The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1971)

Make no mistake: "The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant" is a clunky, stupid, silly exploitation feature. But if you're into that kind of thing, the movie *does* deliver the goods - and the laughs. The actors - well, most of them - play it all incredibly straight. The special effects are, unsurprisingly, very crude. It all comes complete with one of those dopey songs that were so common to low budget fare of the 1970s. It hits the ground running with a quickly paced opening credits sequence, and builds to a hilariously unconvincing showdown in an old tunnel.Leading actor Bruce Dern has certainly done more prestigious films, but this movie does give him a typically nutty role. Roger is a former doctor now conducting absurd experiments. Obviously he believes that two heads are better than one, and has been grafting a second head to a number of test animals. When he guns down maniacal rapist / killer Cass (Albert Cole), his demented associate Max (Berry Kroeger) gets the bright idea to put Cass's noggin on the body of the hulking but childlike Danny (seven foot four inch John Bloom), the son of Rogers' caretaker Andrew (TV horror host Larry "Seymour" Vincent). Mayhem ensues.Adding to the fun factor is the presence of sexy Pat Priest of 'The Munsters' fame, playing Rogers' victimized wife Linda, and none other than Casey Kasem as his concerned best friend Ken. (Kasem also provides the voice of the radio announcer.) Throughout the course of this epic, Linda gets bound and gagged, caged, and carried away by the rampaging monster. Bloom is endearing, and Cole is an absolute gas (there's nothing subtle about *his* leering performance). If nothing else, "The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant" can take pride in the use of that wonderful phrase "Jekyll and Hyde joy juice".Amusingly enough, A.I.P. recycled the same basic idea just one year later with "The Thing with Two Heads", starring Ray Milland and Rosey Grier.Five out of 10.

*Spoiler/plot- The Incredible Two Headed Transplant, 1971. Dr. Roger Girard is a rich scientist conducting experiments on head transplantation. His house's caretaker has a son, Danny, (although fully grown) has the mind of child. One day an escaped psycho-killer invades Girard's home. The killer murders the caretaker before being gunned down himself. With the killer slowly dying and with Danny deeply unsettled by his father's death; Dr. Girard decides to transplant the killer's head onto Danny's giant body. (Why?) Of course, things go horribly wrong and the two-headed creature escapes to terrorize the local community. *Special Stars- Bruce Dern, Casey Kasem, Albert Cole.*Theme- Large medical decisions have to be made by people with strong ethics or life long problems occur.*Trivia/location/goofs- Filmed in the South.*Emotion- A preposterous film plot with a simplistic binary theme. This film was not good. A similar and better film was made on the same premise, 'The Thing with Two Heads'. Forget this one. *Based on- Mary Shelley's book and medical myths.

This is not an easy one to watch, long spaces of dialog, some poor acting and not enough good campy acting, etc. I can't say I hated the movie, I did laugh at a lot of parts, but ultimately it was nothing memorable. Bruce Dern looks stoned in most his scenes and sometimes cannot be understood because he's mumbling. Casey Kasem has a surprising amount of work to do in this film compared to other films I've seen him in like "Angels Unchained". Surprisingly, he's not that bad. Unfortunately it's one of the few surprises in the film.The plot is very stale 1930s era mad scientist hokum. It's pretty sad when you have to say that "The Thing with Two Heads" is a relatively creative movie, but it's true when compared to this one. The plot is identical with "Donovan's Brain" and any number of generic mad scientist plots. Dern is a guy who has developed a technique for grafting one animal's head on another animal. DJ Kasem plays a doctor (although, oddly enough, whenever you hear a DJ on the radio in the film Kasem provides the voice for the DJ as well) who is an old college friend of Dern's, and Dern shows him his laboratory set-up with all its two headed rodents, monkeys, foxes, and rabbits, declaring his intention to soon use it on humans. Kasem seems oddly unalarmed, simply exchanging pleasantries with the wifey and Dern and promising to come up and visit at a later point in the film. The human experiment subject ends up being a brain damaged worker on Dern's ranch, whose father has just been killed by a homicidal rapist. Neither Dern nor his assistant (Berry Kroeger, who had a very suitable face kind of reminiscent of Peter Lorre's) seems to think about the fact that if they put a psychotic head on another person's body, they will simply create a psychotic monster. Didn't they ever watch "Frankenstein"? Geez! BAD BRAINS! Speaking of the psycho killer, Al Cole who I believe played him has to be one of the worst actors I've seen in a relatively "big" B movie like this. If the movie ever had any chance of working as a scary movie, Mr. Cole's unbelievably over the top performance would have ruined that. His way of communicating his lust is to literally lick his lips and bulge his eyes out. It's an embarrassing performance that could have been fixed sooner as soon as the first rushes came in, but the director either wasn't skilled enough or didn't care enough to fix the problem.This film could have benefited somewhat from having its tongue a bit more in cheek. Everyone seems very serious, which would be fine if it wasn't such a tired plot and a standard script, standard direction, etc. There's really nothing scary about the monster anyway, the only people he kills are some bikers who nobody cares about in the first place and a couple schmoozing teenagers. In a film where the horror fails and there is no camp, you have basically a wasteland which would bore 99.9% of film viewers. The only laughs here are un-intentional and they are few and far between. There isn't a lot of gore or sex exploitation either, at least not in the print I saw which was actually an archival print. So not much to recommend here. Rent the one with Rosey Grier and Ray Milland instead, unless you're a big fan of Casey Kasem or Bruce Dern and you want a few cheap laughs sprinkled through an awful film.

I actually saw this movie by accident. I thought it was the cult movie THE THING WITH TWO HEADS in which a white bigot gets his head attached to a black mans body and the proceed to dis and beat the hell out of eachother...while attached. Sadly INCREDIBLE 2-HEADED TRANSPLANT is nowhere near as entertaining...even on a so-bad-it good level. its just bad. very very bad. this movie was made in 1971, but it seems like it was made much earlier than that when you consider that A CLOCKWORK ORANGE was also made in 1971 and thats light years better than this piece o' crap. This movie stars Bruce Dern as a deranged scientist, Marilyn Munster (ha ha) as his wife and Casey kasem as his worried friend. This cast screams "CULT CLASSIC", but sadly it never pans out. Huge dumb farm boy Danny gets the head of an escaped mental patient gradted onto his huge lumbering body. of course the body wants to murder...and all Dannys head can do is shake "no" and look worried. The psycho head is a truly loathsome person....you wish danny would somehow commit suicide killin them both. i wouldnt recommend this movie to ANYONE. Not even if Mystery Science Theatre has a version.Theres no saving this repellant junk-fest. No stars.