The Gruesome Twosome (1967)

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

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.

Mr. Hershell Gordon Lewis, I'm a great fan of your twisted imagination... but you surely have issues!! "The Gruesome Twosome" may not be Lewis' best film (far from it, actually) it's yet another fun demonstration of his eccentric style and progressive horror visions. The story revolves on a sweet, yet utterly crazy old lady who talks to a stuffed wildcat named Napoleon and owns a little wig shop near a university campus. The wigs in her store look so realistic because they're made of actual girls' hair, bloodily scalped by her retarded son when they visited the house in order to rent a room! The sequences that are relevant to this story, like the slaughtering of the girls and the clumsy police investigation, maximally cover about 20 minutes of the 73 minutes playtime. The rest is pure padding, varying from morbidly funny gimmicks to hugely annoying and overly talkative scenes. I don't have a problem with a little bit of padding now and then, but Lewis slightly exaggerates here and he should have used the lost time better. The kinky intro with the gossiping foam heads was quite cool, but the overlong stalk-the-janitor sequence as well as the emotional girlfriend/glutton boyfriend scene were downright pointless. And what do you think about a bedroom full of college girls that start dancing out of the blue whilst eating fried chicken? Still, I can't possibly rate this movie any lower than 6 simply because H.G. Lewis is a horror pioneer and the gore in "The Gruesome Twosome" is so effectively nauseating and over-the-top gross! Poor Rodney scalps, cuts up and even fully dissects innocent girls with a careful eye for detail. Just make sure you haven't eaten before you watch this movie!

Mrs. Pringle and her half-witted, needs-to-be-institutionalized son Rodney run a small business called the Little Wig Shoppe, which is also next to a room they "rent" out to beautiful college co-eds with long hair. Of course at Mrs. Pringle's establishment only 100% human hair is used. Does she then buy a lot of hair? Don't bet on it. Her son uses a knife(and later an electric carving knife) to scalp these girls for their hair and also various organs(Thursday is Napoleon's night for liver). That's right, I forgot to mention the third member of this happy little family. His name is Napoleon, and he is a stuffed Lynx(or Bobcat). Mrs Pringle talks to Napoleon throughout the whole picture. Business is booming for Mrs. Pringle till a young girl decides to investigate the disappearance of her long-haired friend out searching for an apartment. As far as Herschell Gordon Lewis flicks go, this one is decidedly a notch above films like Two Thousand Maniacs, The Wizard of Gore, and Color Me Blood Red. It has the best acting in it that I have seen for any of his films, not good but almost average! Ronnie Cass plays the demented mother with a likable camp. The film is also one of Lewis's better shot films in terms of direction. Sure we have a ridiculous scene in the beginning with two styrofoam heads with painted faces and wigs talking, but the film has a pretty good pace throughout. Am I saying this is good? No, but is it very entertaining. It also has some pretty good music in it, "Right Napoleon?" As for the gore, it's there but there really is not a lot of it and it fortunately never reaches the hyperbolic level of Lewis's The Wizard of Gore.

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.