Two Heads Are Better Than One

The Midnite Drive-In has often been the source for numerous "double-header" features over the years (as in two movies for the price of one).  I guess we would have to class today's presentation as a "quadruple header"...

 

 

There is a standard catch phrase often used in some circles that "two heads are better than one". Of course, in the standard use of the idiom, people usually mean that two people working together on the same goal usually have better success than just one person by his or her self. This handy little motto has been around for centuries.  A passage from the Bible is one of the earliest examples I found of this:

"Two heads are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor. If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up." (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10)

But this is referring to two separate bodies of people.   What happens if both those people are sharing the same body however?  There are examples of the concept when one body is occupied by two people in film. All of Me, a Steve Martin comedy had Martin's character, Roger Cobb, being co-occupied by the spirit of Lily Tomlin's Edwina Cutwater, to comedic effect as both tried to work together to make the co-habitation work. 

You could add some of those demonic possession movies to this list, but, really, those are a different kind of animal all together, because the evil spirit in question completely dominates the character and the real owner of the body has no input into the decisions. 

On the other hand, there are these two examples. Each one involves a fully functional head attached to a body (with the original head still intact). That Biblical bit about helping each other becomes decidedly problematic.  Especially when the two heads are diametrically opposed to each other in principles or thought.  

 

 

The Thing with Two Heads (1972): 

Dr. Max Kirschner (Ray Milland) is a brilliant doctor. Well, brilliance and demented go hand in hand in these kinds of movies, so he is also a bit off his rocker.  

As per the norm, Max has been doing some decidedly strange work in the operating room.  What he has done is grafted a second head onto a gorilla. (That's Rick Baker in that gorilla suit, and also the designer of much of the more exotic special effects in this feature.)

Max is elated with his success. Except the two-headed gorilla is not exactly emotionally stable.  It breaks out of it's cage and runs rampant down the city streets outside the hospital. Eventually the gorilla is caught in a supermarket. It turns out he wasn't a rampaging savage creature... he was just hungry. The ultimate plan for the gorilla was to let the new head become acclimated to the body and then remove the original head.  (You didn't think he was just trying to create a new hit exhibit at the local zoo, did you...?)

The reason why Max has been working so diligently at this experiment is that he is dying.  And like most of us, he doesn't want to die just yet.  Fortunately he is a brilliant doctor, with his own medical research facility and the funds to change his future.  Unfortunately he is rather unprincipled as to his methods. He has a subordinate seek out an acceptable body. Then, when he gets his "victim" the plan is to attach his head to the body, and of course, ultimately take it over.

This movie is classed as a "horror/comedy" so there are several things that are spliced in to the film to get to that "comedy".  For one thing, at the outset it is established that Max is a racist. He had recently hired a new doctor for his facility, apparently without an interview or even a working knowledge of his new hire.  Because when he finds out that Dr. Fred Williams (Don Marshall) is an African-American, he tells the new doctor that the contract that Fred signed is null and void. 

Fred insists that Max has to keep him on for the trial period otherwise there will be some serious legal issues, so Fred is assigned to a desk job to keep him out of the way.  Meantime, Max's subordinate is seeking that body.  An effort is made to convince an inmate on Death Row in prison to agree, and they manage to get Jack Moss (Rosey Grier) to accept.

But wait. Jack is a black man. Won't that be a situation that Max would reject outright? Unfortunately he has no say in the matter, because he is basically going in to a coma and is about to die. So the doctors under him decide they have to act right away in order to save him.  Of course, when Max wakes up he's not entirely pleased the operation was a success...

For that matter, Jack is not entirely happy with having another head in the game. The comedy part comes into play in full force after this (although whether it's actually funny is a matter of opinion.) Jack only agreed to this situation because he is innocent of the murder he was convicted and sentenced for, and having this cranky old geezer just doesn't help matters much. 

(And just as a side note: How the hell long has Jack been on Death Row anyway? In these days when appeals can keep a Death Row inmate on there almost until death actually takes his life before the government does, it seems that Jack has had a short time on it.  The movie indicates he is due to be executed forthwith, the reason he is granted a stay of execution.) 

There is a conflict when Jack takes control of his body and escapes the hospital.  He has the advantage, however, because most people who see him run away rather than try to help capture him. (That extra head just might come in handy after all...) At first they try to commandeer a car, conveniently the car owned by Fred (remember Fred?). But with police chasing him and this car being a less than acceptable example of a getaway car, they end up crashing. But not to worry.  Jack manages to get a hold of a dirt bike. 

And with that, a chase through a dirt bike track and an open field with Keystone Kops in cars chasing them, the movie takes a weird turn.  I didn't time it, but I bet that police chase takes up at least 20 or 25 minutes of the film. And since this was BEFORE The Blues Brothers, it may be a source that John Landis got his iconic chase scenes from in that classic film.  This movie had a much lower budget, however, so there are only about a dozen police cars. And apparently the budget was stretched thin because several times the car that crashes in a scene already shows signs of having been in a previous crash.  (There is one scene, even, where the car that crashes flips, and it's obvious there is no engine under the hood...)

