A year after their goofy "The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant", A.I.P. recycled the basic premise, this time adding a racial angle. Esteemed transplant surgeon Maxwell Kirshner (Ray Milland, a long way from "The Lost Weekend") is dying, and figures that his best chance to beat death is to attach his cranium to a donor body. (Intending to, at a later point, remove the original head.) But a last minute development sees Kirshners' head attached to the body of black death row inmate Jack Moss (Rosey Grier, "The Glove"), and Kirshner, wouldn't you know it, is a raging bigot. Assorted comic hijinks ensue as the two-headed man flees from the cops in the attempt to clear Jacks' name.
This is very daft stuff, but the filmmakers do seem to be well aware of the fact, and wisely play the material for laughs much of the time. Lee Frost ("The Black Gestapo") directs, from a script by him, his frequent collaborator / actor Wes Bishop, and James Gordon White. The sight of Rays' and Rosey's heads nestled together is such a hoot, and the expected bickering between the two of them is quite funny. Rays' expression just screams out, "Dear Lord, has it come to *this*?". They receive able support from Don Marshall ("Terminal Island") and Roger Perry (the "Count Yorga" movies), and there are cameos by the likes of William Smith ("Invasion of the Bee Girls"), music star Jerry Butler, veteran film producer / director Albert Zugsmith ("Confessions of an Opium Eater"), and newscaster Dick Whittington. Chelsea Brown ('Laugh-In') is appealing as Jacks' understandably perturbed girlfriend.
Much livelier than "The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant", this film obviously went to a lot of care to set up various stunts and action scenes, with protracted chase scenes taking up much of the movies' second half. The various old-school car crashes are quite entertaining to see, with the police force in this story portrayed as *very* incompetent.
The music is excellent, with a great schlock movie score by Robert O. Ragland; Frost and company are able to send us away with a smile as Rosey, Chelsea, and Marshall do a rendition of "Oh Happy Day", and the nefarious Dr. Kirshner gets his just desserts.
Six out of 10.
This is very daft stuff, but the filmmakers do seem to be well aware of the fact, and wisely play the material for laughs much of the time. Lee Frost ("The Black Gestapo") directs, from a script by him, his frequent collaborator / actor Wes Bishop, and James Gordon White. The sight of Rays' and Rosey's heads nestled together is such a hoot, and the expected bickering between the two of them is quite funny. Rays' expression just screams out, "Dear Lord, has it come to *this*?". They receive able support from Don Marshall ("Terminal Island") and Roger Perry (the "Count Yorga" movies), and there are cameos by the likes of William Smith ("Invasion of the Bee Girls"), music star Jerry Butler, veteran film producer / director Albert Zugsmith ("Confessions of an Opium Eater"), and newscaster Dick Whittington. Chelsea Brown ('Laugh-In') is appealing as Jacks' understandably perturbed girlfriend.
Much livelier than "The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant", this film obviously went to a lot of care to set up various stunts and action scenes, with protracted chase scenes taking up much of the movies' second half. The various old-school car crashes are quite entertaining to see, with the police force in this story portrayed as *very* incompetent.
The music is excellent, with a great schlock movie score by Robert O. Ragland; Frost and company are able to send us away with a smile as Rosey, Chelsea, and Marshall do a rendition of "Oh Happy Day", and the nefarious Dr. Kirshner gets his just desserts.
Six out of 10.