The Thing With Two Heads
Or The Guy With A Racist Guy's Head On His Shoulder
Dr. Max Kirshner-Played by Ray Milland. Racist doctor who wants to transplant his head onto a healthy body. Now, which body would be the most fun to see his head on?
Jack-Played by Rosey Grier. There ya go. A man on death row for something he didn't do, he takes the opportunity to clear his name.
Dr. Desmond-Max's doctor. Performs the transplant.
Dr. Williams-Black doctor Max hires without meeting, then regrets hiring him. Williams is a bitter fellow.
Lila-Jack's girlfriend. Is helping him prove his innocence.
A hundred nurses and doctors-All work for Max. Also kinda plain looking.
A billion cops-Chase Jack/Max all over the place. The inspiration for the ending of "The Blues Brothers".
All my life I heard about "The Thing with Two Heads" but never seen it. I seen pictures, saw the trailer, and even heard a few references to it on "Mystery Science Theater 3000". So finally, thanks to Blaxploitation History Month of February 2010, I get to witness this cinematic experience for myself. Sadly, I'm a bit disappointed.

And before you ask "Is this really blaxploitation?" I'm just gonna go ahead and say it is. Yeah, I have no authority to do so (I can only say "Happy Birthday"), but I figure it's about a racist white dude and a strong black dude and isn't that what every blaxploitation film is about? Thought so.

With that said, we begin with Ray Milland and I guess he was really in a wheelchair cause in THIS movie he's a wheelchair bound dude. Actually, this character is pretty similar to his character in "Frogs", really cranky, in a wheelchair, and racist as all hell. I wonder if this was just how Ray Milland was and he was just typecasted. Well it works.

Anyway, Dr. Max Kirshner is in his serial killer-esque basement and he's trying to transplant an entire head onto a body. He experiments with this on a gorilla and it appears to have worked. Max also runs a transplant clinic where all they do is transplants and that's it. If you have cancer, you gotta go somewhere else, bub!

We learn of Max's racism when he hires Dr. Williams without meeting him and when Williams shows up with his blackness, Max freaks out and stutters out a lame excuse. Uhhh, we filled our quota of doctors this year. YEAH!

But Dr. Williams isn't a person you fuck with. He signed a contract to work with Adolph here for six months and god dammit he's gonna do it! Max reluctantly agrees and goes home to no doubt bath in sanitizer. Actually, he goes home to finish the transplant of the gorilla.

But Dr. Max's assistants are rather stupid and they let the two-headed gorilla loose. If I didn't see the trailer or the movie poster or know anything about it, I would think this was the Thing With Two Heads cause it is, technically, a "thing". The actual "thing" later on is a human being so it's kinda wrong to label him a "thing". I guess "Dude With Two Heads" didn't have a ring to it.

The two-headed gorilla gets out and runs around this rather empty town. Apparently, everyone in town was out shopping cause that's where all the people where. The dumb assistants find the two-headed gorilla eating bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S! (Eating Gwen Stefani is for "another" movie.)
Parts of this movie is amusing and terrific. Yeah, Rosey Grier can't act, but he was a football player. Do you think Payton Manning can act? Or Brian Urlacher? Or...that other football player guy? And Ray Milland was playing his usual character, which is always great. It's kinda nice seeing him play a cranky racist dude, then he gets what's coming to him at the end. This movie suffers in the middle with the super long boring chase scene in the field. If it wasn't for that, this would've had a better rating. And there's nothing worse than a boring middle of a story, isn't that right brotha?
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Maybe the two-headed gorilla wants a smoke.
Quick! Somebody call that chick that Signorney Weaver played!
"If you know of a black football player, call our hotline! Operators are standing by!"
Jeez, did they come out of a nurse/doctor car or something?
Dr. Max finally takes off the original head of the gorilla and the transplanted gorilla head took to the body ok. So now we find out why he's going through all this. Dr. Max had a stroke of some kind that left his body disabled. And on top of that, he reveals to his doctor Dr. Desmond that he has lung cancer. So he wants to put his head on a new body. But they need a body first. I wonder if any 1970's football players are available!

Thankfully, there is. Jack is on death row for a murder he didn't commit. As he's about to get the chair, he goes "Homina-homina I WANNA HELP DR. RACIST THERE!" and before you can say "He's at the 20! The 10! He's going all the way!" he shows up at Dr. Max's.

When Dr. Desmond sent the word out to the community that a body is needed for scientific reasons, he didn't say it had to be a white body. So when Jack gets out of the cop car, and Dr. Desmond sees him for the first time, you know deep down inside, he was laughing his ass off.

Dr. Desmond knocks Jack out and starts the transplant. This is all done at Dr. Max's house, with two cops outside the basement door to keep an eye on things, even though they have no idea what's going on. But whatever, they get paid to watch TV and sleep and ogle nurses.

The transplant is finished and Dr. Max wakes up. He can sorta move Jack's arm and feel the body. Then he asks to see the body he's attached to. Dr. Desmond puts a mirror in front of the body, then runs off to have a good laugh. Of course, Max isn't amused.

Now it's Jack's turn to wake up and discover what happened to him. And he really isn't amused. Desmond puts Jack to sleep so he don't end up ripping Max's head off of his shoulder. Realizing this is a tricky subject, he calls in Dr. Williams, cause he of all people will also find this whole thing pretty fucking amusing. That and Dr. Williams speciality is fixing transplant rejections.

