Vital Viewing (Craniums Edition)

 

Sure, go ahead, spend all your time dieting, lifting weights, doing sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups. Go ahead and give yourselves the the flattest stomach, the biggest biceps, the most shapely legs, the broadest shoulders, the tightest ass, the most massive pecs. But in doing so, you'll just be ignoring the most important part of your body, the part that's not your body, but the seeing, hearing, talking, tasting, sniffing, and of course, thinking growth that sits on the top of your body: your head. We are our heads. Our heads define us. Don't think so? Perhaps the following videos will change your mind.

Let's start with 1962's The Brain That Wouldn't Die, which played to sold-out grindhouse audiences in Skid Rows across America:

The Brain That Wouldn't Die was independently produced and released through American International Pictures. Neither Virginia Leith, who played the film's title character (though it's not just her brain but also her eyes, nose, mouth, and, presumably, ears that survive that car wreck) or Jason Evers, who plays her distraught, homicidal husband, went on to film stardom, but their performances are a notch above of  what one might expect from this kind of thing. A scientist who kills people in the name of science had been done before (most notably in producer Val Lewton's 1945 horror classic The Body Snatcher) but this time around the foul play, or rather, attempt at foul play, is not merely because of some abstract goal of increasing humankind's knowledge, but also due to affairs of the heart. And maybe the loins. I mean, Mr. Evers character can't very well enjoy an intimate relationship with his wife while she's in this condition (actually, he can, but it would give a whole new meaning to the phrase "giving head".) Ms. Leith died just last year at the age of 94, after which her body was immediately donated to the UCLA Medical Center. Intact, if I'm not mistaken.

Oh, yeah? Well, that English proverb writer never saw this movie:

Another film distributed by American International Pictures but independently produced. In fact, so independently produced that after his paycheck bounced, Bruce Dern--a mainstay of low-budget cinema at this point in his career--didn't know how to contact the producers, who had left town, and maybe even the continent as a whole, without leaving a forwarding address. 49 years later, Dern is still waiting to get paid. I don't know if Casey Kasem, who plays Dern's caution-prone colleague--mad scientists always have caution-prone colleagues--was paid or not, but by 1971, when this film was made, he had already begun his long-running radio show America's Top 40 as well as voicing Shaggy on Scoopy-Doo, Where Are You!, so I doubt he had to go on food stamps. Pat Priest, the second of two actresses to play Marilyn on The Munsters, portrays Dern's wife, so she's gone from one horror comedy to another (though this time around the comedy is unintentional.) The title-character in this film does a pretty thorough job terrorizing the countryside and leaving a high body count. But does a monster really need a second head to do that? I'm not sure what advantage that would give you, Well, I guess it would take the intended prey completely by surprise 

As I said, the two previous films were distributed by the above company. So what exactly was American International Pictures and how was it able to distribute all these flicks? Was the studio across the street from the post office? I doubt it, because I can't find any evidence that there ever was a studio in the sense of soundstages or a gate you had to go through or a commissary where all the big stars had lunch or a backlot that eventually became a Los Angeles suburb-- no, none of that, I'm afraid. AIP was no more than an independent film company itself, just a bit larger than the ones that piggy-backed on its distribution system. Whereas the company that stiffed Bruce Dern may have been headquartered in a rusty Winnebago with expired plates double-parked in front of a pawn shop, AIP probably had a long-term lease in a nicely-maintained office building, possibly one with a savings and loan on the first floor. We can only speculate. What we do know is that American International Pictures was co-owned and run on a day-to-day basis by one Samuel Z. Arkoff, a former entertainment lawyer. The skeleton key to Arkoff's success--he died a millionaire--was his targeting of an audience that in the 1950s, '60s, and first half of the '70s was largely being ignored by the major Hollywood studios: teenage males (boy, things sure have changed, haven't they?) This meant hot rod movies, bikini movies, and above all else, horror movies. Although some of those who worked under or alongside him may have had higher aspirations (such as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Robert Towne, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, Laszlo Kovacs, Charles B. Griffith, and, when he decided to have a go with Edgar Allen Poe, Roger Corman), Arkoff made no pretense of creating art. It was all just pure entertainment, or maybe another word that begins with an "e", exploitation. However... 

