Episode 714: The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1971)

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A massive monster menaces the world, threatening the most intimate terror a woman ever felt because of an experimenter with life. The incredible two headed transplants.

Who are you?

I'm your brother?

You and I are now one dummy?

Get the concert?

What a young couple were killed up there in the loop last night.

A couple of kids plain they uh saw a giant with two heads to.

Dogs pick.

No woman is safe from his deadly embrace. No man is safe from his killer lust.

Welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White. Joining me once again is Ms.

Agatha luz Hi, Thank you for having me back.

Also back in the booth is mister tim Las.

Oh pardon me, I'm just enjoying some jecky and high joy juice.

We wrap up October twenty twenty four, as well as one of our three Patreon donor months, with one from James Brummel, The Incredible two Headed Transplant. That's not the one with Rosie Greer, nor is it the one from Japan. It's the two Headed movie with Bruce Dern as a mad scientist who combines the body and brain of a man child who only knows what he reads in the New York Post with the head of a psychotic killer.

Sir?

I'll admit actually watching it for this was the first time. It's one of those ones, and I will confess when we were going to do this, I got confused and thought it was the thing with two heads that we were doing. So I was like, oh, oh, it's the other one with Bruce Dern. So I had been curious to see it. I've seen a lot of clips from like it came from Hollywood, and read about it in the Golden Turkey Awards, so I was curious and it's

And how about yourself.

I'm certain I saw this on MST three K at some point in my decade long history of watching it, but this was the first time I think I'd paid full attention to the movie as a whole, you know, the whole way through. And I was very interested in some of the editing techniques out of really out of left field for a movie like this, But beyond that, it was just it was a little dry for me. I wanted more humor or more action. It was just I felt empty when it was over.

Yeah, the editing techniques really grab you right from the get go and don't let go. They really reminded me a lot of easy Rider with that kind of flashing forward between what you're watching now, and then it's very odd later on when they have flashed backs to a childhood trauma and I'm just like, wait, are we going forward? No, No, we're going back in time. This was the first time

He also seems to be pretty easily influenced, like Maxil constantly be like, we have to keep him alive. You're like, oh, yeah, yeah, you're right. And when it comes to the big you know, the operation itself, maxis the one is like, we've got two perfect specimens. We should do it, we should do this horrible evil thing. And He's just like, yeah, right, prem for surgery. Fun.

But there is something I kind of love about having a mad scientist lab in the basement of a suburban dwelling because where would you not expect it to be? Right there in the middle of kind of I'm assuming they're more well to do given that they have servants, so right there was I'm not imagining a servant, right.

Well, I mean you have Danny and his father being kind of the caretaker and Dartness, so right there.

Yeah.

So it's it's kind of like danger could be anywhere, it's even in the suburbs.

It also brought to mind for me like the Delambre family from The Fly that you know, you have this beautiful Bucolic nice house and the wife and kid, and then dad can go downstairs, close this big metal door locket and do all sorts of unseemly bizarre stuff that ends up with heads where they don't belong.

This also fit in for me with the whole mind transfer thing. There's a great movie called Change of Mind. Well it's not great. There's a movie called Change of Mind where it is a and this we'll talk a little bit more about this when we talk about the

Lyne?

You know, that's one of the best ones that are in there. But yeah, this one really had gone under the radar for me, except I definitely had seen that image of John Bloom as Danny the Manchild character with is it Albert Cole? Is it casts that's on his shoulder? Albert Cole, who just, man, oh man, he loves being evil. He has the best time being evil. And there's so many times where you cut to him and he's just like moving his eyes back and forth and gnashing his teeth.

And he's so randomly evil too. He's just like, I'm just going to run over here and grab a woman because I can, and now I'm going to run in the opposite direction back to my car and drive off. And it's just like this this wacky, gleeful murder spree. He just isn't going to pull back from it, and the actor just goes with it. I was impressed by that level of acting. Honestly, he just dug into it.

Whenever we get a close with him, all I can think was like, well, Dwight Fry would look at this and go, hm, maybe you should pull back a little bit. Yes, right.

He kind of reminded me of John Aston a little bit, and you know, just I don't know the shape of his face or something, and he's got that little mustache. I mean, he's not Gomez or anything, but he's getting close. And yeah, we start off with him having murdered a woman's husband and has her hostage, and there's we get to see the phone is off the wall and you hear the voice on the other end, and you're just like, wow,

He was holding upside down.

Yes, yes, he didn't want to accidentally murder that on then and then he takes a frickin' header out of a window to avoid being captured. But luckily there's two cops right outside.

I got to say the coppers, these are like the calmest cops I've ever seen chasing down a serial killer. The two guys like keV Steady, why don't you put that down? And when he jumps out, there's that one walking up with a smile, just like, Hi, I got you, okay.

I love it. He will stay there until his sanity has been restored. We get to quickly meet the manchild who I mentioned before and kept confusing me because his name is John Blum. I kept thinking of Joe Bob Briggs, but no, very different person Danny and his I guess it's his caretaker, or is it his dad. This cast guy, I think it's his dad.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be his dad, because that's what the sheriff says at one point.

Yeah, which really starts to set up this whole father relationship that we have and that we'll talk about as we go along. But yeah, it's interesting too that is played by Albert Cole, and I found a nice article about him where he was actually a horror host, so it's kind of interesting seeing him show up in this. And then it's actually his son who plays the young version of Danny when we see that flash back as opposed to a flash forward or flash cut that we get.

Oh see, I thought it was the guy who plays Danny's father who was the horror host.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying, Albert Cole, Right, No, no, Larry Vincent. Oh oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry Larry Vincent as Andrew. My bad. I'm sorry I was mixing up the killer and the guy. I'm so sorry.

I have to have like a list of the names most of the time to be able to keep him straight.

Yeah, well it is, but it is coal it is, so I guess it's the killer's son. Yeah, because this Leslie Cole is young Danny. So the killer's son.

What? Oh?

Interesting, Okay, I didn't not catch that. All of these very exotic names like Ken and Danny and Linda, it's stuff for me to keep them straight.

