vienna that the movie goes off the rails in the best way possible. Hfuhruhurr meets Dr. Alfred Necessiter (David Warner), a mad scientist living in a condo that looks like a Universal Monsters set. Necessiter has a collection of living brains in jars, and Michael falls in love with one of them—Anne Uumellmahaye.
Yes, he falls in love with a voice in a jar. That voice, by the way, belongs to an uncredited Sissy Spacek.
Why the Reiner-Martin partnership was lightning in a bottle
To understand why The Man with Two Brains works, you have to look at the Carl Reiner and Steve Martin era. This was their third collaboration, tucked between Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid and the masterclass that was All of Me.
Reiner and Martin had this "more is more" philosophy. They didn't just want one joke per scene; they wanted a machine-gun fire of gags. If a pun didn't land, a physical pratfall was coming in five seconds to save it.
The Genre Parody
The movie isn't just a comedy; it's a love letter to 1950s B-movies. Specifically, it sends up Donovan’s Brain (1953).
- The Scientist: David Warner plays the "mad doctor" with such a straight face that the absurdity becomes ten times funnier.
- The Sets: Necessiter’s lab is filled with glowing liquids and humming machinery that would look right at home in a black-and-white horror flick.
- The Villain: The "Elevator Killer" subplot is a brilliant piece of nonsensical filler that somehow ties the whole thing together.
Kathleen Turner is the secret weapon here. Fresh off her sultry role in Body Heat, she parodies her own "femme fatale" image with terrifying precision. She is so mean to Steve Martin that you actually find yourself rooting for him to run off with the jar of pickles—I mean, the brain.
The bits that people still quote (and why they're weird)
There is a specific kind of "Steve Martin humor" that exists in this film. It’s the kind where he stays in a joke way longer than he should. Take the scene where he’s trying to pass a sobriety test by juggling and tap dancing while reciting poetry.
"Pointy birds, pointy, pointy. Anoint my head, anointy, nointy."
It’s nonsense. It makes no sense. But the commitment Martin brings to the character of Hfuhruhurr—a man who is genuinely brilliant at surgery but a total idiot at life—is what makes it stick.
Then there's the rowboat scene. Michael takes the brain (Anne) out for a romantic afternoon. He puts a little hat on the jar so she doesn't get sunburned. He puts wax lips on the glass so he can "kiss" her. It’s creepy. It’s sweet. It’s hilarious. It’s everything modern comedies are often too scared to be.
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Does it hold up?
Kinda. Mostly.
If you watch The Man with Two Brains through a 2026 lens, some of the gags feel like relics. There’s a scene involving Jeffrey Combs (the future Re-Animator star) as a doctor performing some "unnecessary grooming" on an unconscious Dolores that feels a bit cringey by today's standards.
But the core of the movie—the wordplay, the slapstick, the sheer audacity of the premise—remains top-tier. It’s a film that trusts the audience to keep up with its internal logic, no matter how fractured that logic is.
Critics at the time were split. Roger Ebert famously didn't love it, saying the "funny name" jokes grew tired. But over the last 40 years, it has become a cult classic for anyone who loves the "absurdist" school of comedy. It’s a bridge between the old-school Vaudeville style of Carl Reiner and the new-wave, weirdo energy of early Saturday Night Live.
Actionable ways to enjoy the movie today
If you’re planning to revisit this classic or watch it for the first time, don't just put it on in the background. It’s a "look at the screen" comedy.
- Watch the background: Carl Reiner makes a cameo as a doctor during the craniology seminar. There are also tiny visual gags hidden in the lab sets.
- Pair it with a double feature: Watch Young Frankenstein first. It sets the mood for the "mad scientist" parody.
- Check the credits: Look for the note about Merv Griffin at the end. It's one of the best "meta" jokes in the movie.
- Listen for Sissy Spacek: Since she isn't credited, try to pick out the nuances in her voice performance as Anne. She manages to make a literal jar of grey matter feel like a romantic lead.
The Man with Two Brains is a reminder that movies used to be allowed to be completely, unapologetically insane. It’s a product of a time when a major studio would give a bunch of money to a guy to fall in love with a telepathic organ. We're probably never getting another movie quite like it, and honestly? That’s why we should cherish this one.
Go find a copy. Look for the remastered widescreen versions if you can; the old fullscreen DVDs from the early 2000s don't do justice to Michael Chapman's cinematography. Turn it up loud. Enjoy the "screw-top" method. Just stay out of the elevators in Vienna.