Customer Reviews

The Gruesome Twosome [VHS]

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4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you've never experienced a Herschell Gordon Lewis film this is as good a place to start as any.Everything,literally eveything about his ultra low budget epics is so wonderfully inept yet the end result is always hugely entertaining and compulsively watchable.The other-wordly like acting is a hoot.The camera hardly ever moves.Shots are framed badly.If you can take the excessive gore(which adds to the surreal tone)that is present in most of Lewis's films check a few out for something quite unlike anything you've seen before.

For those of you unfamiliar with the work of director Herschell Gordon Lewis, I advise you to start with 2000 Maniacs (his best in my opinion) or Blood Feast. For those who have seen those classics, I would consider this a "minor" yet worthwhile work along the lines of Color Me Blood Red. You get four good gore scenes, which may not seem like a lot, but when the movie only runs about 1 hr. 15 min. that's actually pretty decent.

The plot concerns the elderly Mrs. Pringle and her drooling, mentally deranged son who run a wig shop. The wigs are made out of human hair which the son obtains by killing and scalping beautiful young women. Clearly the old-woman-helping-her-son-kill idea influenced several newer horror films, most obviously the classic Mother's Day. Mrs. Pringle also has a stuffed cat (I'm guessing a leopard) named Napoleon who she talks to repeatedly throughout the movie. Napoleon has a central role in this film; those familiar with Lewis' work will appreciate the fact that an embalmed animal can steal a scene from some of the human actors involved.

Objects also become actors in the much-discussed introduction to the movie, which features two styrofoam heads with wigs talking to one another. It's this kind of low-budget inventiveness that makes Lewis' movies entertaining. Sure it pads out the running time, but what the heck! it's creative and bizarre. I also enjoyed the movie that was playing at the drive-in: the camera never shows the couple's faces but instead shows their actions at the dinner table during their conversation. Their hands pour beer, handle food, crush potato chips, and smash fruit in a way that corresponds with what they're saying. Truly weird.

The heroine of The Gruesome Twosome is a meddling college girl who is trying to figure out the recent murders. Don't expect rocket science or great acting here. Do expect her and her college girlfriends to start dancing in unison, whether in the dorm room or at the beach. I especially liked the girl who danced on the bed while eating a KFC drumstick. Careful not to choke!

The usual nice extras are here from Something Weird Video. There's a short film about wig making, Lewis' running commentary through the feature, and Lewis' gallery of exploitation art (print ads, posters and other promotional material from his films). I really enjoyed the ads, but in some cases the small print was difficult or impossible to read. My main complaint about the DVD (and every other Something Weird release of Lewis) is the inside cover. If you've never seen the movie before, don't look at it! It gives away key gore scenes in full-color close up. Other than these minor drawbacks, I recommend Lewis' horror films to fans of gory sick humor and bizarre, low-budget film making.

In 1963 Herschell Gordon Lewis, an independent filmmaker best known for making limited release "cutie" pictures, changed forever the face of American cinema when he released "Blood Feast." That film, as low budget as you could possibly get, heralded the era of the gore film. While it would be quite some time before Hollywood caught on to the fact that certain segments of the movie going public hungered for films containing nauseating scenes of explicit violence, H.G. Lewis took one look at the receipts for "Blood Feast" and decided he better quickly make another movie similar to this one. What followed was a series of gruesome zero budget shockers, films like "The Wizard of Gore," "A Taste of Blood," "2000 Maniacs," and this exercise in bloodletting, "The Gruesome Twosome." Lewis went on to make one more gore film, the downright offensive "The Gore-Gore Girls," before retiring from the film business in order to devote his time to the advertising business. It wasn't until 2002 that the director returned to form with "Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat," a movie which proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Godfather of Gore still has what it takes to gross out an audience.

"The Gruesome Twosome" tells the story of Mrs. Pringle, her mentally defective son Rodney, and her stuffed cat Napoleon. Mother and son live alone in a rambling house where they run a small wig business out of a room on the ground floor. The store draws in many customers, so many that in order to restock the product Pringle happens upon a novel idea. Since a university sits right down the road, Pringle puts out a bogus advertisement about a room for rent that soon draws in plenty of potential female boarders. The girls aren't in the house for more than a few minutes before they learn the horrific truth about this elderly lady and her disturbed son. Pringle shoves the victim into a room, locks the door, and unleashes Rodney on the frightened victims. A bloody scalping, an evisceration, and a tracheotomy performed with an electric carving knife provide the grue typical of a H.G. Lewis film. The disappearances of several women worries Kathy, a university student with an overbearing attitude and a nosiness that goes beyond all rational sense. When Kathy's friend Dawn suddenly disappears after looking for lodgings, our annoying amateur sleuth starts to uncover clues that will lead to her own personal showdown with Pringle and Rodney. "The Gruesome Twosome" is definitely not the goriest Lewis motion picture, not by a long shot, but it does contain a few scenes guaranteed to turn the stomach. Unfortunately, the infrequent gore is about all this film offers the viewer.

