Year: 1972
Duration: 01:20:38
Directed by: Andy Milligan
Actors: Denis DeMarne, Julia Stratton, Gay Feld
Language: English
Country: USA
Also known as: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Blood, L'uomo con 2 teste, The Man with Two Faces
Description: A mad doctor steals the
brain of a killer and injects himself with the serum. He then becomes a
sadistic monster, raping and killing prostitutes and whores until he is
captured.This most schizophrenic take on Robert Louis Stevenson's
morality tale, The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll and Mistress Hyde,
portrays the cursed doctor's dark half as a charismatic, DeSadian
sexual predator, not a mere wailing monster. His rape-mentality dementia
is as creepy and disturbing as Frederic March's freak-out in the 1932
classic version, sort of Jack the Ripper
as Doctor Frankenstein. Thus, Andy Milligan has taken a time-honored
and shop-worn story and given new, ungodly life to it. By painting
Jekyll/Hyde as a sexual sadist, Andy creates a reason for his patented
scenes of strong violence, sexual discord and grisly gore. As
Jekyll/Hyde is a tortured soul, so is this movie, and ultimately, the
viewer. This includes an absolutely impossible scene in which drooling
medical students perform an "autopsy" with axes and cleavers!
The psychological import of these cynical scenes is clear, as
is Milligan's London, which is truly Freudian; there are whores
everywhere, on every corner, in every shadowy doorway, lurking in every
corner. And they're all dying to be punished for their sins. And they
are...Somehow, Andy has always been able to get talented and attractive
young talent to sweat it out in his Grade-Z, no-budget, never-seen
abominations. This flick has a most exciting parade of alluring cheap
tarts.April Connors in particular, playing herself brilliantly, is one
of the most enticing Staten Island-Cockney tarts to ever burn up the
drive-in screen. Her lusty, low-rent vulnerability against William
Defane's grimacing hysteria is superb, especially in one intimate,
unbearably tense scene, in April and Hyde's first meeting. The
electrifying seduction scene between Hyde and April in the bar has the
erotic intensity of great art.After much wailing and gnashing, the film
degenerates into a wild, Dionysian sex orgy in which Hyde pays a madam
to inject everyone with his serum, turning them all into drooling,
sex-crazed ghouls! This ungodly, horrendous scene is wild, just wild!The
Man With Two Heads is a good example of Andy Milligan as amazing
aesthetic alchemist.
He takes the most hackneyed cinematic/dramatic elements and
chucks them haphazardly together in an unutterably and entirely new way:
avant-garde, free-form camerawork alternates with stagy scenes worthy
of Warhol or Warren (Ed or Jerry); literate (if hoary and tedious)
scripts; sincere if hammy acting; a ruthless fixation on mock-Victorian
period settings, with moldy costumes and authentic locations; the
cheesiest stock music (from the infamous Thomas J. Valentino music
library in New York); surprising and shocking sex-and-violence subtext,
including ludicrous gore; tinny sound; breathlessly unrehearsed takes.
The Man With Two Heads is a good example of Andy Milligan as amazing
aesthetic alchemist. He takes the most hackneyed cinematic/dramatic
elements and chucks them haphazardly together in an unutterably and
entirely new way: avant-garde, free-form camerawork alternates with
stagy scenes worthy of Warhol or Warren (Ed or Jerry); literate (if
hoary and tedious) scripts; sincere if hammy acting; a ruthless fixation
on mock-Victorian period settings, with moldy costumes and authentic
locations; the cheesiest stock music (from the infamous Thomas J.
Valentino music library in New York); surprising and shocking
sex-and-violence subtext, including ludicrous gore; tinny sound;
breathlessly unrehearsed takes.
Review: As the credits state, this is Andy
Milligan's adaptation of a novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. (Guess
which one?) Denis De Marne stars as Dr. William Jekyll, a Victorian
instructor in biochemistry who develops a drug capable of eliminating
man's inborn potential for evil. Unfortunately, it doesn't do anything
for man's tendency to make mistakes, and when his assistant (Berwick
Kaler) spills something on his notes and covers his butter fingers by
scribbling in some corrected text, Jekyll has some surprises in store
when he decides to test the formula on himself. The result is a violent
alter ego who goes by the name of Danny - maybe Danny Blood, if we take
this project's original title ("Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Blood") to heart.
Rob Craig's new book on Andy Milligan (Carnage)
reckons that "The Man With Two Heads" is Milligan's masterpiece, and he
may be right. The lead performances are surprisingly good and the whole
thing resembles an ambitious stage play caught on film. Unfortunately,
Milligan's original director's cut was stronger than the PG-rated
version that survives and is now lost to the ages, but this version
offers some choppy glimpses of the evils that must have lurked there.
The most noticeable casualty is an out-of-nowhere delirious orgy scene
that plays like Andy's attempt to film the Velvet Underground song
"Sister Ray."
Technical note: It was recommended to me that I stop uploading low
quality avi files and work directly from the VOB files on my master
disc, so this is my first attempt to do this; I hope all goes well. This
was taken directly from a near-mint quality Wizard Video VHS
pre-record, with only one tiny glitch that I could see. The image
frequently looks overly grainy, blown-out and what-not, but it's the
only release this film has ever had and you can't get closer to the
source than this.
Screenshots:
get a high quality DVD or Blu-ray:
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