In April 2005, we profiled Terry Michael King, the Arlington-based director of Brainiac, a low-budget horror flick about a pharmaceutical-company head who satisfies an unnatural lust for endorphins by turning into a lizard-esque monster and hoovering people’s brains out of their skulls. Though it enjoyed a handful of screenings, the film failed to land a theatrical distributor, denying theater audiences the pleasure of catching lines like, “I may be dumb but I’m not stupid!” and “Your dad is addicted to killing!”

Last month, though, Brainiac finally got a formal DVD release through Tempe, Ariz.—based Brain Damage Films. The deal was struck early last year, King says, but the better part of ’06 was spent making tweaks and putting together extras for the DVD: a blooper reel, a stills gallery, and a commentary track. In 2005 King was considering making Brainiac sequels, but since then he’s decided to look into other ways to expand the franchise. “I want to spin it off into other areas,” he says. “I’d like to pitch it as an animated feature or an animated series, or as a television series.”

In the meantime, King finished Joe Theremin, a six-minute short about a hungover gent who wakes up one morning and fantasizes he’s become a world-class theremin player. (As it opens, King explains, the character “is looking around his house, and the place is festooned with bras and panties….I had to do it when my wife was on vacation.”) It screened last month at George Washington University as part of the monthly experimental-music series the Electric Possible; he hopes to have the film posted on YouTube soon and plans to have it broadcast on DCTV.