As far as Herschell Gordon Lewis films go, "The Gruesome Twosome" is a mediocre effort. Sure, all Lewis films rely heavily on atrocious acting, wooden pacing, and sloppy editing, but the outlandish gore sequences usually balanced out--to some extent anyway--these horrendous flaws. Regrettably, the gore scenes are rare in this picture, but that is the least of our worries here. The Kathy character poses the biggest problem; she is so annoying and so steadfast in her ridiculous quest to blame anyone for the disappearances that I quickly hoped she would come to a bad end. There is some nonsense about her boyfriend getting angry with her about her inquisitiveness, along with several useless scenes involving Kathy and her girlfriends, which totally stifle the pace of the film. Moreover, Lewis admits on the commentary that he failed to shoot enough footage to manufacture a seventy plus minute film. The sort of theaters that showed Lewis films would only present movies of a certain length, so the director had to add several scenes of filler to flesh out "The Gruesome Twosome." Check out the ludicrous opening sequence with the talking mannequin heads or the confusing potato chip/fruit sequence midway through the film to see what I am talking about.

Still, a few notable items stand out. The actress who played Mrs. Pringle did a good job with her character. She has a hilarious tendency to turn everything he says into a rhetorical question directed to her stuffed cat Napoleon. After watching a few scenes with Pringle, I began to seriously think that this person might have been the most competent actor Lewis ever hired. The chap who played Pringle's son Rodney also did an effective job as the grotesquely unhinged killer. His leers and grunts while he commits a dastardly deed are quite disturbing in their own right. Sadly, Rodney gets little screen time. I think if "The Gruesome Twosome" had spent more time developing Pringle and Rodney, it would have been a much better film. Instead, we get the two aforementioned filler scenes, a few cheesy dance sequences with Kathy and her friends, and boring shots of the beach, a car race, and a chase scene involving Kathy and the school janitor. Boring!

DVD extras include a theatrical trailer for the film, a poster gallery from Lewis's numerous films, a commentary from the man himself, and a clip about making wigs that came from one of the "Mondo Cane" films. The picture quality is sub par, with fading colors and streaks appearing with frightening regularity. This is especially disappointing when one remembers how great "2000 Maniacs" looked on DVD. While "The Gruesome Twosome" disappoints in many areas, it is still a movie with that distinct Herschell Gordon Lewis feel. Personally, I would watch "Blood Feast 2" or "The Wizard of Gore" again before diving back into this mess. "The Gruesome Twosome" is for Lewis completists only.

College chicks looking for a room to rent find it in Mrs. Pringle, on old loon who runs a wig shop. Problem is, the college chicks don't get to rent a room. Instead Mrs. Pringle shoves them into a dirty back room where her retarded(I'm sorry, Mentally Handicapped) son, Rodney, proceeds to slaughter and scalp them. Helps keep the wig business going, ya know!
Yes, what we have here is another Herschell Gordon Lewis schlockfest. His first three films, dubbed the "Blood Trilogy" were in collaboration with producer, David Friedman. The Gruesome Twosome is Lewis' first gore flick after the partnership dissolved, and in a way begins a new trilogy. All of Lewis' gore films have the same feel, but the three after The Blood Trilogy(Gruesome Twosome, Wizard Of Gore and Gore Gore Girls) are a bit different. The gore is a bit more nasty and the films just seem a bit darker and nastier. What makes Lewis' films more icky than many other films is that he doesn't do gore in quick cuts like most directors do. The camera is right there lingering on the carnage and it's not going anywhere. Rodney slices a woman's stomach open and then sits and playfully sifts through her innards. The squeezing and playing with organs would be elaborated on in the next two films, as well as Blood Feast 2. It's almost like it's own kind of pornography. The few gore scenes in this film are well handled and not bad looking, with the exception of the scalping victim where you can very clearly see where the appliance starts on her head. Lewis's gore scenes have an interesting mix of ultra fake looking mixed with very real looking.
For the Gruesome Twosome, Lewis appears to have, at the most, a half an hour of an idea. He just wants to get women into this room so Rodney can slice them up, but what do you do with the other 30+ minutes of the film? Lewis put the editing of this film into the hands of someone who ended up cutting the film down to less than an hour, so in order to add a few minutes of run time, he had to add that ridiculous intro with the wigs. But that's not all. The film is full of filler, more filler than any other Lewis film. One scene has girls in a dorm talking about the murders, then they abruptly stop and dance around on their beds while eating KFC!! After this goes on for about a minute you find yourself saying, "What the hell is this??" Throw in more pointless dancing on a beach and long sequence in which our leading lady follows a suspect, and you got filler, filler, filler!
But for all it's filler and not so interesting subplot, it's still Lewis and does still have his charm. It's not my favorite Lewis film, though it does have it's moments(there's a scene where some characters are at a drive-in theater, and the film they're watching is hilarious).
Needless to say it's for Lewis fans only.

