The Gruesome Twosome

Apple Dumpling, I’ve been through bloody murder, and that’s a fact.

An old lady, seemingly sweethearted and cordial, is in fact mad and talks to a stuffed tiger called Napoleon, and houses a mentally challenged son that loves to butcher college co-eds she traps in his room, using their scalps for wigs to sale to the local women in the community!

**½

I was just left dumbfounded at the opening of Gruesome Twosome. Someone unseen is playing out a conversation between two women through facially dressed wig holders. Yes, this is exactly as it reads. Going back and forth about argumentative convo regarding college and bloody murder. Eventually a hand with a switchblade knife pulls off the wig of one of the talking heads (literally, talking heads) and stabs it in a hole cut out at the top, with accompanying spitting blood. Yeah. Something about Rodney, experiencing is believing and some such nonsense. I was just rather left mouth agape. What the hell am I getting myself into?

Then the second scene came. Mrs. Pringle runs a wig shop. She has a “Rooms to Rent” sign outside her home/wig shop, and those girls from the local college who respond have quite a fate in store for them. One such girl, from the college, thinks the warm and inviting Mrs. Pringle is about to show her to the room for rent, but this poor soul instead is locked in a backroom with a nutjob. This nutjob, her son, Rodney (Chris Martel), takes a primitive cutting knife and scalps her. I’ll just get this out of the way: The make-up effects for the scalping are an absolute disaster. This is just too funny. Oh, she screams and screams, and that wig comes off with a lot of film blood as the crazy makes mongoloid utterances of excitement. It isn’t as gruesome as it is hilarious. Oh, I’m the sure those with the weakest of stomachs will probably hurl, but for the rest of us, this is just so ridiculous. What is even more hilarious is how long this scalping takes. Lots of extended peeling off the top. Oh, and something even more priceless than the actual scalping (which seems to go on FOREVER, as Rodney’s tongue is wagging) is how Rodney holds the hair and attached skin in his bloody hands as pieces of flesh fall from it. Maybe even a little brain splatters out. This is HGL, folks. Expect the expected. I always read about the blood trilogy, but Gruesome Twosome and Wizard of Gore are just as deserved to be featured in the same breath because the blood didn’t stop with Color Me Blood Red.

A scene that just had me in stitches show the girls of a college (the lead blond actress shares with them) in a dorm room checking out the headlines regarding missing female students, dancing, snapping their fingers, and gnawing away on some drumsticks from a bucket of KFC chicken. Mmm. Want some? When the radio broadcast announces that the three missing co-eds were possibly murdered, Kathy (Gretchen Wells in a wretched performance that is so ideal for any HGL flick) is inspired—despite her boyfriend, Dave’s (Rodney Bedell) objections—to find out who is responsible. There’s a wonderful scene where Kathy and Dave discuss murder, with her so in tune with her inner detective, even the janitor of the Chinese Drive-In theater (carrying his tin garbage can and can spike) is suspected! Haha. Oh, not to be denied her morbid curiosity, Kathy follows the janitor (who had confiscated something hidden in a brown paper bag) from the theater through a neighborhood, basically “hiding in plain sight” (since she hides behind skinny trees and bushes not so thick yet he doesn’t see her!) when he turns around to see if anyone is following him. In the bag are bones that he digs a spot in his yard for which certainly shocks Kathy into believing he’s a killer hiding proof of his crimes.

The whole movie is really as much about the characters and setting as it is the bloodletting. Herschel Gordon Lewis enjoys shooting the girls in their dorm (one while taking a shower and preparing to wear the next wig she spent most of her savings on), chatting, and the beach as the kids dance, enjoy the local boys jamming on their musical instruments, and some making out nearby. We even see Kathy's beau, Dave, taking in a night with his boys at the local race, the derby with all the cars speeding around. Kathy can't get her mind off of the missing girls and when her own friends vanish, it takes her right to Mrs. Pringle's home, perhaps in the clutches of her psycho son. Not to be remiss, I can't forget to mention Dave and Kathy out at the local Drive-In with another couple taking in a really strange movie featuring a wife pleading for some passion from her husband too preoccupied with stuffing his face with chips, fruit, and Michelob. Kathy can't seem to give her boyfriend some attention because it is diverted by the case of the missing girls. Following her own inquisitive nature and possible clues that inevitably draw her to the wig shop, Kathy's peril could be because she doesn't know how to leave well enough alone. But because she won't just put her feelings away, through the efforts of this civilian investigation (and her man's panicky concern that brings the cops to Pringle's home), the gruesome twosome could be stopped once and for all.

Perhaps besides the fondling of guts, scalped hair, and organs--lots of bloody hands-- Mrs. Pringle's energetic, unflappable character, always talking to her dead tiger as if he were alive and well, could be the highlight of The Gruesome Twosome. It's a bizarre character fitting for such a absurd gore movie as this. The performances/characters of an HGL flick are often more than not over-the-top and tickle the funnybone. Pringle is no different. She seems like a perfectly normal grandmotherly type of woman, at first, but the talking with a tiger is the first sign of something being off about her. Her ability to earn the comfort and trust of the girls affords her the chances to lead them to their deaths. Of course, the Rodney character is basically mentally slow, in need of guidance, hard to keep under control, and turned loose to indulge in the thrills that come with savagely shedding the blood of girls unable to defend themselves against him. HGL holds the camera on Rodney's activity and doesn't pull away much until the scene ends mercifully. The Gruesome Twosome, to me, will probably appeal because of those two things--Pringle and the gore--while a great deal of the rest will leave much to be desired. I was entertained by Kathy's following the janitor, her girls eating the chicken, and HGL's time capsule capturing of the setting circa 1967. I love the 60s on film and so HGL's flicks will obviously always have that going for them as far as I'm concerned.