Memorable, crazy movie

Fantastic!

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

In California, the renowned Dr. Maxwell Kirshner (Ray Milland) is a brilliant transplant surgeon and owner of the Kirshner Transplant Institute. He is dying and develops a technique to transplant his head in another body in a gorilla. Kirshner, who is racist, hires the prominent Dr. Fred Williams (Don Marshall) to help in his surgery but when he sees that the doctor is black, he unsuccessfully tries to call off the contract. He uses his friendship with the Governor expecting to use the body of a convicted in death row that could donate his body to his experiment instead of being executed. The strong and black inmate Jack Moss ('Rosey' Grier) accepts the offer expecting to get more thirty days to prove that he is innocent. However Dr. Philip Desmond (Roger Perry) immediately operates Kirshner and Jack, but he is not able to control Jack that escapes from Kirshner's house. Jack teams-up with his girlfriend Lila (Chelsea Brown) and Dr. Fred Williams, who is convinced of his innocence and decides to remove Kirshner's head. But how to find another compatible body for Dr. Kirshner?The Trash "The Thing with Two Heads" is a stupid, racist, cheesy but also very funny dark comedy. The politically incorrect plot is absurd but makes laugh a lot. It is impressive that Oscar winner Ray Milland ("The Lost Weekend") accepts such a silly role. My vote is four.Title (Brazil): "O Monstro de Duas Cabeças" ("The Monster with Two Heads")

*Spoiler/plot- The Thing with Two heads, 1972. A rich millionaire but racist man is dying. He hatches an elaborate scheme for transplanting his head onto another man's body to stay alive. The millionaire's health deteriorates rapidly, and doctors are forced to transplant his head onto the only available candidate; a large black man from the local prison's death row. The drama starts there.*Special Stars- Rosie Greer, Ray Milland, Chelsea Brown, Dick Whittington.*Theme- Black and white can live together.*Trivia/location/goofs- Location: Paramount Ranch. File footage alert- The make of the police car changes during the car/motorcycle chase. When it's hit from behind and the trunk won't close, it's a Ford. Later, the same car is a Dodge with its trunk open. Soon after, it turns back into a Ford. During the big police-car/motorcycle chase, in a POV shot from the motorcycle, the stunt driver (who looks nothing like any of the characters on the bike) is on the right side of the screen, with the camera shooting over his left shoulder.*Emotion- An unintentional comedic look at prejudice and racism in the decade of the 70's. This film is enjoyably fun to see these two men delivery some of the best sarcastic dialog in the context of the film's ridiculous plot. Great fun for people who know the historic context of the decade in the US.*Based on- Mary Shelley's novel. A mild satiric political statement film about racism of the 70's.

In a documentary I recently watched called "The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made", this exploitation curiosity is proudly ranked #3, but even though it's a generally dim-witted and inept production, I cannot possibly refer to it as one of the worst movies ever. It offers incredible amounts of fun, laughter, disbelief and astonishment and the film is unquestionably a delight for every cinema fanatic who's remotely into bizarre horror stuff. Veteran actor Ray Milland stars as the genius, but slightly power mad, greedy and discriminating scientist who managed to sew an extra head onto a gorilla's torso without killing any of them. So now, Dr. Maxwell Kirshner thinks he masters the entire transplantation business and intends to use the method on himself. It's understandable why Maxwell is in a hurry, seeing that an aggressive type of cancer is slowly rotting his entire body from the inside out. So, basically, he worked out the whole biggest breakthrough in the history of medical science only to save his own ass! The plan now is to recruit a convict on death row, transplant the Dr.'s head on his body and wait approximately 30 days for the head to adapt to its new host before removing the convict's original head. Tiny little problem, however, the only available prisoner on death row is black and the old chauvinist doctor is quite racist. The con, Jack Moss, is also innocent of the crime he's on death row for and intends to use the additional 30 days to prove this, regardless of the fact there's the cranky head of an old racist scientist breathing down his ear. "The Thing With Two Heads" is a clumsy mad scientist movie with heavy ambitions towards Blaxploitation cinema. Apart from the obvious thematic plot of a stereotypical black tough guy sharing the body with a stereotypical white racist, there's also the extremely groovy soundtrack. The sight of the two-headed person – I have no idea why they refer to him as "things" since he's clearly a person – is just plain laughable. The plot subsequently evolves into a strange type of action movie with Jack Moss escaping from the operating table to prove his innocence. There's a seemingly endless motorcycle race, with numerous police vehicles (fourteen to be exact) getting wrecked and loads of crazy stunt work to admire. It's quite fun and all, at least for a minute or three, but surely they could have come up with something better than a 20 minute chase? Especially with this film's original concept? Either way, in spite of all its shortcomings and missed potential, "The Thing with Two Heads" is an interesting cult product from the early 70's and definitely recommended to tolerant fans of the genre.

White racist's head transplanted on to black convict's shoulder - say no more. This is what happens when schlock filmmakers get their hands on Stanley Kramer-style 'social issue' film-making: absolute, fantastic chaos. For the first act, it almost fools you into thinking it's going to be a Good Movie in spite of itself - the racism theme is handled with a surprising degree of sensitivity while it lasts, and the mise en scene plays out the comedy/drama high wire act with a good deal of finesse in spite of the two headed gorilla suit. What the filmmakers are really doing though is banking points for later, because there's no dramatic balance to be had once Ray Milland plunks his chin on to Rosey Grier's shoulder - it's completely, gloriously absurd. "It" rides a dirt bike, negotiates for nooky with Rosey's skeptical GF, yells "Shut up!" more times than Duane Jones and Karl Hardman. The filmmakers milk this one incredible visual gag for every drop, which is a good thing because elsewhere they don't show much flair for comic timing - not one of the litany of wacka-wacka cop reaction shots elicits the smallest reaction. Oh and did I mention that the escape-car chase scene occupies the ENTIRE second act? That's some pretty serious chutzpah. And you gotta love how everyone goes out singing Mike Curb! So while as usual the crew is probably having more fun than the audience, in this case the crew is having LOTS of fun, and it does rub off.