In terms of Leslie playing the young Danny, I'm not sure if it was just a case of he was just on set and they're like, hey, he looks enough like Bloom, let's get him in here and play the part, or if that was some kind of weird, kind of subconscious idea they had about this future association he's gonna have with this killer.

I imagine he was just on set, Yes, but he.

Looks enough like Boom, and I gotta say, looking at Bloom whenever he's walking around, my god, that guy is just huge. I started to wonder if they were patting up his shoulders, because his shoulders had this weird roundness to them. But he's tall enough that I'm not sure. Maybe that's just how he was built.

But I would imagine I have no evidence for this, but I would imagine they built up the shoulders a little bit so that it wouldn't be so obvious that the other actor was on his shoulder.

And I hadn't realized I had seen him before in a few things. We saw Dracula versus Frankenstein, and that he was in Star Trek six. He's the first alien, the kind of accost Kirk and McCoy when they're on the penal colony, well, it's like their obedience to the brotherhood, and then Emmon shows up and helps them, and he's the creepy chef from The Great Outdoors when John Canny's doing the old ninety sixer. Oh god, the big smile thing.

Yeah, that's like the only part of that movie I remember is him trying this stuff down that steak and then he's got all the gristle and stuff. It's like, no, you gotta finish it all. Oh god.

I also saw him credited for Harry and the Henderson's as Feet, and I'm like, was he like Kevin Peter Hol's foot double or something right? Or is there a character named Feet that I can remember? I could not find out, but I was really curious because I love that movie.

Yeah, he is huge, and I think he actually gets a really good performance here, especially when it comes to after he gets the surgery and he's got Kass on his shoulder, and you can see the hesitancy when he's going after the pat Priest's character at one point and you see this look on his face like no, no, no, I don't want to do even though he's reaching out his arms and going for and I just love that whole like he's not strong enough mentally to fend off Cass and his power over him.

The first time he sees her after the operation, when she is in the lab and he has this smile like, oh it's a friendly face. Oh help me, and then you see that Cass is just like, yes, I'm going to have this woman. Seeing those two contrasting smiles is really creepy. That was actually a really great moment.

Yeah, there are some really good things in here. I love Casey Casem when he shows up. Always love seeing Casey Casem. I love that they were smart enough to use him as a radio voice for all of the police updates, which was good. Kind of throws on a little bit different of a voice. It's not the top forty Casey Casem. It's the much more serious version, the one who gets the goddamn death dedications. That's the one that has come into play when it comes to the updates from the cops.

That's the thing I was waiting for, you know, take me out of an upbeat temple for a dedication to a dead monkey. I cannot think of Casey Kasem, not think of that audio clip. I did notice that when he gets dramatic in this, he whispers.

Yes, We've got to destroy it Roger.

It's like when he first shows up again after you know, a month, and it's like he's on vacation. I'm like, did Casey have larynge? I just want he filmed this scene because his voice is very gravelly for just one scene. I do wonder, though I don't know what is what. The Ken character does not seem to like Danny. Like there's that scene when Danny and Andrew are pulling the stump out and he's watching with this kind of skeptical hmm.

Would be a much better partner to Linda than Roger is, because, like I said, Bruce den is just obsessed with creating two headed creatures. And that's really the crux of this movie is this whole domestic relationship between Roger and Linda, between Bruce Stern and Pat Priest, and that he is ignoring her, and he is putting all of his work before the relationship with her. And we've got this whole thing of her waiting for him for dinner and you know,

I also feel like they were serving him very particular fan base where it's like, Okay, let's tie he up, let's throw in a cage, let's talk. Oh god, yes, there's you can really feel the exploitation roots of that movie in any scene with her being tied up or or locked away somewhere or gagged. Yeah, there's a lot of that.

It felt like an Irving Claw film.

Yeah, ken Is definitely has a thing for Linda and would be a better partner. But you see even Danny he's kind of is better and that he's attentive, like when she's guarding, he comes over, he wants to help out the when everything goes wrong, he's coming back with a big thing of flowers to give to her. I mean he's thoughtful in the way that Roger is absolutely not.

One hundred percent. Yeah, he's really kind of a.

Shit, Yes he really is.

And yeah, we should talk about Max, Who's It's very interesting Barry Kroger is Max. He shown so many times before he gets a name, and I'm just like, who the hell is this guy? And the way that they do these flash cuts, they were like cutting to him. I'm like, who is this guy? Where's he at? Even and then finally I'm like, oh, he's in the lab.

Yeah, he also reminded me he's like the sinister version of the really cute hunchbacked assistant from House of Dracula, who's like helping out, just waiting for the research to get there so she can be cured. Except she's really sweet and nice, and this guy is just sinister and evil as hell, right down to the gloves. I kept thinking of like rot Winging from Metropolis or Doctor Strangelove for a while there. When it comes to Mad Science, if you have a glove on, you're not a good person.

Which actually brings up something really interesting and I'd love to dig more into. But I'm coming up against a brick walls. I'm hoping maybe one of you will have more to go with it. But the relationships between Roger and Max set up against the relationship of Roger and Linda is really interesting because he seems to care so much more about what Max thinks, and he doesn't care

I did notice a couple of key moments where we see Max, you know, when Linda comes up or Linda's in the scene, and he's just doing that kind of scowl of just like, oh no, I don't want her around, which brought to mind like Reanimator and Jeffrey Comb's like, oh, there's a woman involved. They'll never be able to get my experiments done with if Barbara Crampton's around, get her

Yeah, I can totally see Max being a mentor to him at some point, and yeah, teaching him these techniques that were maybe you know, not approved by the board, not approved by the medical community, and that's what eventually gets Max or gets Roger kicked out, or maybe even got Max kicked out originally, and then Roger soon follows.

It's funny you bring that up, because I started noticing a lot of parallels with Frankenstein, specifically the universal monster ones that, like you said, you have Elizabeth and those who's like the ignored fiance, and you have Linda Hear, the ignored wife, and then you have Max who seems to be a fusion of both Fritz the lab assistant, but also doctor Pretorius, the one who's so.

