Is it fair to describe The Thing with Two Heads as a legendary movie? We think so. It’s The Wild Ones taken to its shark jumping extreme thanks to the blaxploitation maestros at American International Pictures. Instead of a white convict and a black convict handcuffed together after a prison escape, this flick features a racist white doctor whose head is grafted onto a black patient’s body. These two really hate each other, which is a serious problem considering they spend 24/7 at kissing distance, but they’re stuck.
Ray Milland, who once won a Best Actor Oscar, is trying to prolong his own life. Rosey Grier is a convict on death row who donates his body to science. He has no idea what the science he’s donated himself to entails, just that he’ll avoid execution for thirty more days and buy time for his relatives and lawyer to prove his innocence. Sounds fun, right? Once Grier wakes up after surgery and realizes what’s happened he flees with Milland’s noggin riding helplessly along and decides to prove his innocence himself. But Milland is slowly gaining control of their body. You get the feeling this isn’t going to end well.
The Thing with Two Heads is low budget, cheeseball, light on genuine humor, and perfunctory in its ending. And yet… how can one resist? Is it an ingenious parable about the historical theft of black bodies by white men? Or is it just a chunk of opportunistic schlock? Only the screenwriters know. We’ll say this, though—considering how low this movie could have sunk (picture Milland looking down at Grier’s dick and exclaiming, “Whoa! That’s bigger than my Oscar!”) it’s actually pretty restrained. Put it in the better-with-alcohol category and don’t watch it alone. It premiered in the U.S. today in 1972.
