The Man with 2 Heads

A writer for the late, unlamented magazine "Demonique" tried to review this movie but got the plot hopelessly confused with THE INCREDIBLE TWO HEADED TRANSPLANT leading me to think he had not bothered to see Andy Milligan's film at all. The protagonist in Andy's no-budget thriller only has one head. This is actually our favourite Staten Island auteur's take on "Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde". We know we are well off the beaten path when Dr. Jekyll, lecturing his students, injects a disembodied brain with his new serum and it turns green (by shining a green light on it); and when Jekyll instructs his students to dismember a cadaver "So that it can be properly disposed of." and they gleefully hack it to pieces with axes and cleavers! Andy's eccentric touches add an originality to the plot that no one else had ever touched on (well okay maybe Hammer with THE TWO FACES OF DR. JEKYLL). The doctor's alter ego visits an S&M club and we get to see such Milligan mainstays as flogging and a man with his eyes poked out with knitting needles. It is clear that Andy really felt the plot had nowhere to go and it becomes a fill-in-the-blank affair when only half the running time has expired. I call THE RATS ARE COMING, THERE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE his best film, this one has to be his worst. If you are a Milligan completist (like myself!) you should see it once though, his quirky charm is indeed evident even here.

Dr. William Jekyll (Denis DeMarne) perfects a formula that can isolate and treat evil in the brain. Unfortunately, Jekyll's incompetent assistant Jack Smithers (Berwick Kaler) drops the only vial of the serum, and then accidentally spills a liquid over the one existing copy of the formula, covering up his mistake by writing in what he thinks has been eradicated. When Jekyll knocks up a new batch of the serum, using the incorrectly amended formula, he transforms into a wicked fiend who takes pleasure in degrading, humiliating and killing those unfortunate to cross his path.

Andy Milligan's version of Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is incredibly talky, which isn't a good thing when the dialogue is so badly written and the acting is so amateurish. Of course, being a Milligan film, The Man With Two Heads was almost guaranteed to be awful no matter how good or bad the script and performances, the direction being of the low, low calibre we have come to expect from the man who gave us such garbage as The Ghastly Ones (1968), Torture Dungeon (1969), Bloodthirsty Butchers (1970), The Body Beneath (1970), Guru the Mad Monk (1970), The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! (1972), Carnage (1984) and Monstrosity (1987), all of which I have had the misfortune to see.

The photography is horrible, the sound quality is bad, the editing chaotic, and the pace sluggish; as a result, the whole thing is a crushing bore to sit through, despite some cheapo gore effects and one of cinema's more despicable and unhinged Mr. Hydes (although in this film, Jekyll's villainous alter-ego goes by the name of Danny Blood).

2.5/10, generously rounded up to 3 for Danny Blood's ability to whip out a meat cleaver from nowhere, and for the thickest and most sudden pea-souper to ever hit Victorian London.

It's easy to mix up Andy Milligan's THE MAN WITH TWO HEADS with THE THING WITH TWO HEADS, a cult movie that came out the same year about a two-headed monster. This film's two-headed creature is a metaphorical one; the film is actually Milligan's version of the Jekyll and Hyde story, and like most of his work from the era (e.g. BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS) it's a period piece that was shot in London. It's also very dull.

Although the film is more coherent than most of Milligan's fare, the truth is that it's not very good. It's not a long film but the pacing drags out endlessly nonetheless. There's the usual combination of slow and talky moments, amateur theatrics-level acting from the unknown cast members, and a few moments of high ham and cheesiness. Milligan can't resist throwing some bloodshed into the mix, which I'm all for, but his films are just too obviously hampered by their low budgets to make much of an impact except in the lowest of cult circles. You can go ahead and watch just about any other version of the Robert Louis Stevenson story and find it more entertaining than this one.

Let's get this out in the open: I don't get the cult of Andy Milligan. I can certainly respect a guy determined to make a film no matter how low the budgets, no matter how cheap the film stock, no matter how limited his means. That does not mean that I have to like the end results. Most of Andy Milligan's films are nearly unwatchable for anyone who demands a minimal level of quality. Static shots that run on forever, unconvincing (to say the least) period designs, and bad acting, that is what one gets with Andy Milligan.

Having said all that, The Man with Two Heads is a marked improvement. Oh, it's still bad; let's not delude ourselves on that point. However, this film features a far better leading actor, Denis DeMarne, than normal and a better story (taken from Robert Louis Stevenson of course). There is still the lousy cinematography and the cheap sets (a medical school that consists of four students meeting in someone's basement). Still, compared to Monstrosity? Compared to Carnage? Compared to The Rats Are Coming, The Werewolves Are Here? Compared to them, The Man with Two Heads is a (small) step above.

A funny thing happened to me as I was browsing around the other day that couldn't be overlooked. Many years ago I saw this awful film. At the time I was kind of spooked by it. It had this kind of quality that will scare a four year old. All in all this is truly bad movie making at its finest. A must see for the experiece.