Doctor Pretorious, especially the gayness of doctor Pretorius.

And leading him down this terrible path. You've got the Lynch Mob. You've got Ken, who's sort of like a Victor Morritz character from the original one, the one who's going to show up and at least it's assumed in the first movie take care of Elizabeth once Henry's out of the way. And Ken's also sort of doctor Baldman character, the Edward van Sloane, other doctor who's a colleague who's more rational, is like, you've got to stop this stuff. Lots of weird little parallels like that.

Well, and then of course the end, which I know we'll get to eventually, but yeah, that end is so Frankenstein. I think I even wrote that in my notes with this whole, like you know, and it's more right of Frankenstein. It's almost we belong dead, and like literally we belong dead when it comes to that.

And yet I kept thinking, is Danny gonna have a moment where he finally asserts control and stops some Moor, saves Linden, but he doesn't he doesn't at all.

Danny has the worst story. I feel so bad for this character. What happens before the movie starts, of course, how he loses oxygen to his brain and he isn't the same person, but he's still attracted to this place of trauma, which, by the way, it's a cave system, so it's it's the womb.

I was also thinking sort of the dark subconscious too, so it's gotten multiple metaphorical ideas.

He's deeply attracted to this cave's because it was a place of trauma and still is a place of trauma. Then he he has this horrific surgery happened to him. He's subjected to seeing his own body commit murders and rapes and assaults, and then he dies where he would have died if they'd left him in the cave system years ago. So he is the worst, most tragic story of this whole movie. I feel for him so much.

In that last shot where we see he's conscious as the cave that's happening all around him, it's just, oh, it's awful. Yeah. I also not sort of a parallel between Danny Manny as I kind of call him and Roger and Max that. I mean, you have in Roger and Max's case, Max is like this, this malign influence is kind of like we should do this, we should do this, And Roger doesn't seem to have the stones to be like, no, I'm not doing that. He's immediately like, yeah,

Any of it.

Okay, so you kind of just cracked it open that there are two two headed monsters.

Yeah, there you go. Exactly.

Max might as well have be that, you know, he's the devil on the shoulder, just like how Manny is that or cast is that devil on Danny's shoulder. Yeah, I love that. I think that's fantastic.

And how many times visually Max and Roger just paired together, whether they're you know, with their guns hunting in the mountains or in the lab, they're always in sony scenes together.

There's definitely a lot more than just like oh, this, you know, cheap exploitation film, and it is cheap, and there's great like gore effects and things like that. As soon as the movie starts, I'm like, oh, I'm in for something here. And then the score, Oh my god, the score drives me freaking crazy because it is all over the place and some of the jazz flute that they have going on during these scenes, I'm just like,

Light symbol taps for suspense when like, you know, Manny is sneaking into the house, things like that, or there's one success you have notes that keeps remind me of the Ifukube score from Godzilla. That bomb boom boom boom after Godzilla's rampage that we hear a couple of times too. I will say the music when he wakes up in the lab for the first time, he's actually creepy. I actually thought that was a really good little piece of music. There are points where I'm like, is this diegetic music?

I mean, it sounds like when they come to the bikers after Danny, the two headed Danny escapes, you know, thanks to his his friend on his shoulder there, and they go out and they find these bikers. I mean, first they find the smoochers, they find all the people that are out there and on Lover's lane, and the reaction from the one couple that isn't being killed is just kind of like, huh, what's going on over there?

Right down to the deputy having that voice. Oh you sure?

Oh my god? I mean, is that adr because it sounds like later on in the movie it's his real voice, but those for a few times he's on screen. The guy's on riff tracks described it as being sounding like a cartoon bear. I was like, yeah, yeah, I can definitely hear that.

Yeah, And then then the last scene it sounds like we were hearing the actor's voice and he's doing that voice. So I don't know if he just gave a little extra juice in looping or what. Because the sheriff in that scene, first scene where we first meet them too.

Yeah, I mean they almost always are in these films. It's very rare that you find competent police force, especially when there's a monster who's terrorizing the countryside.

Or as they point out on riff tracks, the sheriff meets this doctor out of nowhere who you point out has something important to tell him, but never actually does tell him, and he immediately it's like, come along on the murder investigation.

Yeah, you could be of use. You're a doctor. That means you can do forensics right of course.

Which amount to she's dead and she's been beating up a lot a lot of bones broken, good job, But why.

Did you stop by? What did you want to tell me?

Or then there's this cave in and nobody seems to be concerned about, well, should we try to excavate and get them out of there the way we did? Danny back in the day, maybe some of them could still be alive. But no, no, just walk away, good please work, just put a plaque on it. Oh and by the way, Danny did it. Danny did it all. Great, good job, Ken nice. You could have just said it was Cass, you know they know he's around, But no, I just.

Throw it on the guy, the poor god.

I mean, blame it on the doctor. Even if you're a little worried about Cass being just ahead in the blame it on the doctor exactly.

I mean, the better count as lucky stars that they're not doing that excavation and not finding like an extra skull in there.

But after everything happened to Danny, laying it all on his feet is just like one more you know, injury, and one more insult after injury.

It's like no sense lost in that case, I know, to.

Protect this insane scientists like why, I.

Was really surprised that the incredible two headed transplant actually makes it into Bruce Dern's autobiography. It did, and yeah, which was wild and he's just like, yeah, they called me up and said, do you want to make seventeen

What's your next app is to take the live head of an animal and replace it completely with the other live animal's head, and after that then humans and I am successful with this operation, then I'll be able to do it.

I honestly thought he'd been very poorly eighty yard the whole time. It was just so mumbly. He was talking like this the whole time. No matter what emotion he should have been having, it was just like he was clouded with barbituates.

