The Thing With Two Heads

(1972) **

Dr. Max Kirshner (Ray Milland- really) is a self-proclaimed "genius" transplant specialist. He is also incurably ill. The solution? Experiment with transplanting a head onto a body, wait about a month for the transplant to take, and remove the old head. He tries this on a gorilla with complete success (poor original gorilla!). Then he shares his secret experiments with his closest colleagues, and becomes comatose: now they have to choose a donor body for him. The problem is, the donor needs to be a person with an inoperable brain tumor or something similar, because the body donor's head will be eventually removed and the donor consciousness will die, while Dr. Max lives on. Solution? Use a convict on death row. New problems? Convict may be innocent, he is black (Rosey Grier), and Dr. Max is a bigot.

This odd little movie was found by husband in the horror section of a local video store, but it isn't really a horror movie, nor (surprisingly) a comedy. All the actors play it absolutely straight. The Thing with Two Heads plays more like a 70s made-for-TV drama for the majority of the movie, then devolves into Smoky and the Bandit for the last half hour (with funkier music), and the ending is relatively abrupt though satisfying. If it had stuck with the inital tone I may have awarded it 3 stars but I felt let down by the ending, like they ran out of ideas and budget at the same time. To be fair, this is the kind of bad movie I would happily see again.

I highly recommend the trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWHNA_j7h5A

OK, enough crap. Anything I watch tonight will be QUALITY.

Happy Halloween and very happy final day of Horrorthon!