Twisted plot hurts ‘Screaming Brain’

Bruce Campbell movies are hard to resist.

This weekend, the star of the “Evil Dead” trilogy and “Bubba Ho-Tep” appears in “Man with the Screaming Brain” (9 p.m. tonight, Sci Fi). He portrays the brash CEO of an American drug company who arrives in a dusty Bulgarian city and immediately begins to throw his weight around.

It takes no time at all for the hotshot to get his comeuppance. His petulant blond trophy wife (Antoinette Byron) runs off with a Russian cabdriver. A bewitching woman robs him.

And before long, he is mugged, left for dead, and subject to a brain transplant experiment conducted by a deranged researcher (Stacy Keach) with a drinking problem and a strong sense of nostalgia for the good-old days of Soviet science.

Saddled with two brains, one corporate and one communist, Campbell’s character is quite literally beside himself. This results in some silly slapstick as the right and left (or rather Eastern and Western) portions of his noggin negotiate ways to walk, talk and drive through the madcap traffic of a crumbling Eastern European city.

Asked to describe “Screaming Brain,” a film Campbell also directed and co-produced, he professed, “I’d say it’s ‘The Out-of-Towners’ with a brain transplant.” But with its convoluted plot, “Brain” is rather slow to get started.

Sci Fi Channel-movie buffs used to the slam-bang monster action of, say, “Pterodactyl” may be put off by its transparently goofball nature. But Bruce Campbell’s legion of fans will follow him anywhere.

It’s unfair to dislike a sitcom on sight. But in the case of “The War at Home” (8:30 p.m. Sunday, Fox), I’ll make an exception. Michael Rappaport stars as Dave, a harried dad married to Vicky (Anita Barone), a working mother who shares her husband’s disdain for sensitive “parenting.”

If there is a fine line between rejecting touchy-feely behavior and being a crude slob, Dave is not aware of it. He’s too arrogant to be a clueless dolt of the “Married with Children” variety. And Vicky is too sexy to pull off the “Roseanne”-like lines she is asked to deliver.

Kiefer Sutherland narrates “The Flight That Fought Back” (9 p.m. Sunday, Discovery) a moment-by-moment chronology of the hijacking of Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001, and the passengers’ efforts to resist the terrorists. “Flight” combines dramatic portrayals of the passengers as well as real-life video footage of the deceased and taped recollections by their families and friends.

Like the best films to come out of the Sept. 11 tragedy, “Flight” is often too compelling to resist and too heartbreaking to endure.

“True Hollywood Story” (8 p.m. Sunday, E!) profiles Brooke Shields and updates her story to include Shields’ public bout with Tom Cruise.

Columnist Michael Musto sums up one reason for the “Suddenly Susan” star’s enduring appeal: “She’s maybe the last of a dying breed, a really old-fashioned, gracious star who everybody’s rooting for, because she’s never done harm to anyone.”

“Mystery” (8 p.m. Sunday, KSPS) returns with four new episodes of “Foyle’s War,” a superior series starring Michael Kitchen as a homicide detective who solves murders on the British home front as World War II rages and Nazi forces threaten an invasion of England.

Tonight’s highlights

U.S. Open Tennis coverage (5 p.m., CBS).

On back-to-back episodes of “Cops” (Fox), a bicycle thief (8 p.m.), and old bones and cell phones (8:30 p.m.). This opens the 18th season of “Cops.”

Ohio State hosts Texas in college football action (5 p.m., ABC).

Vincent Spano stars in the 2005 natural-disaster drama “Landslide” (9 p.m., Hallmark).

“Live from New York” (9 p.m., NBC) glances back at the first five years of “Saturday Night Live.”

John Walsh hosts “America’s Most Wanted” (9 p.m., Fox), now entering its 19th season.

The Australian import “McLeod’s Daughters” (10 p.m., WE) enters its third season.

Sunday’s highlights

On the eve of its convention, Bartlet’s party looks disorganized on “The West Wing” (8 p.m., NBC).

Marge puts Marge first on the season premiere of “The Simpsons” (8 p.m., Fox). Alec Baldwin guest-stars.

Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas star in the 2001 romance “Save the Last Dance” (8 p.m., WB).

George Clooney leads an all-star cast in the smug 2001 remake of “Ocean’s Eleven” (9 p.m., CBS), a 1960 film that was pretty terrible in the first place.

Locals compete on “My Kind of Town” (9 p.m., ABC).

A new neighbor (Alfre Woodward) and old mysteries on the season finale of “Desperate Housewives” (10 p.m., ABC).

Rita Moreno guest-stars on “Wanted” (10 p.m., TNT).