Coming into this. I'm thinking, like, you know, during in Silent Running in Black Sunday, that we're going to get a really unhinged during his Mad Scientist and he starts off todate and I'm like, Okay, he's starting us quiet, but we're going to ramp it up, and no, we really don't. He gets a little upset when talking about the hospital. He gets really upset when Ken's on the phone and he doesn't want to go answer it. But

To explain it that phone call that he gets so angry at him. Just what was the direction in this moment, Anthony Liansa, What were you doing? Why was he so angry at this? Yeah, and yeah, I was surprised that he wasn't even doing experiments on himself or something like you said, like shooting tranquilizers or doing some sort of like chemical experiments on himself to be like, oh, well, I can be a better person because of X, Y and Z, like the science has opened up all these

Also, like, I mean, he's willing to turn a shotgun on his best friend very casually, just like, yeah, nope, we're not doing that. I'm gonna throw my wife in a cage again, very casually.

When castik's that extension chord or the chord from the phone or whatever and just like turns her around and starts to like, okay, spread your legs. I'm just like, all right, this feels like a scene to me. This feels like you guys had a contract sign before you started to play together.

Yeah, that was a that was kind of uncomfortable. I could help. But notice he pulls out the power chord that's lighting up that painting. A couple of scenes later, this painting is lit up again, So I just imagine Roger like, well, gotta get this going again. He's like, that's that's where his priorities are. He's gonna have that

The other movies would have shown him either be that cold all the way through about everything, but like chilly instead of kind of like bored almost, or they could have shown us that he has an addiction problem, or they could have gone even further out and said hypnotism. They could have done something to explain why the character is so one note.

We're wondering that if Max has him hypnotized or something, and that's why every time he's like we should do this, he's like, yes, yeah, we should do that. One little touch that durn did and I'm not sure if it was on purpose or what it means is there's a great moment when when Danny comes in after the murders and finds his dad and starts cradling the body, and you can see Darren just kind of roll his eyes like ah shit, and it's like, I wasn't sure if

I almost wonder if he and Casey Caysm should have exchanged roles and it should have been like the Casey Cason Vehicle where he's the mad scientist and Bruce Durn's the friend. Because Casey Kasem barely has anything to do in this movie. He just kind of shows up or like gives him a call, Hey, don't forget, I'm coming over, and then he shows up later and hey, remember I said i'd be over. There's no real reason for any of that stuff to happen.

They could literally just switch lines, keep their delivery the same, and I think it would be an infinitely better film.

Yeah, you're right, although then we might not get Casey Casem's amazing ensembles because he'd been in a lab coat all the time, those high giant collar shirts and that weird funky tie he has. He's looking stylish.

I love how easily cast breaks out of the mental asylum. Kind of reminded me of a lot of Michael Myers, you know, just like, Okay, he's gone, don't worry about it. He chokes out. The one guy jumps into the car, it happens to have a whole bottle of milk there, so that was very convenient. Who's leaving milk in their hot car?

I don't know. Ooh, I do have to mention. That scene has one of my favorite cuts in the movie too, because it cuts straight from Roger and Linda are starting to make love and he's kind of on top, and we immediately cut to a shot of cast strangling the guy, and it's like, Yes, this is sex for him, is violence. This is what turns him on is strangling people. I thought the way those two cut together is really really cool. That's a I thought that was a really great transition.

I do actually want to look further into the editor's career because.

It's the director.

Oh this, the director did this. Oh fantastic, Okay, so I love it. I think there's a use for this editing style outside of this story, because this particular story needed a lot more work to be able to live up to that editing.

I think he was primarily an editor because he has a much bigger editing career than he does as a director, both before and after, So this might have been kind of him trying up directing. I think he directed one of a film before this, possibly, but yeah.

I want to say it was The Glory Stompers, because I did read an interview with him and he was just like, yeah, I helped out this person I helped that this person, you know, this definitely seemed like he was much more behind the scenes than actively directing for quite a bit of his career.

And I'm not saying he was a bad director outside of the cuts, not at all, but those were stellar.

Oh yeah.

Another one I love is when they're talking about the monkey and taking the experiment to the next phase of you know, cutting off the head and seeing if the other one will take it and take control of the body. And we cut from Max staring at the monkey with this an instant smile, right to Andrew with the clippers clipping the heads like chop, chop chop. Beautiful cut. I love that. I love the idea. These cuts are kind of letting us in on the mindsets of these characters.

Even just those little things like Danny with his axe and he's running along the bushes and stuff, and it's just like, hey, hey, Danny, it's not a toy, you know, it's just showing like how carefree he is. And then it's just awful. Like again to your point, Agatha, just what a broad deal this poor guy has had, Like he seems to be doing pretty okay with his life when we first meet him and able to use his enormous strength to rip out a tree from the ground

And I love the little edit cuts of Andrew his father during the operation scene, like little almost subliminal and always you know, cutting from Roger to that like this is on Roger's mind of like I promised I'd look after him, and this is how I'm going to do it. Apparently.

Yeah, he edited some interesting things Anthony Lanza and this film. Of course. The previous one was Dinah East, which I feel like we've talked about on the show before. It was the kind of odd Gene Nash film that was allegedly about May West, that there were all these rumors that she was actually a man. And so when this star dies and they Dinah East and they go yeah, May West, Dyna East, and they go in and they take pictures of the body and they find out, oh,

Good because I want to find it. I want to see this.

I think you will have a good time.

Excellent.

I did notice some titles in this hormography, like Outlaw Motorcycles on hot Rod Action that feel like the kind of exploitation movies that would the style would lend well to what we see here. Like the biker fight for example.

Oh yeah, yeah, the biker flight fight is actually okay.

He does a very good job of cutting it in such a way where he's trying to hide the fake head during the fight scene, Like there's a moment where they're kind of circling each other and it's just at that moment that the biker kind of blocks what we would have seen of the fake head, And I thought that was again a really clever way of not letting us set it too much. There's some scenes where the

And when they show the actual actor on the shoulder, I think those shots are just fantastic. And it helps that Bloom is just built like such a brick shithouse that to fit this little actor on his shoulder works pretty darn well.

Also, maybe I'm just kind of imagining it, but I swear as the film went on, they started to make up Cold a little bit to look a little gray and ashen, almost like his body is rejecting the transplant. It's very subtle, but you can especially see on the fake head that in some wide shots his head looks almost gray, which I thought, if that was on purpose, that's really subtle and interesting.