...not even Arkoff could ignore the turbulent times he was living in, so in 1972 when he decided to make another multiple-noggin movie, he made sure it had a touch of...

 ...social significance: 

It's hard to classify a film about a man with two heads as belonging to anything other than the horror genre, but it should be noted that the title character is quite sympathetic. Well, one half, the soul brother half, is sympathetic. The real monster here is institutional racism (that's the best spin I can put on it, I'm afraid.) Really, this movie is less horror and more a blaxploitation/car chase hybrid. Neither Pam Grier nor Peter Fonda would feel out of place in such a film. Also, until a finale that insists otherwise, the movie looks like it might turn into a buddy comedy, in which case Dorothy Lamour wouldn't feel out of place. Instead we have Ray Milland, and he's not really out of place either, as by this point in his career he was becoming a grindhouse mainstay. A talented actor, he was a movie star in the 1940s and '50s, and won an Oscar for his portrayal of an alcoholic writer in The Lost Weekend. But as the stardom faded, he seemed to accept any role that came along (or maybe the stardom faded because he accepted any role that came along.) As for former NFL player Rosey Grier, he seems to be enjoying himself, and actually plays off the surly Milland quite well. Rowen and Martin's Laugh-In repertory company member Chelsea Brown is a hoot as Grier's dumbfounded wife and gets some of the film's best lines. Let me see, anything else? Oh, yes, as if a two-headed man wasn't enough, there's a two-headed gorilla terrorizing not the countryside for a change but a supermarket. Spills in too many aisles to count.

Now what keeps a head attached to a body is the neck, which, sans skin, look like the above. Unless...

...you happen to be processed by the Devil:

Homophobic little brat!  And to think, William Friedkin had directed The Boys in the Band only a few years earlier. Anyway, The Exorcist itself hit theaters in 1972, long before the advent of digital special effects. So, how did Friedkin and his crew get young Linda Blair's head to make that 360 degree turn?

 

 Simple. The camera was turned off and Blair was replaced by a life-size doll of herself. Then with wires and pulleys and other mechanical doohickeys, as well as someone who was operating all those things just outside the camera's range, the head was set into motion. Basically, it's a very sophisticated, and very scary, Muppet you're looking at.

Unfortunately, due to a prior commitment, the rabbit is unavailable.

Speaking of magic... 

Meet Georges Méliès, born on this day in Paris, France in 1861. Unlike some stage magicians in the late 19th-early 20th centuries, he wasn't at all phased by the sudden emergence of a newfangled competitor, the moving picture. Instead, he saw in it the opportunity to create illusions on a whole new scale. With some 500 films to his credit,  Méliès was arguably the first special effects artist, the Stephen Spielberg of his day. His most famous film was 1902's A Trip to the Moon, based on a Jules Verne novel. Except nowhere in Verne's novel does he describe anything like this:

Ouch!

I'm tempted to show you the entire 18-minute film, but the topic of today's post is the human head, not lunar landings. So instead I'll show you a Méliès film from four years earlier, The Four Troublesome Heads, which he not only directs but stars. In fact, he has several starring roles:

 Méliès took a medium that in its earliest years did nothing more than document reality, and with a sleight of hand, gave it a reality all its own.

Finally, what does the future hold for the human head? Here's Matt Groening's prediction:

Yes, I know one president is conspicuously absent, but that's because...

...his jar is locked away in some cupboard in the 30th century White House, still unwilling to concede.

Well, I hope I've convinced you of the importance of the human head. You couldn't really survive without one, so use yours wisely.

Take it away, Lou: