Amok, l'homme à deux têtes

This is a great party movie. My friends and I have watched it together at least four times since we were teenagers. There are so many laughable moments that I could list, but here are just a few favorites:

Casey Casem is a main character (a doctor), but also provides the voice of every news announcement heard on radios in the film! (Did they think we wouldn't notice?)

Bruce Dern saying "Johnny, this is an axe. It is used for chopping wood, and NOTHING ELSE."

Dern again, upon completing an autopsy of a lab monkey: "You know, if this little guy had been healthy, he'd still be alive!"

The totally gratuitous "lady getting out of the bathtub" scene.

The soundtrack is consistently inappropriate for the action on screen. I particularly love the opening titles -- a drippy love song comes directly after a maniac's menacing laughter.

Stilted acting, poorly written dialog, cheesy 70's clothes, a ridiculous premise, and totally unconvincing makeup effects make this one of the best scoff-able titles out there (even beating "Gymkata")! Recommended for your next scoff-fest!

Casey Kasem, Marilyn Munster, Bruce Dern, and Seymour in a campy horror cheapsterpiece that is good for some laughs.

Bruce Dern is a mad doctor/scientist, and of course, nobody has ever seen a mad scientist in a movie before. He concocts a plan to take a dead head off one guy, and surgically attach it to another guy. Neither he nor you will ever know why he wants to do this, but it provides the backbone for this juicy camp novelty, that looks to have been made on a budget of about ten bucks, and two S&H green stamps. Casey Kasem was not doing a top 40 show or Scooby Doo cartoon that week, so he drops by. He's a colleague of Dern, but not nuts like Dr. Dern is. I love the scenes where our hero, Dr. Kasem, turns on the radio, to listen to his own voice doing the radio news announcer. Pat (Marilyn Munster) Priest is the blonde bombshell romantic interest (of more than one character, if you catch my drift). And of course, the two-headed transplant: both actors combine to actually give this awkward looking beast some real emotion.

They're all good, in a campy way, but a special treat this movie had was a popular local late night horror host seen here in L.A. in those days, named Larry "Seymour, the Master of the Macabre" Vincent. He used to offer up golden turkey monster flicks, in order to poke fun at their awfulness, MST3K style. He roasted himself for doing "Transplant," although his all-to-brief screen before making a routine horror film exit, was actually pretty good acting. Sadly, Seymour died fairly young, leaving this as one of his few film appearances.

The idea is goofy, but the script has enough going on that the actors can work with it. They all seem to have had fun making the flick, too. Considering the z-budget, it's not bad at all. This can actually be entertaining if you go in expecting dumb but amusing camp.

Obviously this is a bad movie. But what else did you expect from a movie with a title such as this one has. I'll admit, this movie its title is the only reason why I really wanted to see it and no, I also certainly don't regret I did. Yes, it's still being a bad movie but it's just one of those movies that is fun to watch, regardless of how bad things get in this movie.

The movie does work out as fun because of its insane and silly concept. Main concept of the movie is a scientist experimenting on putting two heads on one body. But I seriously still don't understand with what purpose the professor was executing his experiments. As far as I understood it, it all had something to do with successfully transplanting limbs from one body onto another but this all doesn't explain why our dear professor and his disabled assistant are experimenting with putting extra heads onto animals bodies. But needless to say that this is simply one of those movies you really shouldn't think too much about, while watching it.

I was really interest to see how they had done the two heads effect on one human body in this movie. The answer is; poorly. It's quite laughable actually. For certain shots they used an obvious (very) fake puppet head, that never gets shown from the front and for its close-ups it's basically the one guy standing very close behind the other guys back, to create the illusion of two heads on one body. This should pretty much sum up how this entire movie is being like. Silly, cheap, poorly done and just overall bad but you still can't help being amused by it all.

No, it's not really a story with much good story and that also is really foremost its downfall. This movie could had still been a much better and more entertaining one if more was happening in it. Now the 'monster's rampage doesn't happen until far into the movie. It's all such a big waste and shame. Surely they could had come up with some more original and entertaining stuff than what they show in the eventual movie. They waste too much time with this movie by setting up its shallow characters and shaky plot, that is being filled with holes and inconsistencies.

I also just love it how mentally challenged persons why behave like little kids in movies always wear dungarees. In this movie that isn't any different and he's constantly wearing the same sweater as well in this movie to complete things. I also just love how insane and over-the-top the smirking murderer is in this movie. Those two are the persons who get attached to one and the same body in this movie, so prepare yourself for lots of insane madness.

The movie foremost sounds like a crazy B-monster movie from the '50's and for most part the movie is also really being that way but it it's actually an '70's movie, so it's still has lots of hints of the exploitation genre in it as well. The movie is not that bloody or gory but it still features plenty of killings and also some nudity. The camera-work and especially its editing are being quite experimental at times, which also makes it all the more apparent that you're watching an '70's movie here.

Funny that somehow Bruce Dern ended up being in this mess, that foremost is still being a silly/bad fun one to watch.

4/10

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The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1971)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Roger (Bruce Dern) is a doctor doing experiments on animals. He is putting two heads on a single body and he finally gets his chance to do it with humans when a large but mentally challenged man becomes available as a subject but he puts the head of a killer on him and soon the monster is running loose.

THE INCREDIBLE 2-HEADED TRANSPLANT was the type of film that AIP was turning out to drive-ins back in the day when this type of exploitation was grand. As with a lot of drive-in films, the most important thing was a great title and there's no question that this film has that. With that said, there really isn't too much exploitation here and it's a tad bit too dry for its own good.

Apparently the mad scientist role was originally meant for someone like Vincent Price but the role went to Dern instead. Dern is certainly a very good actor and he gives a good performance here but he plays it so serious and straight that it just doesn't added enough entertainment value for the type of film it is. The performance was more for a serious medical drama than a drive-in "B" picture. Casey Kasem was fun to see in his role and we also got Gary Kent, Pat Priest and Albert Cole.

The film is certainly mildly entertaining and the two-headed monster has an interesting look to it. The film is worth watching but at the same time there's no question that it falls well short of being a good movie. It also got outdone by the following year's THE THING WITH TWO HEADS.

An absolute riot. The kind of movie Edward Wood could only aspire to make. And Bruce Dern is always worth watching. No matter the quality of the movie, there's just something about the guy that guarantees a good time.