I'd like to think it was on purpose, but I don't imagine it was. And then, like we were saying earlier, we'd come to the end of this film and literally have the mob going after poor Danny with his two heads, and yeah, that idea of I'm going to go back to this cave, back to the womb and pull the walls down behind me, And yeah, it's awful. It is so bad that the poor guy goes, but at least he takes everyone bad with him, well most bad people.

Yeah, every time they showed like the posse out with the hounds and then cut to Danny running across like the countryside, all I can think it was dark Knight of the Scarecrow, and I made me wonder maybe this posse would have gone on God after Danny eventually anyway, just because he's different, you know.

Yeah, it is remarkable that they don't really bring that up too much. And just like some of the language around him, they're not calling them simple or any of these words that you would associate with them or like. It kind of reminded me of the Sun from Faster Pussycat Kill Kill, just who's just like pure muscle and no hate, you know, like he seems pretty pretty just stupid, stupid and big, and that's so much of Danny's m O. But yeah, I really I like this guy and I

The scene where he goes back to the mine the first time and we just see that sort of curiosity but also fear and trauma and kind of remembering how he was as a kid and he still kind of is now. That the way that plays on blooms Face, I think is actually really good. That's a good I thought that was a great scene.

When the audio is very effective there too, hearing those echoes and hearing the flashback audio and things just like bringing up those memories, hearing people calling his name. I was like, oh, yeah, that's really good.

And him playing with like a toy gun outside the mind and you can imagine playing like cops and robbers and the bad guys of course are going to hide in there and I'm going to go get him. And that's exactly what he ends up doing with Nanny, that he actually leads him to this place to be their hiding place, almost like yes, this is where evils belongs. It belongs in this dark, nasty cave with this terrible thing happened to me.

I kept waiting for Roman to come marching, Oh fool humans.

To give credit to a few things, there's an amazing shot when he's going after the two teenagers in the cars where he's coming out of the swamp silhouetted and you just see like the car in the foreground and him kind of lurching out of the swamp with an arm out that I thought was actually really effective too.

Well, there's there's also the fact that she's being assaulted and trying to leave. He brings her back in the car and Danny Manny Monster come up and the would be rapist is now clinging to his would be victim just out of terror. It was just an interesting moment, but it still left me kind of like, oh, what's going to happen now, Like that's the end of their lives here. She was almost a rape. She's definitely assaulted

Yeah. I also have to bring up the very ominous thing when Linda's asking Roger is there anything you could do for Danny? And he's like maybe after the next experiment, I'm like, what was Roger gonna do to help me? Any quotation mark Stanny? He does transplants, what what would he do in this situation?

And when Linda asks if they can go away on vacation, you can understand they've been through a lot of stress. Something happened at the hospital. Now some weird stuff is happening at their house, and he asks, he asks Linda, well, what do you want me to do about my work? I don't know, Maybe maybe don't do creepy work.

Maybe let Max take care of the monkeys and bunnies for those.

You know, you have an assistant who can manage.

He's much more attentive to this kind of thing. I also have to bring up the amazing cut of when they're talking about, you know, I'll go to the sheriff eventually, I'll I'm gonna send Max in town, He'll take care of Andrew's funeral. Cut immediately to Max just digging up a hole in the backyard to dump the two bottom. It's like, oh god, again, this poor family.

Yeah, and you're just like, well, what's their whole story? Like why is it just the father and the son? Like what happened to the mom? Like yeah, it's You're like, okay, well this is a damaged group as well. Pretty much everybody in here is damaged.

Again that quote from Danny's father of like, I appreciate you looking out for my boy. It's like, so what was he expecting of Roger and Linda in terms of looking out Because he's still there and taking care of his son, So I'm kind of curious as to what he was expecting there.

Yeah. I mentioned that this was a request from James Brummel, and one of his notes that he gave to me was the idea of the heading the two headed Snake, which keeps going back to Yeah.

I'll notice Mack's doing that.

A lot, especially while while Roger's making up his mind about the operation. It does seem kind of suggestive.

Yeah, kind of reminds me of that line from The Incredible Two or sorry from the thing with two heads, you know, do you have two of anything else? I don't know why you would that. It seems like a very odd surgery to do.

But it's an odd situation. So yeah, I wonder if part of it was also practical, because it's the only animal that actually does have two heads, and if you start petting the bunny or the monkey, you know, the prosthetic one might come off. I will say the fake monkey head looked good to the point where I was a little worried. Was that like a taxidermied monkey head that they put on that monkey? I hope, yeah, not.

But well, the very first shout of the monkey, it almost looked like the other head was hiding, you know, that there was a second monkey that was actually there. But then that was the only time I thought, are there actually two monkeys here? Because the rest of it, I was like, Okay, I can see that that's not real. But yeah, to your point, it did look really good in a lot of places, And yeah, so did the

I know this comes up in a lot of movies, and especially to some degree exploitation films, but the lab tour made me very uncomfortable, as even though we're seeing, you know, a two headed rabbit or whatever, that's a rabbit actually experiencing those conditions you put them in, I don't like that actually, which it just the raw nature of the film itself just highlighted the conditions for the actual creatures in there.

And with this sort of prosthetic head mounted on it probably could not have been comfortable.

Now. Yeah, when they show that fox, the first animal I think they shows the fox, I'm just like, oh, that poor thing.

Yeah.

I actually kept having flashes to Larry Fessenden's No Telling, which is very similar in a lot of ways. It involves transplants, it has the same love triangle with the mad scientists, the wife and the good guy who's kind of trying to lure her out of this. There was a lot of a lot of parallels between those two movies.

We're going to take a break and we'll be back with more of this right after these brief messages.

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Forget it all from your television set in a night gallery a dark chid. Midnight Viewing the Horror Anthology podcast join hosts fatherm Alone, Mike White, and Christashie as they exhumed some of the most infamous horror television of all time. Midnight Viewing from weirding Way Media Too.

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A white bigot needed a new buddy. A black soul brother needed time to prove his innocence. Together, they unwillingly created one of the most horrifying aspects of modern medical science, The Thing with two heads.

