The Thing With Two Heads (1972)

He transplanted a WHITE BIGOT'S HEAD on a SOUL BROTHER'S BODY!

The Thing With Two Heads (1972)
Directed by Lee Frost
Written by Lee Frost and West Bishop (story), Lee Frost & Wes Bishop and James Gordon White

Meet Ray Milland, a cranky millionaire. He’s confined to a wheelchair, and is presumably cranky because he lives in the single most handicapped inaccessible mansion on the planet. Ray’s got to be manhandled up the front stoop by his chauffeur and his wizened houseboy; the foyer offers a dealer’s choice of staircases going up, while his hideous experiments are inconveniently located down a rickety flight of basement steps.  I don’t like to tell people their business, but if I were a mad scientist with limited mobility I’d buy a rambler in the suburbs and ride from room to room on a Rascal¹.

Anyway, like a lot of geezers with too much time on their hands, Ray has a hobby, and down in the basement where people keep their model trains and their foosball tables, he’s got one of those Black and Decker workbenches with the special primate head-grafting attachment. And he’s not bad, since he’s managed to sew a Don Post ape mask onto the shoulder of a Rick Baker gorilla suit, while Rick Baker is still inside it.

By day Ray runs a transplant clinic on Sunset Boulevard where the wealthy come for liver upgrades. But since he’s confined to a wheelchair, the operations are actually performed by Roger Perry. You know who I mean—he was in that episode of Star Trek where they accidentally go back to 1967? No, not the one with Terri Garr and the guy with the cat, the other one; he played the Air Force pilot. That guy. Except here he’s sporting a poufy, yet contour bouffant which makes me suspect that before California passed a motorcycle helmet law in the 80s, they passed a hair helmet law in the 70s.

 

Back in Ray’s basement, the Houseboy attempts to jab a hypodermic needle in the two-headed gorilla’s ass, presumably so Ray can graft two or three more butt cheeks onto him. But the ape escapes, and goes on the Parade of Homes! Then he lopes around the aisles of a corner market shopping for Foster Grants and Screaming Yellow Zonkers.

Now things take a wacky turn as Houseboy and another lab-coated flunky burst into the market with a tranquilizer rifle, but don’t shoot because the gorilla’s dual heads are performing synchronized banana eating and it’s just so cute.

Now things take a socially relevant turn as Ray greets his new surgeon at the transplant clinic, but discovers that the producers have secretly switched his regular white doctor with Don Marshall, the black guy from Land of the Giants. Let’s watch…

Well, in addition to his skills as an ape head multiplier, it turns out Ray is also no slouch in the racist dickhead department.  Dr. That Guy doesn’t stand up to Ray, but you can tell he’s disappointed, because his pneumatic hair helmet loses an alarming amount of P.S.I.

Later, before he even gets a chance to pump it back up again, he gets called out to Ray’s M.C. Escher mansion of endless staircases and shown the hydra ape. Ray explains that he’s only got three weeks to live, but he’s such an accomplished surgeon, such a brilliant researcher, and such a tireless racist, that his brain must survive! Dr. That Guy agrees to find a donor body, and we cut to the Transplant Clinic, where a phone bank of sexy nurses are cold-calling cadavers.

Sadly, there are no takers (hopefully the nurses get a base salary and aren’t just working on commission). Cut to Death Row, where Rosey Greer is about to die in the electric chair. The executioner, a groovy black dude with a Super Fly mustache, says to Rosey, “More power to you,” and saunters over to the switch, while Rosey looks off with an expression that seems to say, “Isn’t that kind of an insensitive thing to say given the circumstances?”

But Rosey claims he’s innocent, and his lawyer and girlfriend are close to proving it, so he tells the warden (who looks like a live action version of the mascot from Monopoly) that he’d like to donate his body to science. Cut to Ray’s non-OSHA compliant mansion, where Dr. That Guy takes delivery of the huge black dude who will serve as his bigot boss’s host body, and tries really super hard not to laugh.

They scrub the basement with germicidal solution and shave Rosey’s back, and we’re off to make fake medical history!  The surgery scene is surprisingly good, with articulated prop heads that look quite realistic—the mouths move faintly, the eyes flutter—including the hair, which actually looks more real than Ray’s toupee.

