Head of the Family

Head of the Family is cheesy B-movie trash at its best, the plot if there is one revolves around mutant quadruplets that are control by their brother who just happens to be a giant disembodied head. The plot good as it sounds really takes second stage to a number of cheap special effects and several sexy scenes. The star of the film is ex-porn star Jacqueline Lovell better known as Sara St James who plays a cheating wife looking to have her husband killed. Lovell gives a performance worthy of better source material and she gives the you the impression that a name change and a career move could prove very worthwhile for her. The film works because it doesn't take itself seriusly, the plot is crazy, the characters are shallow, the effects will make you laugh and the girls are sexy while losing their clothes at every chance they get. Despite of all of this you laugh with the film, its a bad film and it doesn't pretend to be anything else. The film while never rising above its B-movie roots does entertain for 82 minutes and if you want a Friday night popcorn movie you could do much worse than this.

That's a line from the movie, and that's what it is. This movie was wacked out from the start. The Stackpool quadruplets each have an odd abnormality. There's Wheeler, whose sense of smell, sound, and sight are incredibly enhanced. Otis has the strength of ten men, Ernestina (?) has, well, some special physical talents, and Myron is a giant head with a tiny body. Myron has cleverly dubbed himself "head of the family" because his special talent is an infinite intellect and he has the power to telepathically control the other 3. What a privilege. This is most definitely one of the oddest films I have ever seen. The southern one-liners are all over the place, and there isn't enough horror to classify this as a horror movie. However, the scene where Myron's big nasty 3 foot tongue slobbers all over Jacqueline Lovell's breast was rather horrifying. While this film was definitely , well, different, I must admit I got some enjoyment out of it.

This is one of those movies where the point is to embrace the campiness. Yes, this is a B-movie; what were you expecting, Shakespeare? Not all of the acting holds up, it is true, but the leads do a fair job of selling their characters, and there is full awareness they are doing parody. To be honest, the plot holds together a lot better than a lot of wide-release horror movies with "name" talent. And yes, if you don't get distracted by her lovely form, Jacqueline Lovell is doing some honest-to-gosh acting here. If anything, the flaw with this movie (despite the premise of the title villain), is that it's not quite bad enough to be truly campy.

A muscle man, a trollop, a big head brain, and a sensitive guy, make up the ultra-weird Stackpole family. They get their chuckles by waylaying strangers, giving them a lobotomy, then caging the victims in the basement for their amusement. Enter a diner owner, who's fooling around with a psycho biker's wife. Blackmailing the Stackpoles into getting rid of the brutish biker, he then puts the bite on them for money, which forces the plan to quickly spiral out of control. "Head of the Family" is outrageous and has enough dark humor to satisfy the "black comedy" crowd. There is very little gore, but be prepared for at least a bunch of nudity, including full frontal. Recommended of it's type. - MERK

C'mon folks. Do you really think the producer, director and cast intended this to be serious? A tongue-in-cheek parody of all those cheesy horror flicks I used to enjoy as a kid -- that's what I think this is supposed to be. Belly laughs? No. But I did find myself chuckling on occasion at the subtle touches and I was continually amused by and pleased with the thing. In this day of bloated, anything-goes, lowest common denominator comedy, this is a pleasant departure because it's serving up all those types of films (hence the over-the-top family of misfits, the gratuitous sex, etc.) and it's right on target. And personally, I think the acting is way above average here --they're making fun of all the bad acting that goes on in these films. It's too bad some of my fellow reviewers here tried to take this film as serious scary stuff. It's not intended to be that. I think it's poking fun at an entire genre. It's a well crafted little movie that dares to be different. I appreciated -- and enjoyed -- it.