I've told you guys, I was in the little Why do you gotta do this to me?

Why do you do this to me? Oh my god, you're crazy.

You'll never get out of here, that's what you think.

Hold everybody, hold.

It right there?

Will somebody do something?

A chase that crossed four counties and threatened the destruction of.

An entire town.

He's taking control of your body.

Hold one head.

A convicted murderer, the other a scientist guilty of only his bigotry and hate, and each trying desperately to gain full control.

Of them black body.

They shared.

Raymonland and Rosie Greer as shut up.

The Thing with Two Heads.

That's right, and we're back and we're talking about the two Headed Transplant. And I was very curious about the timeline between this and the Thing with Two Heads, because this one, incredible two Headed Transplant came out nineteen seventy one, and it sounds like they were maybe making the second

I also know it's another name. I think it was a John Lawrence and Johnathon Lawrence. I wasn't sure if that was the same person connected between the two of the moves list is like, I think an executive producer on Thing with Two Heads, and are these these are both aip? Right?

They are?

Yes, Oh yeah. It's not like another company trying to rip off or kind of copy that. They're just like, well, we did that, maybe we can do it again differently.

What I like about the two films coming from the same house, basically, is that the two headed transplant is kind of the movies the film serious way of looking at it, quote unquote serious. But then you get the Thing with two Heads, and you're getting a takedown, a black exploitations takedown of that movie of another exploitation film, and it's so tongue in cheek and I love it.

That's true.

Yes, yes, thank you. Yes, I forgot about that.

I'm glad you mentioned that. Yeah. Yeah, this is the one I had seen and remembered as a kid. So I was eager to see it again because it's been so long and there was so much I missed as a kid, because you know, as a kid, you're just like, all right, well, are we going to get to the either the grill of the two heads or the two headed guy. So a lot of the first act leading up to it, how Ray Miland just seems to be like, Oh,

Whoof I had that momentary? What movie or we will? Oh that's the point. Yeah, okay, I know what movie we're watching now? This is okay?

Yeah, that was surprising and just how vicious he is about things, because you're like, is he going to go there? Oh? He went there? Okay, all right.

And it's kind of funny to see you have Bruce Dern starting off in kind of B movies and incredible to it, and Transplant is kind of the last of the really goofy be movies he did. Then you have Ray Milan on the opposite spectrum, near the end of his career doing a B movie. But I gotta say, Milan doesn't really feel like he's phoning it in. He's kinda he's doing it.

Oh yeah, that's the thing. Nobody is giving half assed performances in this one. It is all the way. And I really like Rosie Greer and here, but I really like Don Marshall as the black doctor who's being discriminated against. I thought it was great.

Yeah, he kind of feels like our side protagonist eventually because he's the guy, kind of the guy making the moral choices in the second half and kind of he's the one we're sort of following through all.

This, right. Yeah, he's like Max of Max was good, Yeah, exactly, because he you know, he could be the guy who helped save you know, save either Rosie Greer or rayma Land. I mean, it's funny because this movie is very similar to one of my favorite films in the entire world, Free Jack, with this whole idea of you know, I need a different body. This one is dying, Give me a new body. And then this whole idea of like, oh, yeah,

It did go on way too long, but to be fair, it did that thing where it went on and it was funny and then it stopped being funny because it went on too long, but then it kept going so it was funny again, and it just kind of built on itself.

And when you see like Bud Eckens listing in the credits as a stunt coordinator, you know you're going to get some amazing motorcycle stuff. And some of those stunts are so good you can tell. It's like, we had what five cameras on that crash, use every bit of them. Oh there's suddenly just another car following them that rolls down the hill the same way. I will say. During that scene, though, Raymaland's fake head started to look like beetlejuice at some point, hair flying, pale, dark wem rings

Yeah, I really like this one though. I think it's great, especially when the girlfriend comes back into it and you've got the whole idea of, you know, trying to prove Rosie's innocence, and I'm like, okay, all of this. These subplots actually really work for this, and they wrap up.

Everything is up and the reveal at the end of the film, the reveal, We're all in the car, we're singing about our freedom. Everything is fantastic. This white dead guy is off my head. I mean I turned to Tim and I feel that repeating this because it's you know, Yodoreowski. But this reveal is second to the reveal in The Holy Mountains.

For me.

It was just perfect. And I can't say enough about that reveal.

Yeah I won't. I won't spoil it for people because they definitely need to see it with their own eyes, because yeah, it is a glorious thing.

I really like Rosie Gru's performance. I love things about his character, like that he sees this as Okay, this will bide me time until they can prove my innocence, and then when it's revealed what they did, and he's like, I thought you were just gonna like take out some of my organs give him to some kid. I didn't know you're gonna do this. So even when he signed up for this, he's like, Okay, maybe whatever horrible thing they're gonna do might do some good for some poor kid.

This one really shows that whole control thing, because we don't get that as much in the incredible two headed Transplant, but you definitely do in this one with the whole left hand right hand. And then when like he you know, punches Ray Malan in the face and knock him out, and then Ray Malan eventually punches him in the face and knocks him out. One of the funniest shots for me is just Rosie Greer punched himself in the face and knocking himself out.

For me, it's the shot right after where Rosy Grier is knocked out and Rosy Greedy actor is like trying to pretend that Ray Millan head is in charge and walking this way, so that heads upright. I thought that was really funny, and I gotta say it because he's like a childhood idol of mine. Rick Baker as the two headed Gorilla, I love all those scenes. It sounds silly, but having seen him in a bunch of movies in creature suits, I see his eyes in a suit and

As soon as that two headed gorilla came on screen, I was like, I bet you anything that's Rick Baker. You know, Like we talked on the Island of Doctor Morrow episode about like the professional ape people and Rick Baker for a long time. Had he not made this massive career in special effects, I think he could have had a career just playing apes for the longest time.

