There's no doubting this is a very bad film by anyone's standards, but it isn't without some entertainment value. Bruce Dern – clearly on his uppers back in '71 – takes on the mad scientist role with such laid-back indifference to the part that his performance alone is worth the cost of the rental or purchase or ninety minutes of your life. Never will you see an actor so clearly embarrassed by the rubbish he has somehow found himself saddled with or trying so hard to appear invisible. Dern speaks each of his lines with a kind of preternatural calmness that leaves you wondering whether some underhand producer hasn't drugged him so that he believes he's floating through a dream. His character is assisted by Max (Berry Kroeger) who, quite frankly, is the creepiest thing in the film – like a strange uncle whose lap your mum warns you not to sit on when you're a kid…

The plot follows the typical monster-movie template. Once again our monster is stitched together from people's body parts in a fortress-like laboratory to which access is denied to the good doctor's long-suffering wife (Pat Priest). But, unlike Frankenstein, this is no meditation on the dangers of man playing God, rather than a frank attempt to titillate undemanding teens. Of course, wifey can't resist having a peek in the lab and before you can say 'don't open the door!' she's opened the door and – well, I'm sure you can get the rest.

The poor simpleton who has a maniacal killer's head grafted onto his neck (don't you hate it when that happens?) is something of a giant, and he's filmed from a low angle so that no money has to be spent on special effects. I'm sure Messrs Bloom and Cole must have been pretty close friends by the end of the shoot. Of course the killer quickly becomes the dominant partner and forces his neck-mate to embark on a killing spree. He lumbers around the countryside, chancing upon necking teenagers and wasted bikers who, for some reason, find it impossible to outrun him and, cackling wildly, summarily dispatches them for no apparent reason other than he's completely bonkers.

The single moment of any worth in the film is the point at which director Anthony Lanza cuts away from the murder of the female biker, just as those brainless cackles are beginning to rise. It's a moment of restraint totally at odds with the rest of the movie.

A maniacal killer's head is fused to the lumbering, gargantuan body of a man with the mind of a small child by a scientist who just happens to specialize in fusing two-headed creatures in his spare time. Why? He says to show everyone what a genius he is. Why on Earth would anyone want to create a monster with two heads - neither containing the brain of anything remotely resembling worthiness? Such is the premise in this bizarre, fascinating, and God awful film made in 1971. Bruce Dern plays the "mad" scientist with decided disinterest. Can you blame him? He strolls around with drink in hand and never shows any real depth of character. By the film's end, his performance just caves in. The two-headed monstrosity, which battles bikers on bikes wielding chains and has a cumulative IQ of 60, is a true sight of ineptitude to behold. John Bloom, who would later get an even worse role as Frankenstein's Monster in Al Adamson's horrendous opus Dracula Vs. Frankenstein, plays Danny - a hulking man that lost his mind when he was left for dead in a mine shaft years ago. Now an adult, Danny is dutiful to his father, is treated like a mental defective by all concerned, and sweats a lot. The head of Albert Cole, a man who we see leering or laughing with crazy glee, is attached when Cole tries to rape Dern's wife(more on her in a minute) and kills Danny's father. Dern and his limp-wristed former surgeon assistant(Barry Kroeger) feel the time is right to make a two-headed freak with the body of Cole at their disposal and the mentally deficient Danny just there. This movie is a real hoot to sit through as every minute in bad - bad but fun. The story stinks. Director Anthony Lanza has little savvy. The production values virtually non-existent(although the head thing looks better here then some of the other two--headed monsters of the same era). Acting? What acting? C'mon - Casey Kasem as a doctor/hero? Dern looks like he lost a bet and had to be in the picture. Cole is annoyingly disgusting and ridiculous. Bloom is okay at best. But I really liked Pat Priest as Dern's wife. She sure didn't give a great performance, but she made a believer out of me as she fainted(several times), ran from crazy Cole, lounged in a chair by the pool, laid in bed either of her own accord or bound and gagged, and finally was tied and put in a cage in the lab - all in either a bikini, a small nightie, or some other light attire that showcased her attributes, the brightest things about this dreadful dreck. This movie is very, very bad, and I must confess I loved every minute of it. I laughed and laughed and laughed. Just hearing that soundtrack where every beat foreshadows something suspenseful will happen and rarely does. Or how about the dialog used in the picture? Whew! This is one of the all-time great of le bad cinema.

There is no better companion film for The Thing with Two Heads than this, a movie that's pretty much the same idea: Dr. Roger Girard (Bruce Dern!) is a scientist experimenting with head transplantation who finally gets the chance to do the experiment that everyone says shouldn't happen. Hijinks, as they say, ensue.

Girard had a caretaker who was killed. That man's son Danny (John Bloom, The Dark, The Hills Have Eyes Part II, Brain of Blood) is a giant with great strength and the mild of a child. Manuel Cass is an escaped mental patient who is critically injured after killing Danny's dad. So you know - why not transplant their heads on the same body? What can go wrong?

Larry Vincent, one of the first film riffers as horror host Seymour on Los Angeles' Fright Night on KHJ-TV and Seymour's Monster Rally on KTLA, shows up, as does Pat Priest (the second Marilyn Munster, of course), Casey Kasem (I really need to do a Letterboxd list on the films of Casey because, well, I'm a maniac) and stuntman Gary Kent (who the film Danger God was about).

Once, on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, Dern revealed he was not paid for acting in this movie. He was given a check for $1,700 that bounced and when he returned to the set for the next day of filming, it had already been shut down.

It certainly made money, as American International Pictures paired this with the Amicus movie Scream and Scream Again.