Eventually Jack and Max and Fred escape the cops and make their way to Jack's girlfriend, Lila (Chelsea Brown). She is surprised to see Jack, and even more surprised to see his new addition, but she apparently takes it into stride, rather than running and screaming for the hills.  She does, however have a bit of curiosity about Jack's new situation because she delivers what is probably the best line in the movie...

"Is there anything else you've got two of?"

A valid question, if you ask me...

Well evil Max has plans to get rid of Jack's head, even if his body is not one that Max is happy with, but jack is not ready to go so gently into that good night.  Ultimately Jack wins out, but being that this is a good-natured comedy more than a horror film, Max is still alive, albeit in need of a new body.  The last scene features Jack, sole possessor of his body, traveling down the road with Lila and Fred, singing:

"Oh, happy day! Oh, happy day! When Jesus washed my sins away!" (REALLY!!! Would I lie?)

There is one big hole here, plot wise.  For one thing, Jack is still a convicted (and now escaped) felon. And on top of that, the issue of who actually committed the murder that Jack was on death row in the first place is never really resolved. So maybe that "Oh, happy day!" is a little bit premature. But then no one ever overestimated the coherency of these kinds of movies.  Maybe they were looking towards a sequel.

The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1971):

From the trailer: 

 "No woman is safe from his deadly embrace! No man is safe from his killer lust!" (And no audience member is safe from the devastating ennui...)  

The story here is that Bruce Dern plays a demented (there's a stretch...) scientist. Dern plays Dr. Roger Girard, a man who lives with his wife, Linda (Pat Priest) and his assistant, Max. 

 

Dr. Girard

Linda

Max (with Linda)

 

Why is he demented? Well, maybe it has something to do with the fact that he still holds a grudge over getting canned from his previous job. Or maybe it's because he has such a friendly relationship with Casey Kasem. But possibly it's just because he likes to, in his spare time, graft the head of one animal to another.  No reason, just because no one else is doing it...

Roger has a friend, a fellow doctor named Ken Anderson (Casey Kasem) who comes around to visit him. Ken is concerned because Linda has told him that Roger spends WAAAY too much time in his lab, to the detriment of neglecting his newlywed wife. But since Roger has much more interest in his secret scientific experiments, he doesn't really see the negative effect he is having on her.

 

Ken

 

Roger and his assistant, Max, are planning on the next phase of his experiments, that is to graft a head onto the body of a fully functioning body of another.  The ostensible reason is that they may be able to prolong the life of a valuable intellectual whose body is deteriorating.  It later comes out that Max has much more invested in the success of this experiment because he is suffering from a debilitating disease but wants to go on living.

When a really psychotic criminal, Manuel Cass (John Cole), escapes from a maximum security prison ("maximum security" apparently meaning the door is locked...), and ends up on Roger's estate, he is shot by Roger as he tries to do some bad things to Linda. 

Cass (with Girard)

 

Just prior to this he has killed Roger's estate caretaker.  The caretaker's son, Danny (John Bloom) is distraught.  Danny is also mentally disabled.

Danny (pre-op)

 

Max sees the opportunity to test Roger's head transplant theory, since Cass is now dead, and Danny can only be improved in mental capacity by the procedure. Psychotic brain of a criminal being considered a vast improvement on mental deficiency, take it as you will.  This is not Casablanca quality theater, you know.

As you might expect, Danny is not pleased with the change in situation, nor is he pleased with the fact that this psycho seems to have taken over every aspect of control of it's new body.  Danny can only look on in horror as Cass manipulates his new body and takes up his preferred method of dealing with life; killing and molesting people.

Danny (post-op)

 

The cops have surmised that Danny is a prime suspect, because apparently, by the footprints found at the scene of the crime, there can be only one person with that big a footprint. But when they try to find Danny to question him, they are told by Roger that Danny and his father left town a week before. Not entirely buying the story they keep looking, especially after bodies keep piling up that suggest the culprit is the same person. Although, by now, they are aware that Cass has escaped.

Eventually both Linda and Ken (remember Ken?) find out the truth and, with Roger and Max,  begin their own search for the monster Roger and max created.  And we find out that Max wants to capture him/it alive because he wants to use Danny's body for his own head transfer (so who is more demented... Roger or Max?)

You already know pretty much how this HAS to turn out. All of the bad people are killed in a cave in in an old mine, and Ken and Linda escape.  Of course, neither of them are going to reveal to the police what REALLY happened, just that Roger and Max and Danny were killed in the cave-in. (They don't even mention Cass, so I guess the escaped lunatic is officially still on the loose.)   

In summary, Harry and Michael Medved, in their book The Golden Turkey Awards, had a category "The Worst Two-Headed Transplant Movie". In it, these two movies competed with a third movie, a Japanese entry in the genre: The Manster: Half-Man, Half-Monster (not reviewed here). In their opinion, the winner of "the Worst" was The Thing with Two Heads.  Having not even seen the Japanese movie, I can't exactly make a completely knowledgeable decision, but if I were to make one just on these two movies I would have picked "The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant.

Well, folks, the one head I have is telling me it's time to head home.  And thankfully I won't have to compete with a second head.  Driving the Plymouth is a tough thing to do by myself.

Drive safely.

Quiggy