I actually have Metamorphosis books you got for me for Christmas years ago, and there's a great chapter on this movie where he's talking about how he signed on basically with a one gorill ahead like yeah, I have a suit, and then with the game the way he's like, shoot, I have to build a suit and a second head. But he did some really intelligent stuff in terms of making them interchangeable so he could pop out of one

That must have been the scene with the banana, because I was noticing during that when they're both eating bananas at the same time, I was like, that looks like two actual people in there.

In the white shot, you can tell it's the puppet because the head's a little flat, but once it's the close up. Yeah. He also said they didn't have permits, so they would literally take him in a van at the end of this residential street, open the van, drive to the end, and have him just run at camera. And if people saw this two headed gorilla running around they were in the shot, that was it.

Yeah, it's definitely a step up, the two headed gorilla versus the two headed monkey.

Yeah.

Did y'all get a chance to see Manster?

We did watch manste Oh yeah.

Yeah, what'd you think of that one?

It's funny because at least for me when I was watching, and I kept thinking, you know, if he didn't have two heads, you'd never know, because there's nothing in the script that actually mentions two heads. It almost felt like it could have just been sort of a Jackal and Hyde sort of thing, or almost a Wolfman type story.

That's what I thought. I thought this was a converted Wolfman's story. But I think you'd mentioned, wasn't the title.

One of the alternate titles that was shot under it was something about the beast with two heads or something like that. So, I mean, until he splits, it doesn't really come into play very much.

Though not really. No, I mean it is interesting because well, I know, you guys didn't have a chance to see how to get ahead in advertising, but that has pretty much the same idea of a head growing out of a person's shoulder. To your point, you don't get that nearly as much as you probably should in The Manster. You know, you'll see that better in like Army of Darkness. And I really think that the whole splitting of Ash

I get the implication that whatever this doctor injected into him kind of unleashes his primal side and kind of pushes him into jerk him a little bit more. But that specific shot of the eye on his shoulder is I definitely think Raymy saw that and was in fla. But it's funny because just this weekend we saw The Manitou, and that movie in terms of another thing coming out of somebody's shoulder that's this horrible malign influence, is kind of kind of runs parallel with this one.

During my research, I found that there was also there was an Andy Milligan film that was released in nineteen seventy two, so right in the same sweet spot with our two previous movies. I know, Manster comes out well before that, but that one is a Jaqueline Hyde so they it's called The Man with Two heads, but it's because of a seer matein from the brain of a mass murderer transforms the good Doctor Jackyl of London into the evil mister Blood.

Excuse me, man with two heads a film of Unspeakable.

You say that you've experimented on animals.

What does that prove?

You haven't tried it out of a human.

How do you know that a human won't react different?

I don't.

That's why I must have a human.

To try it on.

Maybe they could get rights for mister check for Doctor Jekyl, but not mister Hyde. I don't know what was going on there.

Every time we saw the creature in this movie, I could think of, I don't remember this moduleck that masters the universe figure that had the multiple heads that kind of just pop onto the shoulders. Something about the way the heads are oriented here, That's all I could think of, because I used to have them as a kid and make all sorts of ghoulish sort of combinations of that guy.

This movie really reminded me of another one that we did called Horrors of a Malformed Man, and this whole idea yeah yeah, right, yeah, especially the ex wife or the I guess she's still legally married to the crazy doctor, but her in the cage and that makeup on her face and it's really smart that this is all in black and white. That really helps with her makeup as

And some of the performances. I actually kind of liked tedsun Nakamura as our mad scientist in this one. Robert Suzuki, he's just like he's he's almost kind of genial about it, just like, oh, this is going to be interesting and exciting, and it's it doesn't really fit with the mad scientist thing, but at least it's doing something a little bit more than Bruce Dern did. Yeah.

I liked this way more than I thought I would. I was really impressed by this one, and the copy that I saw looked horrible, but I know there is a blu ray out there, and I kept thinking, oh, well, I need to find the original Japanese version. There is no original Japanese version. This is big shot. It in English, and it's all American actor well not American actors, but American folks behind the scenes kind of thing. As far as the directors and writers, which was very surprising to me.

As the movie went on and I started to realize, like, especially what's his name, Jerry Youto who played the police superintendent. I really liked his performance, and realizing.

Oh, he was great.

Oh he's not dubb No, he's speaking in English, so this was actually shot this way. The one performance I thought was really out there was Jane Hilton as Linda, the wife. Every time she shows up, she seems vaguely psychotic when she's trying to talk to her husband.

And again I don't know if it was a transfer or not, but she looked really sweaty. Yeah, a lot. Okay, good, I'm glad it wasn't just me.

It didn't look like she was made up very well. She was not live very well.

Though.

I do like a lot of the lighting has a very film noir quality to a lot of this. I also can help but wonder if the main character being named Larry was a little sell reference to Larry Talbot, because there's a lot of wolfman kind of qualities to this story too.

Yeah, when he's out and it almost looks like he's on the moors towards the end there, when he's running around away from the you know, the people again hunting him kind of thing, and he's just like struggling with himself and all then trying to get the pressure of

It doesn't probably count, but I was thinking that tales from the Crypt episode with Don Rickles' ventriloquist that has the you can Join twin that he found gets off of his arm.

There's a Buffy the Vampire Slayer the Zeppo where Xander gets split into two.

Yep, that's a good one too. Yeah, I feel like there's another one, but I can't think of I can think of a lot of possession ones like Poltergeist too, where he gets the possessed tequila worm out and then it grows into his whole disgusting creature, which I think was a Giger design. It's a great looking monster in that scene.

Yeah, sure is, especially that close up of the face that's like molded to look like the old priest. Oh. But yeah, I would recommend that you definitely check out How to Get Ahead in Advertising. That was nineteen eighty nine and Bruce Robinson one with Richard Grant, and that was the first movie I ever saw in a foreign country, so it has a lot of meaning for me. I was on a I don't know what you would call it.

The only other two edded one I was thinking of, and it kind of came up every time we'd see some of the dodgier effects of the fake heads thing is Zapod Beeblebrocks from the original Hitchhiker's Guide, where they come up with a conceit that his other head is usually asleep, so they don't actually have to puppeteer it most of the time in the show. But I've always kind of love that that, Well, what's going on, Go back to sleep, It's fine.

