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The Gruesome Twosome is a lot like any other Herschell Gordon Lewis film in that it features a ridiculous plot line, a plethora of useless performances, buckets of gore and some real nasty sequences. As usual, the director sets out his plot and it doesn't go anywhere from there. There aren't any twists in this film and what you see is very much what you get. While this simple formula is fun, it is rather monotonous also; and if you've seen a few other HG movies prior to seeing this one (as I had), it's safe to say that there isn't all that much here. The film kicks off with a suitably demented scene that sees two head models with wigs having a conversation with each other. From there, we learn that a wig maker's shop is getting its realistic hair straight from women's heads, as the old woman who runs the shop employs her retarded son to scalp the young women who comes looking to move into the abandoned apartment next door. The piece is made more ridiculous by the way that the old lady talks to Napoleon; who just happens to be a big stuffed cat!

I'm never really sure if HG Lewis movies are meant to be bad, or if the director is just grossly talentless. The acting is so bad that it's arguably not even acting; between speaking parts, some of the actors are visibly laughing - I don't know if the whole thing is meant to be a joke. The film only lasts for the seventy or so minutes, and so you'd expect that even a plot as basic as this one would be able to be stretched; but the Godfather of Gore obviously didn't know what to do with it, meaning that way over half of the film is made up of useless scenes that add nothing to the plot and serve only in making the whole piece more weird. HG movies have a sort of otherworldly feel about them stemming from the fact that they are so inept; nobody in real life acts like the people in HG movies do, and this movie adheres to that styling. The characters are non-existent and the way they react to the local murders is purely stupid. The murder scenes themselves are grisly as usual, but as is the case with everything else in this film; they're impossible to take seriously. Overall, this really is a terrible movie; but there's something about HG movies that make them better than most trash, and while I won't argue with bad words against this film; I did enjoy watching it.

I've seen a few Herschell Gordon Lewis films and in general I'm not a fan. Admittedly, I've not yet seen any of his blood trilogy, but based on his films that I have seen this one is by far the best. The opening scene is wildly entertaining, featuring two wigs in a shop window talking to each other. It sets the tone for the rest of the film.

The movie features many fun, engaging scenes that are enjoyable to watch even if they often have nothing to do with the plot, including several ridiculous minutes during which a man guzzles beer and stuffs his face with potato chips while his girlfriend tries to get him to tell her he loves her.

Additionally, The Gruesome Twosome features more character development than other Gordon films I've seen, especially from the female lead and the quirky old lady who runs the wig shop. And I was honestly surprised by the acting at certain points. In particular, the guy who played the mentally challenged son of the old lady did a great job. Usually those roles seem poorly cast in low budget films like this. The actors can never seem to get it quite right, but this guy really nailed it. It made me wonder if maybe he really was mentally challenged in real life.

The editing is very sloppy and I got the idea that the filmmakers didn't spend much time on it or care about it. They were probably in a rush to get it shown. But that makes it better and more enjoyable. Some scenes that otherwise may have been pretty dull become hilarious due to the bad editing. I get the feeling that the filmmakers had to have known this.

The Gruesome Twosome is never boring and at just over an hour in length, I could watch it again and again. And I probably will.

"The Gruesome Twosome" has a simple plot. Old Mrs Pringle (Elizabeth Davies) lives in a lovely little house just outside a Miami University Campus and runs a high quality wig shop from within it. Her son, Rodney (Chris Martell), who's a little simple in the head, helps her out. His speciality is procuring the real human hair that goes into making these wonderful wigs. Unfortunately for the local students, this involves the brutal killing and scalping of every beautiful young girl who is lured into the house under the pretense of finding a room to rent. But hey, don't blame Rodney, it's not his fault - he's a child trapped in a man's body and his domineering Mother dearest (accompanied at all times by her stuffed bobcat, Napoleon) continually threatens him with the prospect of being sent to "the place where bad boys go" if he doesn't carry out her murderous desires.

