Rohr frei für Familie Hollowhead - Life on the Edge

It's like a late-Snakefinger era Residents video that goes on forever because one little boy WON'T LET THEM STOP!! In our house we always follow it up with a Mongolian Death Worm quiche and Quisp pie. Most folks don't necessarily need the 151-proof white rum chaser, but we strongly suggest you just take your medicine and shut the heck up -- especially during all those extra juicy food preparation scenes. This is a great movie when it's served to your dinner guests without all those pre-conceived notions like Germanoid meal tickets getting in the way. Make sure you keep those internal visions of Jesus doin' the hustle in your head all updated and stuff and you'll survive the night just fine, which is more than you can say about Juliette Lewis' acting career. Does anybody else get her confused with Shayna Knight? So it's just me then. I thought so.

This strange little gem combines the biomorphic machinery of Giger with the surreal dadaism of Terry Gilliam and the sugary family life of "Leave it To Beaver". The Hollowheads live in a future world after overpopulation and economic collapse has forced everyone to live in inside giant tubes over vast factories, where pre-processed food is pumped in through pipes, and normal animals and plants have disappeared, replaced by selectively bred genetically-engineered mutants. Biomorphic machines are used as medical equipment, food sources, and even musical instruments. Yet the family lives in a 50's style nuclear family with touches of 80's extravagance (gotta love the bubble dress!). The household machinery and factory equipment is very reminiscent of the industrial scenes in Terry Gilliam's "Brazil". The Hollowhead family have striven to maintain civilization, while the managers of the ruling factory, United Umbilical (with a Staley-eqsue swastika-like logo), ruthlessly manages its employees with animalistic lust. "Meet the Hollowheads" is one of those films you will recognize more and more as its predictions start coming true.

Imagine a bizarre fusion of Terry Gilliam's Brazil and TV sitcom I love Lucy. Now add a dash of Cronenbergesque body-shock horror and a soupçon of sixties sci-fi idealism. The result might look something like Meet The Hollowheads, the only directorial effort (to date) from movie make-up maestro Tom Burman. And then again it might not.

Set in a strange world where all of life's necessities are supplied (and disposed of) via tubes, where strange creatures are used both as food and household tools, and where clean living wholesome folk are driven to violence, Meet the Hollowheads is definitely a film that needs to be seen to be believed.

Henry Hollowhead (John Glover), loving husband and father of three, is United Umbilical's top meter reader. Hoping for a promotion, he brings home his new boss, Mr. Crabneck, to meet his family and stay for dinner. But Mr. Crabneck proves to be a less than perfect house-guest, insulting Henry's youngest son, and leching after both Henry's tasty wife and his jail-bait daughter (played by a young Juliette Lewis). Soon enough the situation turns ugly and the Hollowheads are forced to fight back.

Extremely imaginative and downright freaky in places, this movie is certainly not going to be to everyone's taste, but those with a taste for the unusual and absurd should really give this one a try, if only to witness the sight of Juliette Lewis singing and dancing whilst her (real-life) brother plays a 'half-mutant-chicken/half-trombone' musical instrument.

And if that isn't enough to tempt you, the film also contains these treats: Ms. Lewis trying on a range of garish figure-hugging dresses, Ms Lewis feeding her grandpa green goop though a tube while he gropes her, Near Dark's Joshua Miller playing 'Splatspray' with huge lice, Bobcat Goldthwait (credited as Jack Cheese) talking normally, and Anne 'Throw Momma From The Train' Ramsey (in her final role) requiring subtitles due to her throat cancer.

Quite insane and quite possibly brilliant (but don't quote me on that), Meet The Hollowheads is well worth checking out if you love obscure cinematic oddities.

This is certainly one cheery little pile of glop but, with its rainbow-dessert/Good n'Plenty visual design, it is hard to digest and rather nausea inducing. It's like a bad dream channeled through a nether world where the brains of Terry Gilliam and Steven Spielberg (in his Goonies phase) connect. Meet the Hollowheads? More like the Jetsons-meets-Brazil-meets-a-hamster-habitrail... well, it's certainly not the usual "meetings" I'll grant that. But it's all contrived weirdness and goopy effects, and worst of all not funny. There's no wit, just a lot of Sid & Marty Kroft-like ('Lidsville/H.R. Pufnstuf', etc.) goings on that might appeal to kids. There's even a section with Anne Ramsey that is so badly acted and recorded that it required post-production sub-titles in order to figure out what was being said (granted Miss Ramsey died, presumably before she could loop her dialogue). There's also a cheesy 80's-cliche guitar & synth music score that ironically dates this futuristic film. Or maybe it's not futuristic, but an alternate universe... being the same place where this film came from, like some of the actors listed: Shnutz Burman, Lightfield Lewis, Shotgun Britton and Jack Cheese (yes, these are the actors names not their characters). Yet it was probably a blast to make, at least for the Burman clan: from the credits it appears the entire Burman family tree worked on this. Then again, Tom Burman is a make-up artist, so this may be the finest directorial achievement of any make-up artist in Hollywood history. Bravo... now let's put a Key Grip in the directorial chair and see what one of THEM can do.

This is sort of like a lite version of BRAZIL; which takes a standard 60s sit-com plot of a middle-class working father who has to impress his boss with a dinner at the family home; and sets it in some futuristic/alien world.

It has quite impressive production values, great set design, and a fairy tight little script.

All the child actors especially show a lot of enthusiasm and great personality.

Very enjoyable if you like escapist storytelling. It would probably make an enjoyable rainy-day video for the family during holidays.