The Gruesome Twosome

Herschell Gordon Lewis gives to this low-budget badly acted exploitation gore film the air of a literary piece. The main characters are well established especially the naive but suspicious college girl and the old lady of a Victorian quality. The film has extended silent scenes that remind of the 1920s silent films but also two remarkable avant-garde scenes (the opening scene and the film at the drive-in). Adding to all this the reference to Longfellow, there is an aesthetically satisfactory context to the central scenes of extreme gore. And has anyone noticed that the "Little Wig Shop" was on Elm Street?

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.

This is now the 3rd garbage horror film that I've seen which was directed by American, film-maker, H. G. Lewis - And I am now totally convinced that Lewis was nothing but the absolute worst and most pathetically incompetent movie-maker of all time. And I now refuse to ever watch another one of this moron's utterly awful movies ever again - 'Cause I'm totally convinced that they would be just like these 3 that I've already seen - Pure junk. Yes. Even though 1967's "The Gruesome Twosome" was a truly vile and amateur production - Its story did actually produce some genuine howls of unintentional laughter - But, in the long run - At a 72-minute running time - This story about a slobbering, dimwitted "psycho-scalper" and his wacky mother was so bad that it was downright unbearable to sit through. And speaking about idiotic dialogue and cringe-worthy acting - Between actresses Gretchen Welles' "Kathy" and Elizabeth Davis's "Mrs. Pringle" - These 2 women and their irksome performances were, without question, the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel.

WOW! This is absolutely the weirdest movie ever made...and a fun time to watch! The Godfather of Gore, Herschell Gordon Lewis made this movie very quickly to be used as a double bill with the abysmal "Something Weird" which at the time was not doing well on it's own at the theaters. This was his first "gore" film after making the infamous "Blood Trilogy" with producer David Freidman. Even though this film was a "rushed" work, it still holds it's own with some of the most outrageous scenes ever filmed including the opening segment (a conversation between 2 mannequin heads complete with construction paper faces that seems to last an eternity)a strange "film within a film" segment at a drive-in movie theater and a beach scene that boasts what is probably the worst performance by a band ever recorded on film! No Herschell Gordon Lewis classic would be complete without the gore and this film is LOADED with it...you'll see girls being scalped, decapitations, livers torn from abdomens and eyes gouged out. The trailer for this film brags that it is "The wildest motion picture ever made" that is the understatement of the twentieth century!

I've only seen three of Herschell Gordon Lewis's films thus far but I think this is the worst one yet. I loved Two Thousand Maniacs and I wasn't too fond of Blood Feast but it had its moments that I did indeed enjoy. I don't think I enjoyed anything about this movie except for some gore. Stay away if you can. If possible, this may have the worst acting I've ever seen on film. The storyline is idiotic, the lines are stupid and the filming, editing and direction are all miserable. I expected a fun and cheesy little horror film but what I got was 72 minutes of agony on screen. Do yourself a favor and see Two Thousand Maniacs instead. The Gruesome Twosome gets a gruesome two out of ten.

The Gruesome Twosome is a lot like any other Herschell Gordon Lewis film in that it features a ridiculous plot line, a plethora of useless performances, buckets of gore and some real nasty sequences. As usual, the director sets out his plot and it doesn't go anywhere from there. There aren't any twists in this film and what you see is very much what you get. While this simple formula is fun, it is rather monotonous also; and if you've seen a few other HG movies prior to seeing this one (as I had), it's safe to say that there isn't all that much here. The film kicks off with a suitably demented scene that sees two head models with wigs having a conversation with each other. From there, we learn that a wig maker's shop is getting its realistic hair straight from women's heads, as the old woman who runs the shop employs her retarded son to scalp the young women who comes looking to move into the abandoned apartment next door. The piece is made more ridiculous by the way that the old lady talks to Napoleon; who just happens to be a big stuffed cat! I'm never really sure if HG Lewis movies are meant to be bad, or if the director is just grossly talentless. The acting is so bad that it's arguably not even acting; between speaking parts, some of the actors are visibly laughing - I don't know if the whole thing is meant to be a joke. The film only lasts for the seventy or so minutes, and so you'd expect that even a plot as basic as this one would be able to be stretched; but the Godfather of Gore obviously didn't know what to do with it, meaning that way over half of the film is made up of useless scenes that add nothing to the plot and serve only in making the whole piece more weird. HG movies have a sort of otherworldly feel about them stemming from the fact that they are so inept; nobody in real life acts like the people in HG movies do, and this movie adheres to that styling. The characters are non-existent and the way they react to the local murders is purely stupid. The murder scenes themselves are grisly as usual, but as is the case with everything else in this film; they're impossible to take seriously. Overall, this really is a terrible movie; but there's something about HG movies that make them better than most trash, and while I won't argue with bad words against this film; I did enjoy watching it.

This one earned the only video store I knew that carried it multiple rentals... until I wore it out! If you love bad acting, preposterous dialogue and classic gore, you'll want to show Gruesome Twosome to all your friends. Repeat viewings lodge this foolishness, complete with the usual infectious Lewis soundtrack, deep in your psyche. Perhaps the most appealing thing about this one is that it draws some of the most miserable reviews cinema has ever seen. Judge for yourself. And it's short for easy digestion... or, um, indigestion.

H.G. Lewis, the horror movie hack behind "Blood Feast" and "2000 Maniacs," created this repulsive little item about a freak who stalks college coeds for their scalps. It seems his mother runs a wig shop, and she wants to sell only the best. You get the picture. Starring the usual Lewis cast of non-actors, and highlighted with gross-out special effects that are neither special nor effective.

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!

This film seems to have eek-ed out a cult following, though for the life of me, I have no idea why. The dialogue and story is as asinine as anything one is likely to find. Indeed, you'd find more convincing dialogue or effective story telling in a high school drama class. The gore is both obnoxious and obvious- it seems that the film's only purpose is to give the "special effects" guru a chance to showcase his/her ability to slather us with gore. The acting could've been a redeeming factor, however ultimately it isn't because the film is overloaded with attractive young thespians who cumulatively haven't got the talent to carry a commercial, let alone a full length movie. The story goes something like this: a psychotic women and her mentally challenged son run a wig shop in which they accumulate their inventory by slaying young women from the local college and scalping them when they stop by to look at the apartment they're renting out. Apparently business is booming because of a "recent trend" of young women to cut their hair short and then buy wigs. Make sense? If you think late 60's and early 70's gore is fun and campy, I suspect you'll be willing to overlook how ridiculous this film is and may actually enjoy it. But for those not really oriented to cheap 60's creepy horror, I leave you with this: the slasher genre, even with its countless, terrible sequels, are FAR up on the evolutionary scale when compared to this garbage! If you'd like to see a good movie of the day (late 60's/early 70's), I strongly recommend the Dr. Phibes movies.