Sounds from that like it could be one of a million naff exploitation movies churned out by the late 60's but this one has the distinction of being directed by the undisputed king of the genre, Herschell Gordon Lewis. As a result the film is loaded with the same kind of screwball, absurdist humour as found in his "She Devils On Wheels" opus (shot virtually back to back with this'un), mixed in with the trademarked ultraviolence of his earlier splatterfests. Hilariously, as revealed in the commentary on the recent DVD release of this, much of the humour was derived unintentionally from the fact that they shot far too little footage on the set and were forced to pad out the 75 minute running time with lingering scenes of very bizarre activity that was never in the original script. For example, the film opens with a camp 7 minute conversation between two wig blocks painted to look like garish pink Mr Potato Heads. We also have an outlandish, almost dadaist "film within a film" sequence at the Drive-In in which a young female tries to seduce a gluttonous Ray Sagar ("The Wizard Of Gore") who is more concerned with squashing peaches and stuffing his face with potato chips than he is with her wily charms. However, even discounting the unintentional comedy resulting from the timing mix-ups, Lewis still manages to cram in plenty of deliberate gags from his cast of kooky, colourful characters. We have a quirky heroine, Cathy Baker (played by the delicious model/actress Gretchen Welles), who is an overzealous and fairly inept Nancy Drew type attending the local university and is forever trying and failing to solve mini-mysteries, such as the whereabouts of her friend's pet parrot (she believes they ate it the previous day in a pot pie!). We have a creepy caretaker on campus who happens to be a bone smuggler (!) when he leaves work. We have extended scenes of pseudo-go-go dancing from the female students (including one where they all bop around waving legs of Kentucky Fried Chicken, as part of a product placement agreement Lewis scored with the fast food chain who, in turn, fed the entire cast and crew!). To cap it all off, we're even treated to a bikini beach party scene *AND* a stock car demolition derby! Anyone seeking prime 60's trash will be in Heaven here!

But it's not all fruitcake comedy. Gorefiends will delight in the extended sequences of scalpings, decapitations, disembowellings and eyeball gougings, shot in squishy, sickening close-up and rich with Lewis' beloved "red glop". It's strange that even over 30 years on from the Godfather Of Gore's heyday, no one has, in my mind, been able to out-gross him on the slippery viscera scale. The violence in "The Gruesome Twosome" is as stomach-wrenching today as it was in 1967.

Whilst not as seminal as "Blood Feast", as shocking as "2000 Maniacs" nor as trashy as "She Devils On Wheels", "The Gruesome Twosome" is nonetheless probably Lewis' weirdest finished product and, as a result, an essential part of his oeuvre. It's obvious from the DVD commentary that he still views the film with great affection and you should too. It's a gem.

H.G. Lewis, the horror movie hack behind "Blood Feast" and "2000 Maniacs," created this repulsive little item about a freak who stalks college coeds for their scalps. It seems his mother runs a wig shop, and she wants to sell only the best. You get the picture. Starring the usual Lewis cast of non-actors, and highlighted with gross-out special effects that are neither special nor effective.

This is now the 3rd garbage horror film that I've seen which was directed by American, film-maker, H. G. Lewis - And I am now totally convinced that Lewis was nothing but the absolute worst and most pathetically incompetent movie-maker of all time.

And I now refuse to ever watch another one of this moron's utterly awful movies ever again - 'Cause I'm totally convinced that they would be just like these 3 that I've already seen - Pure junk.

Yes. Even though 1967's "The Gruesome Twosome" was a truly vile and amateur production - Its story did actually produce some genuine howls of unintentional laughter - But, in the long run - At a 72-minute running time - This story about a slobbering, dimwitted "psycho-scalper" and his wacky mother was so bad that it was downright unbearable to sit through.

And speaking about idiotic dialogue and cringe-worthy acting - Between actresses Gretchen Welles' "Kathy" and Elizabeth Davis's "Mrs. Pringle" - These 2 women and their irksome performances were, without question, the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel.

I've only seen three of Herschell Gordon Lewis's films thus far but I think this is the worst one yet. I loved Two Thousand Maniacs and I wasn't too fond of Blood Feast but it had its moments that I did indeed enjoy. I don't think I enjoyed anything about this movie except for some gore. Stay away if you can.