It's been so long since I've seen that BBC version, as opposed to that just horrific movie version, which I still I wish that that had been better.

Me too, I do love the BBC version though I grew up on that.

Yeah, those are some of those weird effects too, where it's like the video in the studio film outside stuff, and that used to throw me a lot when I was watching the old Tom Baker Doctor Who, I'd be like, what before I knew what film stocks were or what video was, I'd just be like, something so off here.

Or for me learning years later that the dish of the day is actually Peter Davison, the Fifth Doctor who.

I don't know that at all.

It meet the meter talking about yeah.

Yeah, I recommend you eat my liver. It should be very tender by now. Yeah, under that horrific makeup is Peter Davison.

We had the Sims is it?

Oh yeah, that's true. That actually did two tree House of Heart. Well, like one little reference at the end where Burns's head is stuck on Homer's body. I remember, and I was I believe one with Bart and Lisa ending up kind of with their heads together, but I can't remember. It's been so long since I've seen that one.

Those are good to go back and rewatch because I'm trying to remember which one I just saw recently. I had to go back and check it out because I was like, oh, we were talking about the butterfly effect and I was pulling the Grandpa Simpson line about if you ever time travel, never kill anything, especially at bug.

Oh yeah, it was a Treehouse of Horror twenty four is the one that did the Bart Lisa conjoined one.

I can really see. I mean the Homer mister Burns is almost rosy Greer, and Raymond it's perfect, or maybe even the Danny and cast.

I'm almost surprised we haven't got a resurgence and somebody hasn't tried to do a goofy two headed transplant movie. Again just as an homage, it feels like it feels like we're doue oh yeah.

Well, now with the effects that they are, I mean, that's got to be super easy. Well, probably not super easy, but the idea of having a thing on your shoulder to give you that like the shadows and everything correctly, and then being able to just map somebody's face onto that, you know, that, it seems like it'd be pretty simple. These days, we're.

Having an actor in like a green screen suit that you can just wipe out the rest of the body and just have the head there, yeah.

And just like have them shake around a lot while he's running.

We were thinking during thing the two heads, that you know, you could do this as sort of a buddy cop movie or it's like a buddy at adventure movie where the two of them have to overcome their differences.

Two heads are better than one.

Yes, you could call it head to head.

It could have been Michael J. Fox and James Woods all those years ago. Oh the hard way, the hard way, yes, make it even harder, but.

That's the two headed snakes.

See. That could have been like Beverly Hill's cup four. If they thought of it early, just have all three of them together, Taggart and Billy and Axle Foley.

Body, because that really would be the sequel, like if they did the incredible three headed transplant. You know, Danny comes out of the wreckage brewster and is still around.

The other thing I kept thinking of was the office where it was Michael Scott's Halloween costume with the fake head there. It kind of made me want to do that.

Well, there you go, your next idea. All right, we're going to take another break and play a preview for next week's show. Right after these brief messages.

It looked calmless enough, just a professional models album of poses. Yep, this was the glamorous pitfall where they look the most seductive. Courses of email, violent jealousy.

Johnny, I like that good.

I don't care what you like or what you don't like.

Torments of unfaithfulness.

I met a couple of months ago while I was on a case what about the kill?

Somebody told him a lot of things about her and me?

Are they true? Yes? Then I must hate.

The raging theory of a guilty conscience.

You've got to call the police.

I just killed a Man.

That's right. We will be back next week with the first film of Noir November Pitfall. Until then, I want to thank my co host Tim and Agatha. So what is the latest with you two.

I'll admit things have been a little slow recently. We've had a lot of kind of family issues to get through. But we're starting to gear back up into recording again. We have a few episodes we've recorded and they're working on editing and hopefully going to get into a more regular rhythm pretty soon.

It's going to be a full podcast season for us next year. We're going to get back into our form, probably doing twenty episodes, so we're going to be backing out there.

I am looking forward to though. For every November we do a Bond movie and we're going to be doing The Spy Who Loved Me And last time we actually found a James Bond movie that she liked. Yeah, so I'm thinking The Man with the Golden Gun turned out to be the winner, So I'm thinking she's going to like the next one too, because it's goofing a lot of fun.

So it is very goofy. Yes, and Scarmango is pretty great though. The return of Clifton. James really left a lot for me to be desired, especially as racism.

Don't get me started.

And by the time this episode comes out, it will be right around Halloween, and I know you guys really like to celebrate, especially there in Salem.

Yes, it's our anniversary as well, so we pretend the city celebrates for us every year. And everybody already seems to be in Salem, so the tourist crowds are heavy.

Yep, We're going to go do our zombie walk pretty soon, where we're going to be zombified interesting zombifide costumes. This year, I'm going to be a zombifide Blockbuster employee because Blockbuster may be dead, but it still lives on.

Get the Blue and the Khaki out and that great name tag.

Yeah, I haven't warn them in like twenty five years. It feels really weird.

Going to be a zombie tourist because that's how I exercise my anger.

And it's also the scariest thing you can encounter in Salem.

This tour is true going to go that one step further.

One other thing I got to mention that's kind of amazing. Are one of our favorite theaters. Coolidge Corner in Boston is actually doing a whole sort of William Castle Gimmick retrospective and they're doing the gimmicks. They're doing House on Hunted Hill with a Mergo, which we're gonna go see. They're doing the Tingler in Percepto, which I have to get tickets for because I've always wanted to see exactly how that plays out.

We got to mention the marathon subject. They do a horror movie marathon and it's twelve hours horror films. This year it's Mad Scientists, so we so we might end up seeing one of these movies.

Yeah, yeah, there's a oh yes, yeah.

Or sedate ness instead of madness. When it comes to Bruce Dirt.

Think I'll stick this head on this body? Yeah maybe if it's maybe, if you put it another extra head on his wife, he would have been more interested in her.

Then you could put Max's head on her body. Oh, could have had it all.

There.

You go.

Thank you so much folks for being on the show. Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of the other shows that I work on. They're all available at weirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit patreon dot com Slash Projection booth. Every donation we get helps the projection booth.

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