The Gruesome Twosome is an H.G. Lewis movie that was released in 1967. However, it's still pretty gory, or should I say "gruesome" even by today's standards. It's my second favorite H.G. Lewis movie, after Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat. Although, I haven't seen Wizard of Gore yet. H.G. Lewis should do a sequel, and call it The Gruesome Threesome!

When the first sign in a Herschell Gordon Lewis film reads "100% Human Hair Wigs for Sale," is there ever any question where the hair came from? Mrs. Pringle and her son Rodney run a charming little wig shop with amazingly beautiful heads of hair. Next door, they offer a room for rent open to any unfortunate coeds that plan on living off campus. It isn't long before the police are able to connect the missing college girls with the little shop of horrors! THE GRUESOME TWOSOME has all of the same dreadful acting and stagnant directing that Horror fans have come to expect from the later H.G. Lewis efforts . As always, the only thing worth watching for is the gore. The film is hardly able to make its feature run-time even with the ridiculous amount of useless filler. Lewis opens with a mindless conversation between two Styrofoam heads, adds random scenes of go-go dancing and people eating food, and then extends the murder sequences to outrageous lengths. The strange characters and throwaway plot never come close to reproducing the same level of fun and camp found in the original Blood Trilogy, but it still holds its place among 60's Gore aficionados.

-Carl Manes
I Like Horror Movies

I received this as a Christmas present and was the first Herschell Gordon Lewis I've ever seen! What I loved about this is that it has the classic of the 1960's and was extremely gory for a movie made in that time period. The thing I found very annoying was the old lady always talking to her dead stuffed cat! Her and her son have a wig shop and the wigs are made from women's real hair, because the son scalps the women and kills them in gory ways. I think this movie should be remade. I'd probably recommend THE GRUESOME TWOSOME!!!!!

This is not one of Hershell's best, but I'll buy anything he puts his name on, movie-wise, at least. I just love his commentary and insight into such a wonderful time, when everything was up for grabs in movie making. This movie has some good gore in it, intestines, scalpings, eyeball-gouging, etc. It's about an old woman, named Mrs. Pringle, and her son Rodney, who own a wig shop/rooms for rent. The "Rooms for Rent" premise is how they lure their victims to the shop, then Mrs. Pringle leads them to this door, has them go inside, and shuts the door and locks it. Then the maniacal Rodney takes over. The results aren't pretty, to say the very least! Let's just say that they don't SELL one wig in the movie, but they do obtain a few of them, in gruesome fashion. KFC makes it's first appearance in a film here. See it to find out what I mean! Colonel Sanders even made an appearance in one of Hersch's films, Blast-Off Girls. Hersch was kind of a shill for them in these two movies. He got free food in exchange for it. He had to cut costs wherever he could, and he did it masterfully! This DVD is a must for your Herschell Gordon Lewis collection! Get it now!!!!

If you're an HG Lewis fan or just the low budget horror exploitation scene of yesteryear you'll wanna see this '67 effort.People who expect a slickly done horror feature should stay away,unless you harbor an admiration for camp.Anyway,since I belong to the second group mentioned I'm all over this!A cool movie,but not quite up there with Blood Feast but what is?This dvd is great quality,has the trailer,a short,and a revealing commentary track.Worth a look.

sick mommy & sick son run a human wig shop & trap the local college girls in a back room of the shop to get there hair cut/or a scalp!!!!!!!!!this is not HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS'S best effort by no means!!! but it is a classic blueprint gore flick from the original master of gore himself!!! this flick is gooooofy & thats what its supposed to be so when your watching it DON'T TAKE IT SERIOUSLY!!!! THIS IS A PIONEER GORE FLICK TO THE BONE!!! & if you don't have it then your gonna want to get it to help complete your H.G.LEWIS collection!!!!! so hurry up & get it before you cant find it anymore. its got a decent commentary by H.G.LEWIS & a couple of other gooooooofy (aged) extras all & all this is a blueprint classic low budget gore flick!!!! GET IT & E!!!!N!!!!J!!!!O!!!!Y!!!!