Head

In the Sixties there was a band called "The Beatles" and they were bigger than Jesus.  Because of their massive scale in comparison to a religious figure, American television networks decided to create a TV show based around a rip-off band, which was known as "The Monkees".  Despite being only tangentially connected to a band physically larger in size than the son of God, the Monkees were a respectable height themselves:  perhaps not bigger than Jesus, but definitely bigger than Paul of Tarsus.  Though a band entirely manufactured by crass cooperate marketing strategies (kind of a failed precursor for the modern music industry), they made quite a few good songs which live on fondly in America's musical memory.  Also their show only lasted two seasons, but many of its signature gags live on as Scooby-Doo stole each and every one of them.

Let's rewind to 1968.  The band - now actually a real musical group after a very ugly fight for creative control - were not doing so hot.  The show was dead, their music was failing to place on the charts, and slowly they were moving into far stranger territory than their early Beatles-inspired pop image.  One weekend the Monkees went to a resort in Ojai, California with Bob Rafelson, one of their original creators, and a pre-famous Jack Nicholson*.  Supposedly they all got incredibly high (this was the Sixties after all) and brainstormed ideas for a movie into a tape recorder.  The end result was a movie so fantastically bizarre that it immediately bombed at the box office, killed the careers of the Monkees, and was left relatively forgotten for forty years.

And it happens to be one of my personal favorite movies of all time.

The parody on the Monkees television theme at the beginning of the movie promises "we hope you like our story, although their isn't one, that is to say there's many, that way there is more fun".  And it sure delivers on that. 

"Head" has no plot.  If you buy the DVD, you can skip the chapters and watch them in any particular order you want, and it will make no particular difference on your final reaction to the movie.  The first scene and the last scene come together on some level, but beyond that nothing is gained, nothing is won, nobody is saved, and but quite a bit is sung.  There are characters, the Monkees themselves, and they do have personalities, so at least you're grounded in that respect.  Instead you simply see the Monkees wandering around into various cliche movie genres and then falling into wacky situations and the occasional random music sequence.  There is a very limited fourth wall, and you can never be quite sure of what is "real" and what is just taking place on the movie set where the Monkees are trapped.  Storylines just bleed into each other without warning, leaving problems unresolved and completely forgotten.

The dialog is insane, perhaps even purposefully random.  At one point a cow talks to the band, saying "Monkees are the cwaziest peoples!".  You can never be sure if any of it actually means anything.  Characters often react in bizarre ways all just to add to the silliness of the entire picture.  Some people compare this movie to a "three-day acid trip".  This movie defines Sixties psychedelics, and then goes farther and parodies it.  Just when you think you might be given a philosophical explanation for whatever the heck you're watching on screen, the other characters just tear the entire argument to pieces and then go fight pirates.  And then there's another musical number.  None of it makes any sense, and none of it wants to.  Its a movie so ridiculous that its almost a work of art.  Or maybe it is, I have no idea.  And obviously the people who made this movie have no idea either.

Peppered throughout the movie is various cameos from all sorts of actors and musicians, several with a look like "what the Hell am I doing here?"  Frank Zappa wanders in and says some random words and then wanders out, never to be seen again.  And look, there's Teri Garr in her very first film role.  And there's Jack Nicholson hanging in the background when the movie decides to show the crew for no apparent reason.  Then there's several other people whose name and roles are written backwards in the end credits.  Why write names backwards in the end credits?  Why not write names backwards in the end credits?

Just to prove how strange this movie is:  the title, "Head", was picked purely so that if the Monkees ever made another movie, they could say "coming from the people who gave you Head!"  The entire title is a dirty pun that only could have made sense if they made a sequel, and sadly they never got the chance.  If you were ever wondering what the inspiration for the random intros that I made back when I was wasting my life writing walkthroughs, well here's you go.  It was this perfectly crazy movie.

"Head" features a great soundtrack that it almost as underrated as the movie itself.  The album "Head" was arranged by Jack Nicholson and features random bits of dialog from the film.  Not to mention that it has some great songs, easily some of the best that the Monkees have ever done.  "Porpoise Song" is just as good as the more famous "Last Train to Clarksville" in my humble opinion.  Tragically its many times more obscure.

I cannot recommend this movie highly enough, even though I wonder if perhaps I'm the only person on Earth who can appreciate its insanity.  Perhaps its a postmodern deconstruction of the Monkees experience with the industrialization of pop culture by cooperate entities.  I don't know.  I really don't care.  Its silly, beyond weird, has no plot, and is criminally unknown.  Watch "Head".  At the very last watch it once.  Some things like "LOST' make no sense, but pretend they that have some kind of explanation, be it purely symbolic, and then ultimately leave you with no answers.  "Head" has no answers, has no explanation, and is right up front with it from the very start.  You have to respect that kind of absurdity.

"I'm always the dummy!"

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* Jack Nicholson at the time was essentially a failure, having only managed to gain roles in horrible B-movies directed by frequent "Mystery Science Theater 3000" alumnus, Roger Corman.  He also threw away what might have been a very successful career with Hanna-Barbara, the animating company that would later steal the Monkee's television act for Scooby-Doo.  Having given up acting, he decided to become a screen writer, and "Head" was one of his first movies.  Of course, having watched this movie, I find it a little difficult for me to believe that there actually was a script.  A year after this movie, Jack Nicholson would rise to fame for playing a drunkard Southern lawyer in "Easy Rider", and the rest is history.