Meet the Hollowheads

It's like a late-Snakefinger era Residents video that goes on forever because one little boy WON'T LET THEM STOP!! In our house we always follow it up with a Mongolian Death Worm quiche and Quisp pie. Most folks don't necessarily need the 151-proof white rum chaser, but we strongly suggest you just take your medicine and shut the heck up -- especially during all those extra juicy food preparation scenes. This is a great movie when it's served to your dinner guests without all those pre-conceived notions like Germanoid meal tickets getting in the way. Make sure you keep those internal visions of Jesus doin' the hustle in your head all updated and stuff and you'll survive the night just fine, which is more than you can say about Juliette Lewis' acting career. Does anybody else get her confused with Shayna Knight? So it's just me then. I thought so.

I must say I was laughing a lot and frightened a bit...but in a good-natured way...and most of all I was simply mesmerized by the brilliantly amusing storyline and wonderful special effects that used real full-sized movie sets and none of the cheap, too-obvious digital graphics used by all Sci Fi movie-makers of today.

This is a must-have Sci Fi movie for those who enjoy the eclectic, the bizarre and the esoteric worlds of anywhere else but earth. My best guess is that the Hollowheads live in a society on a distant planet that exists totally underground in a large population, a very large "city" with miles of tunnels, single-family homes, ultra modern conveniences using pipes that bring in food and every ingredient needed for life's daily needs.

Why does an entire civilization live beneath their planet's surface? Who knows? It is never explained; but then an explanation is never necessary either. The Hollowhead underground world is very well conceived and becomes as reasonable to the movie watcher, as does our own reality here on the surface of the earth appear normal to us.

Meet the Hollowheads with sexy Juliette Lewis as daughter Cindy Hollowhead, and John Glover and Nancy Mette as Mr. and Mrs. Hollowhead...as normal as any U.S. television family out of the 1950's...help to bring off this caricature of life as we thought we knew it, with good-natured humor, a zesty cast of fascinating characters and an alien lifestyle as crazy and fun as any which has ever been brought to film.

My suggestion: This is a must-have video for you and your family.

Enjoy!

Imagine a bizarre fusion of Terry Gilliam's Brazil and TV sitcom I love Lucy. Now add a dash of Cronenbergesque body-shock horror and a soupçon of sixties sci-fi idealism. The result might look something like Meet The Hollowheads, the only directorial effort (to date) from movie make-up maestro Tom Burman. And then again it might not.

Set in a strange world where all of life's necessities are supplied (and disposed of) via tubes, where strange creatures are used both as food and household tools, and where clean living wholesome folk are driven to violence, Meet the Hollowheads is definitely a film that needs to be seen to be believed.

Henry Hollowhead (John Glover), loving husband and father of three, is United Umbilical's top meter reader. Hoping for a promotion, he brings home his new boss, Mr. Crabneck, to meet his family and stay for dinner. But Mr. Crabneck proves to be a less than perfect house-guest, insulting Henry's youngest son, and leching after both Henry's tasty wife and his jail-bait daughter (played by a young Juliette Lewis). Soon enough the situation turns ugly and the Hollowheads are forced to fight back.

Extremely imaginative and downright freaky in places, this movie is certainly not going to be to everyone's taste, but those with a taste for the unusual and absurd should really give this one a try, if only to witness the sight of Juliette Lewis singing and dancing whilst her (real-life) brother plays a 'half-mutant-chicken/half-trombone' musical instrument.

And if that isn't enough to tempt you, the film also contains these treats: Ms. Lewis trying on a range of garish figure-hugging dresses, Ms Lewis feeding her grandpa green goop though a tube while he gropes her, Near Dark's Joshua Miller playing 'Splatspray' with huge lice, Bobcat Goldthwait (credited as Jack Cheese) talking normally, and Anne 'Throw Momma From The Train' Ramsey (in her final role) requiring subtitles due to her throat cancer.

Quite insane and quite possibly brilliant (but don't quote me on that), Meet The Hollowheads is well worth checking out if you love obscure cinematic oddities.

This is literally what title is, a movie about meeting the Hollowheads in what I think the future world where everything is supplied like how Gas is. Things go south when the patriarchs' egoistic boss tries to force his way into the family.

Talk about Style over Substance.

This looks so crafty and zanily plays it up. Everything is stylized with 50's Modernism but god does that story felt flat.

It just never really peaks. It actually feels like you are watching a tv pilot where everything feels like there is something more out there. The whole plot seems like a setup for something big in the future. It was such a waste of great style.

Not my kind of film.

This strange little gem combines the biomorphic machinery of Giger with the surreal dadaism of Terry Gilliam and the sugary family life of "Leave it To Beaver". The Hollowheads live in a future world after overpopulation and economic collapse has forced everyone to live in inside giant tubes over vast factories, where pre-processed food is pumped in through pipes, and normal animals and plants have disappeared, replaced by selectively bred genetically-engineered mutants. Biomorphic machines are used as medical equipment, food sources, and even musical instruments. Yet the family lives in a 50's style nuclear family with touches of 80's extravagance (gotta love the bubble dress!). The household machinery and factory equipment is very reminiscent of the industrial scenes in Terry Gilliam's "Brazil". The Hollowhead family have striven to maintain civilization, while the managers of the ruling factory, United Umbilical (with a Staley-eqsue swastika-like logo), ruthlessly manages its employees with animalistic lust. "Meet the Hollowheads" is one of those films you will recognize more and more as its predictions start coming true.