If possible, this may have the worst acting I've ever seen on film. The storyline is idiotic, the lines are stupid and the filming, editing and direction are all miserable. I expected a fun and cheesy little horror film but what I got was 72 minutes of agony on screen. Do yourself a favor and see Two Thousand Maniacs instead.

The Gruesome Twosome gets a gruesome two out of ten.

Here's another great one from the king of schlock, Herschell Gordon Lewis. Be warned, you need to be in the mood and ready for this kind of movie. But when the time is right you will know it. So fire up the popcorn maker and get ready, cuz this is a good one.

In my opinion it is Lewis' masterpiece. It's about a dimwitted man and his mother who kill people for reasons I won't go into so as not to spoil the plot, but it's only one of the single best motives in movie history. Overall a fun movie. Recommend.

Mrs. Pringle (Elizabeth Davis) owns a wig shop in a little town in Florida, but she is a demented woman who lives with her mentally disabled son, Rodney (Chris Martell), in a home where she rents rooms to young co-eds attending the local university.

"Gruesome Twosome" was developed in part because exhibitors were telling H. G. Lewis that his films did not have enough blood, leading him to make this gory film. This request is ironic in that "Blood Feast" (1963) was seen as too bloody just a few years before. He went from pioneering the gore movement to being seen as too light! This film corrected that.

Although I have been a fan of Lewis for many years, even publishing an article on his "Gore Gore Girls", I had not seen this film until Arrow Video put it out as part of their "Feast" collection. I can only imagine how rough previous copies are, because even with their painstaking efforts, the sound and picture are pretty rough. The physical film must have been rotting away, fading and getting holes.

Some have praised the film, but I find it to be one of his weaker entries. The introduction was made later to pad the picture, and it shows. But much of the film seems like padding. The dance scene, the long trailing by Kathy Baker (Gretchen Wells in her only role) of the college janitor... the film could easily have been better paced at under an hour.

Other filler includes some shots of Ray Sager ("Wizard of Gore") eating potato chips for no reason. Reflecting years later, Lewis admits he spent too much time on "the periphery" with things "not germane to the plot", but Lewis feels this had the unintended effect of giving audiences a recovery period between gore shots. He may be right, but it would have been nice if the time was filled with plot and not filler.

The strength comes in the gore. While the effects are in some ways pretty awful, such as the clear use of wigs for the victims being scalped, the actual blood and guts is very much ahead of its time and of course became Lewis' hallmark. Sure, a "dead" girl may be seen blinking her eyes, but at least the audiences were grossed out.

The Blu-ray from Arrow Video is pretty good. The picture and sound, as noted above, is far from perfect, but it is probably the best version released to date. The audio commentary is full of wonderful stories, including great asides about the "Blood Shed Theater" in Chicago. Some of the other features are unusual... an interview with filmmaker Peaches Christ seems out of place. A short piece on low budget films that came from Florida is really good, but not nearly long enough. A segment with an interview of Lewis on "censors" turns into more of a rant on his views of Facebook, which is a bit obscure.

H.G. Lewis like to stage bloody set pieces. However in order to show them off he likes to make a feature length film. Many of them aren't very good and they're padded out to make the 70 minute mark. The gruesome Twosome is one of those films. The film revolves around a crazy old lady who makes nice realistic looking wigs and her ogreish son. She has a secret in her wig making that you'll find hair raising. They're many filler scenes placed through out the movie. The most notorious one (and clever) takes place in the beginning where two wigs are holding a conversation. The gore set pieces are cool but you'll have to sit through the movie to experience them.

Recommended for campy cult fans.

B

The '60's seems to be a sort of forgotten age when it comes down to horror but it's forgotten a very good reason. Some absolutely horrible, cheap Z-grade genre movies got made during that period, that seemed to be a transition age between the B-horror monster movies from the '50's and the '70's slasher genre.

This movie is bad and lacking at about every department but yes, this luckily is one of those movies that is so silly and bad that it actually becomes entertaining. The movie will make you laugh, just because of how bad it all is, so you can still definitely get some joy out of it.

The story isn't even the biggest complain for this movie, that features some extremely poor directing and acting in it. I just couldn't believe how some of the scenes kept dragging on, for no apparent reason and how pointless and random some of the moments within this movie were. What was with all that dancing for instance. And even with those overlong and pointless sequences, the movie is still only 72 minutes short.

It's hard to take this movie very seriously, when it has such bad writing, directing and acting involved. But obvious reason for all of this was also its incredibly low budget. This is basically the biggest downfall of the movie and makes it the bad and silly product that it is. They simply didn't had any money to spend it on some decent equipment, its setting, actors and other talents involved. The movie still manages to be quite gory and some of its make-up effects were definitely good looking but when the rest of the movie is being so laughable as is the case with this movie, nothing really works out in it.

I was still entertained by it but all for the wrong reasons though.

3/10

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Gruesome Twosome, The (1967)

** (out of 4)

An elderly woman and her deranged son kill young women so that they can scalp them in order to put their hair in a wig shop. As is normally the case with a Lewis film, this one here is very short on plot but as an early splatter film goes, the gore does come off is fun red style. This is certainly a poorly made film with awful performances, bad dialogue and questionable direction but that doesn't really matter as what the film delivers is nostalgic fun. The film, as bad as it is, is a lot of fun because of how cheaply made it is and how much fun the director has with the gore. The gore effects are so obviously done but they remain fun just because of how fresh and at times original they are. One must remember that Lewis didn't have anything to copy off of so he was pretty much coming up with this stuff as he went along. If one is looking for a horror film to shock and scare them then this certainly isn't your movie but if you want a classic example of drive-in trash then this film remains fun.

The Gruesome Twosome is another excuse for splatter pioneer H.G.Lewis to paint the screen red with gore, and this he does with several messy murders of hot young women, whose hair is destined to be turned into wigs by batty shop owner Mrs. Pringle (Elizabeth Davis).

In between the grisly but not very convincing killings (a scalping, a decapitation, and a disembowellment, all performed by Mrs. Pringle's mentally disabled son Rodney), Lewis treats the viewer to lots of inconsequential padding solely designed to take his film to feature length.

Amongst the craptabulous filler on display: a bizarre pre-credits sequence involving two talking styrofoam heads wearing wigs; snoopy student Kathy (Gretchen Wells) tailing the college janitor, who she believes to be responsible for several disappearances on campus; Kathy and her sorority pals gyrating to groovy music while eating KFC; a drive in movie that features crisp munching and fruit fondling; a beach party; and some stock car racing.

With its grainy picture, terrible sound, amateurish acting, cheap effects, bad editing and basic direction, The Gruesome Twosome is par for the course for a Lewis movie. If you're a fan of the man's work, you'll probably dig this as well. If you've no great love for HGL's unique style, this one is unlikely to change your mind.

4.5/10, rounded up to 5 for all the lovely young ladies.

The Gruesome Twosome are a little old lady called Mrs Pringle, who runs a wig shop, and her retarded son Rodney who murders and scalps pretty college girls. A student called Kathy investigates their disappearances. Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis, the "Godfather of gore", Gruesome has four splatter scenes, very graphic but even at 72 minutes the film is heavily padded out. The beginning has a bizarre 4 minute conversation between two talking styrofoam heads, later added to stretch out the running time. We are also treated - if that's the corrected word - to drawn out scenes of groovy dancing, car racing, etc, again just to pad out time. Kathy's initial investigation is strictly comical, featuring that horror staple, a creepy janitor. Elizabeth Davis as the very eccentric Mrs Pringle is a lot of fun, she has a stuffed, scary looking big cat as a pet, called Napoleon. Hilarious! The acting at best is amateur but generally it is abysmal. This is a very cheap looking, crude movie, on purely technical merit I would score it only 2/10. However I do enjoy bad, strange and cult movies, this one leans towards the so bad it's good type. To date "Blood. Feast" is still my favourite HG Lewis movie.