Williams doesn't want to help out at first cause of Max's racism, but Desmond says he's the one asking, not Max, and he's not racist. Then in the very next scene, Desmond says "the black head is waking up". Nice Non-Racism there, pal.

Jack is pretty fed up with all of this and decides to bust loose. He knocks out a nurse and gives her the sedative she was gonna give him...even though he was pretending to be asleep. I dunno. Anyway, you think escaping isn't gonna be easy with two cops and a shitload of doctors in this house. Well, you're wrong. It's pretty easy actually.

Jack makes a noise and one cop checks it out and Jack easily takes him out. Then he steals his gun. At this point Max wakes up and starts yelling the entire time. Jack then pulls the gun on the 20 million doctors and tells Dr. Williams he's coming with cause he's the only black guy, I guess. Plus, it'll make Max REALLY mad if he's surrounded (literally) by black people.
"Sorry, Mr. Grier, if you agree to be in it, you gotta watch it."
"We can rebuild him! Make him less cranky! Less racist!"
*Snicker* "This is gonna be great when he wakes up! HAHAHA!"
On the right: James Lipton!
For the next 25 minutes it turns into a chase movie and kinda slows down the movie. Jack takes Dr. Williams' car and goes back and forth down the same street, confusing the cops. Then he spots a road block up ahead and does the only smart thing left to do: go down the wide open trail NEXT to the road, where all the cops see this happening. He still somehow escapes. But gets a flat tire.

So now they're on foot and they run through a desert with some trees around and stop to rest for a minute. Here, Jack tells Williams and Max why he's innocent. I kinda didn't understand it. It was something about a gun Jack use to own was used for the murder, but when the dude was murdered this guy named Willie was staying with him and is his only alibi, but Willie split and didn't testify, so Jack was sent to death row and now Jack's girlfriend is out looking for Willie. Got all that?

After telling this confusing story, Jack falls asleep, giving Max the opportunity to bribe Williams into helping him by cutting off Jack's head. Williams, who was on the fence with helping Jack, gets pissed off cause Max is still a racist. Before the matter is settled, the cops show up in a helicopter, shooting.

Now they all run and they find a motor-bike race thing happening. One bike rider sees "the thing" and freaks, leaving his bike. This gives them the opportunity they been waiting for: pad the movie for another 20 minutes! Yay!!
I finally unlocked the special character on Moto-Cross!
It basically turns into "The Blues Brothers" which is weird cause that movie was like 8 years down the road. Maybe they were ripping, er, "paying homage" to this movie? Essentially this is what happens:

-Jack/Max and Williams are on the motor-bike, riding all crazy, eluding the cops.
-There are roughly a billion cops chasing after them.
-One by one, each cop and his car (only one cop in each car by the way) get destroyed for some reason.
-There's a cop who looks like Joe Don Baker and we focus on him for some reason throughout this.
-Joe Don gets a flat tire and we watch him change the tire.
-With the tire changed, he's about to take off when another cop car rams into the back of him.
-Joe Don goes after him.
-MORE cop cars are totaled, with some cops doing one-liner jokes about car safety.
-Joe Don and another cop are on both sides of Jack/Max and Williams and are gonna ram into them from both ends (This sentence sounds dirty) but Jack/Max out maneuver the cops and both cars end up crashing.
-Joe Don throws a temper tantrum on the hood of his car.
-This chase scene is still going on.
-Where are all these cop cars coming from?
-END!!!!

FINALLY, it fucking does. Jack/Max and Williams ends up at Lila's house. She's a bit freaked out by Max's head being on Jack's body. Jack/Max go rest up before dinner and Williams talks to Lila. She tells him the same confusing story and this makes him believe Jack is innocent, so he is gonna help Jack. Max hears his and tries to get full control of Jack's body.
It's the prequel to "Mitchell"!
Honestly, the movie is just this for 20 minutes.
Real Stories of the Highway Patrol's Temper Tantrums.
"Is that Joe Don Baker?"
During dinner, Max says some horribly racist stuff and Williams is like "yeah let's get this white dude's head off". But first they'll need some supplies, which means they have to break into some drug warehouse and steal them. Can only imagine what Max had to say about that.

During said robbery, Max takes control of Jack's body and knocks both Jack and Williams out. He calls Desmond and tells him to meet him at the hatch! Er wait, wrong Desmond. (Was gonna make a "brotha" joke but considering the movie I'm reviewing, probably wouldn't be "P.C".) He tells Desmond to help him get Jack's head off. But the police are looking for them everywhere!

Max realizes he has to do this himself and leaves. He heads to...his house? WTF? The cops aren't swarming there? What, the logic was "he couldn't possibly go back to the white dude's house where all this began! Let's go get doughnut's, men!" And this time, Rosey gets the fake dummy head on Ray Milland's body.
"Got your nose!"
"It IS my nose, Whitey!"
No idea why Rosey gets the fake dummy head now. I guess Ray wanted to use his body for a scene or something.
Williams wakes up and calls Lila and tells her to pick him up. They somehow know to go to Max's house. And there, Max was just about to cut off Jack's head when Williams gets there and stops him. Cut to sometime later and Williams calls Desmond and tell him to help Max, then simply hangs up. Desmond shows up and finds Max's attached to a fake lung and heart machine and still alive, begging to be put back onto another body. As for Jack? He's ok! He, Lila, and Williams are driving away someone singing gospel songs! AND CUE CREDITS!

Yay sudden ending!