Such a frustrating disappointment

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The very beginning of this film might just be the stupidest introduction I have ever seen. Two styrofoam wig heads are decorated with paper eyes, brows, nose, ears and mouths--and look as if they were made by a talents 10 year-old. Then, the two heads supposedly begin talking and talking. Now the faces don't move in the least and what they talk about is pretty tedious. The total effect is super-lame to say the least.The next scene shows a young lady responding to an add for a room to rent. The old lady in this scene can't act and terribly overdoes the scene--she might just be one of the very worst actresses I've seen in a very long time. She pushes the young lady into a room--at which point the old lady's retarded son comes into the room and scalps her. There is tons of fake blood and it is a bit disturbing--until you notice that the actress is wearing a wig and the wig is being cut off--you can see the lines pretty clearly. It seems that these two psychos have a wig business and take the wigs from people!! The rest of the film is made up of a bunch of vignettes starring various people with no acting talent whatsoever. Some (such as the stupid lady who loves to accuse people of the crimes) are meant to be funny, others scary--but with such bad acting and difficulty reading their lines, it's unintentionally funny and not especially scary. A few of the blood and guts scenes look pretty good--as it looks like they used real livers and lots of blood (or very realistic looking fake blood). In fact, the gore of some of the scenes is the best part of the film--though this certainly isn't enough to carry the film. Due to bad acting and a poorly executed plot, this film is only for bad movie fans.By the way, this film is from director Herschell Gordon Lewis--the same man responsible for such masterpieces as BLOOD FEAST, A TASTE OF BLOOD and MONSTER A GO-GO. Among bad movie fans, he's a bit of a god--in the same league as such rotten movie directors as Al Adamson, Ray Dennis Steckler, Ed Wood and Ted Mikels.I give this one a 2--simply because some of the gore looked realistic. A thoroughly cheap and dumb film from start to finish.

The Gruesome Twosome is a lot like any other Herschell Gordon Lewis film in that it features a ridiculous plot line, a plethora of useless performances, buckets of gore and some real nasty sequences. As usual, the director sets out his plot and it doesn't go anywhere from there. There aren't any twists in this film and what you see is very much what you get. While this simple formula is fun, it is rather monotonous also; and if you've seen a few other HG movies prior to seeing this one (as I had), it's safe to say that there isn't all that much here. The film kicks off with a suitably demented scene that sees two head models with wigs having a conversation with each other. From there, we learn that a wig maker's shop is getting its realistic hair straight from women's heads, as the old woman who runs the shop employs her retarded son to scalp the young women who comes looking to move into the abandoned apartment next door. The piece is made more ridiculous by the way that the old lady talks to Napoleon; who just happens to be a big stuffed cat! I'm never really sure if HG Lewis movies are meant to be bad, or if the director is just grossly talentless. The acting is so bad that it's arguably not even acting; between speaking parts, some of the actors are visibly laughing - I don't know if the whole thing is meant to be a joke. The film only lasts for the seventy or so minutes, and so you'd expect that even a plot as basic as this one would be able to be stretched; but the Godfather of Gore obviously didn't know what to do with it, meaning that way over half of the film is made up of useless scenes that add nothing to the plot and serve only in making the whole piece more weird. HG movies have a sort of otherworldly feel about them stemming from the fact that they are so inept; nobody in real life acts like the people in HG movies do, and this movie adheres to that styling. The characters are non-existent and the way they react to the local murders is purely stupid. The murder scenes themselves are grisly as usual, but as is the case with everything else in this film; they're impossible to take seriously. Overall, this really is a terrible movie; but there's something about HG movies that make them better than most trash, and while I won't argue with bad words against this film; I did enjoy watching it.

H.G. Lewis like to stage bloody set pieces. However in order to show them off he likes to make a feature length film. Many of them aren't very good and they're padded out to make the 70 minute mark. The gruesome Twosome is one of those films. The film revolves around a crazy old lady who makes nice realistic looking wigs and her ogreish son. She has a secret in her wig making that you'll find hair raising. They're many filler scenes placed through out the movie. The most notorious one (and clever) takes place in the beginning where two wigs are holding a conversation. The gore set pieces are cool but you'll have to sit through the movie to experience them.Recommended for campy cult fans.B

If this film seems padded and too long at 72 minutes that's because it is. Because of an incompetent production assistant director Lewis had to pad the film out with bizarre scenes like the opening dialog between two wig-wearing styrofoam heads and a hilarious drive-in movie the main characters watch that consists of people drinking beer and eating/squashing fruit, not to mention the drawn-out scene of girls dancing while munching on Kentucky Fried Chicken. This film is a treasure to behold for 60s exploitation film buffs as the black humor and gore flows freely and the 60s fashions are as garish as can be.