I really have no choice but than to give this freak-show a 10. This makes Ed wood and his Plan 9 look like Orson Welles and Citizen Kane! From start to finish is like being on a continuous acid trip...Mrs Pringle and the statue of Napoleon the Leopard to the dancing Kentucky fried chicken eating coeds to Terrance and his girlfriend eating potato chips, mauling fruit and drinking Michelob beer. Rodney the mentally ill murdering son which bids the evil doing scalping, delivers a tour DE force performance which Anthony Hopkins could learn a thing or two from. Sit back , smoke a blunt or better yet magic mushrooms and prepare yourself for a riot!!!!

If this film seems padded and too long at 72 minutes that's because it is. Because of an incompetent production assistant director Lewis had to pad the film out with bizarre scenes like the opening dialog between two wig-wearing styrofoam heads and a hilarious drive-in movie the main characters watch that consists of people drinking beer and eating/squashing fruit, not to mention the drawn-out scene of girls dancing while munching on Kentucky Fried Chicken. This film is a treasure to behold for 60s exploitation film buffs as the black humor and gore flows freely and the 60s fashions are as garish as can be.

After viewing "2000 Maniacs", I wasn't sure if I would ever want to see a H.G. Lewis movie ever again! But I went out on a limb and rented "The Gruesome Twosome", an appropriately gory little number churned out in 1966. Boy, is this movie fun! Unlike "2000 Maniacs", there is no forced humor, no ridiculous music, and no shying away from gore effects. The scalpings of young co-ed girls are shown in full close-up (watch for blinking dead girls!), plus a gutting and a decapitation to boot! The acting is typically slip-shod (except for a bit part by a girl on the phone with the heroine's boyfriend). Lots of unintentionally funny moments, great rock/jazz music (some of which would later turn up in Lewis' "She-Devils On Wheels"), and crappy editing make this one of the better H.G. Lewis movies. Not known as infamously as "Blood Feast", "2000 Maniacs", "Color Me Blood Red", "She-Devils On Wheels", or "The Wizard of Gore", "The Gruesome Twosome" is a fantastic viewing experience, pure schlock, pure camp, pure entertainment! You might have to try looking around for this one, though, on either the old Rhino or Midnight labels. Something Weird Video offers a great print with beautifully garish cover box art!

Look if this was the first Herschell Gordon Lewis movie I'd ever seen it would probably be the last. Luckily I've seen his blood trilogy so I can't dismiss him entirely, but this is easily the weakest of his movies I've seen. The script (by the 'Blood Feast' writer) is trash, and while the movie only goes on for 70 minutes it really drags on and is full of unnecessary padding. Some of this padding is quite odd, such as the opening talking wigs sequence, and the gratuitous KFC eating go-go dancing bit (an early bit of product placement from Lewis), but mostly it's dull. I will admit that the handful of gore sequences are quite realistic for Lewis (that is certainly not always the case!), and Chris Martell makes an okay baddie in the Arch Hall Jr mold, but he doesn't get anywhere as much screen time Elizabeth Davis who is awful, unfunny and totally irritating. Acting in Lewis movies is very variable to say the least, but 'The Gruesome Twosome' has one of the most untalented casts I've ever seen. So, the verdict is only watch this if you are a Lewis obsessive, otherwise newcomers should avoid this one and go straight to 'Two Thousand Maniacs!' or 'Color Me Blood Red' which tie as his best two gore movies.

WOW! This is absolutely the weirdest movie ever made...and a fun time to watch! The Godfather of Gore, Herschell Gordon Lewis made this movie very quickly to be used as a double bill with the abysmal "Something Weird" which at the time was not doing well on it's own at the theaters. This was his first "gore" film after making the infamous "Blood Trilogy" with producer David Freidman. Even though this film was a "rushed" work, it still holds it's own with some of the most outrageous scenes ever filmed including the opening segment (a conversation between 2 mannequin heads complete with construction paper faces that seems to last an eternity)a strange "film within a film" segment at a drive-in movie theater and a beach scene that boasts what is probably the worst performance by a band ever recorded on film! No Herschell Gordon Lewis classic would be complete without the gore and this film is LOADED with it...you'll see girls being scalped, decapitations, livers torn from abdomens and eyes gouged out. The trailer for this film brags that it is "The wildest motion picture ever made" that is the understatement of the twentieth century!