Ray wakes up and is displeased to find himself sharing a body with a soul brother (“Is this some kind of a joke?”), while Rosey is unhappy to find himself sharing a liver with the guy from Lost Weekend. They get in a fight and naturally the authorities chloroform the black guy.

The movie tries to come up with authentic medical problems to overcome (the immunosuppressive drugs given to the patients to combat tissue rejection allow for opportunistic viral infections like pneumonia) and it sounds quite genuine, but it only leads Dr. That Guy to say things like, “Cut down the sedative dosage to the black head,” which makes it seem like the worst post-operative problem they’re dealing with is acne.

Disaster strikes when Rosey is awakened by Ray’s snoring head, and foils the nurse’s efforts to sedate him, jabbing her with the needle instead, because the masterminds who successfully transplanted a human head couldn’t figure out how restraints worked. Anyway, Rosey staggers to his feet, while Ray’s head continues snoring.  (You know what? Forget everything I’ve said up till now. Unlike it’s sister film, The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant, this movie is occasionally funny on purpose.)

Rosey knocks out a cop and steals his gun, then appoints the Black Doctor as his chauffeur. (Hey, remember back around a paragraph or so ago, when I said I kind of liked this film? Well, I just sat through a 20-minute chase scene, including stock footage of some motocross event somewhere, so now I hate it again.)

Wait…No…A biker sees two black guys in suits running in his general direction and panics, abandoning his motorcycle and sprinting away on foot, which isn’t how the Hells Angels I grew up around would have reacted (I had rather a picaresque youth). Then Rosey Greer, Black Doctor, and Wigstand Milland are riding over hill and dale with a cluster of dirt bikes like it’s You’re a Good Sport, Charlie Brown, so now I sort of love it again. God, I’m fickle.

Despite the fact that their dirt bike is being ridden by two and a half men, the fugitives win the race, but due to the police cars in hot pursuit, they don’t stop to pick up their loving cup and giant check.

Our gang putters over the crest of a hill, followed by ten police cars. Things look bad, but fortunately, police cars are like lemmings and are compelled follow each other off the edge of cliffs. So that thins the blue line a bit. By the end of this sequence, the overloaded motorcycle with the two recovering surgery patients is fine, but the entire Bakersfield police force looks like those Smash Up Derby cars by Kenner.

The fugitives reach the house of Rosey’s girlfriend, who’s astonished but philosophical, gazing at the old white head stitched to his shoulder and marveling, “You get into more shit…”

Rosey takes a nap, and Wigstand takes the opportunity to seize control of their body by slowly and excruciatingly doing that “here’s the church, here’s the steeple” thing.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t last, and he can’t even summon the power to prevent Rosey from feeding them collard greens. (“What’s for dessert?” the racist carbuncle sneers, “Watermelon?”) Unsurprisingly, everybody agrees they should cut Ray off and just pretend he was a melanoma. Or a foreskin.

Rosey and Black Doctor break into a medical supply warehouse to steal drugs for the surgery, but Wigstand seizes control again. He coldcocks the Land of the Giants guy, then punches Rosey in the face and knocks him out, and decides to go home and amputate Rosey’s head himself.

Black Doctor and Girlfriend arrive just in time to stop Ray from cutting off one of his two available heads, then Black Doctor calls Dr. That Guy and tells him to hurry over to Ray’s house if he wants to catch the Night Gallery-style twist ending. He arrives to find Ray’s severed head lying on a tray, demanding someone go out and get him another body just in case anybody’s interested in a sequel. Meanwhile, the black people drive off, accompanied by the toe-tappin’ gospel hymn, “Oh Happy Day.”

The end.

Race relations have certainly changed a lot since 1972, but in some ways they’ve remained eerily the same. For instance, while I doubt today’s racists would appreciate the black characters getting a happy ending, I suspect they identify with their plight; except in their nightmare scenario, Rush Limbaugh is Rosey Greer, and Obama is the parasitic black head on his shoulder, trying to take control of white America, or at least moderate its intake of oxycontin, because unlike Rush, Obama has shit to do and can’t spend all day amped up and babbling nonsense.

So there’s your choice: black head or crack head.

1. Ask Me About My Grandchildren