Head (1968)

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Having grown up seeing the TV show and listening to their music, I was naturally expecting more of the same. Instead, I got a bunch of random weirdness that I turned off after fifteen minutes. What was the point of the whole thing? The 1960's movies made by the Beatles were fun romps, and Pink Floyd's "The Wall", though I didn't much like it, at least had a story (about the musician character Pink). But this was just one random scene after another. A politician flubs his speech at a bridge dedication, we see the Monkees being mobbed by screaming fans-and then they are suddenly mannequins, the Monkees are suddenly soldiers, and then Mickey is in the desert trying to get coke out a vending machine, and then he's beside a pink Sherman tank (probably the type used by the British in North Africa), a bunch of Arabic-type people climb out of it and surrender to Mickey, then Mickey uses the tank's cannon to blow up the vending machine. I decided not to bother with the rest.The Monkees's TV show was funny, and it had social commentary, sometimes scathing, and though the band may have been prepackaged, their music was still good. This movie was just random disconnected scenes and inferior music, hardly even funny, and it was a total box office flop which would lead to the demise of the professional relationships between those involved. Stick to the TV show and to the music; those are good.

The most iconic and popular film that came out of the acid-fuelled 1960's was undoubtedly Easy Rider (1969), with the clip of Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper riding their motorbikes to the sound of 'Born to be Wild' now embodying the very spirit of the hippy movement. Yet, as good as Easy Rider is, it followed very much in the same footsteps as Roger Corman's The Wild Angels, out four years before and following the same attitudes and ideas. A lot of the less successful independents from the 1960's have seemingly disappeared from popular culture - movies that deserve a lot more recognition and respect from more mainstream audiences. One of the finest examples, is Head, released the same year as The Beatles' Yellow Submarine, but sharing little of the Liverpudlian quartet's success, perhaps due to it being a vehicle for The Monkees, a band manufactured from actors for the purpose of a bubble-gum sitcom, and who received very little adoration from fans of 'real' music.The Monkees TV series ran between 1966 and 1968, and was a massive success for the band and its co-creator Bob Rafelson, which makes it very strange given the direction Rafelson (directing here) and co-writer Jack Nicholson chose to take them. Head follows the Monkees - Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, Michael Nesmith and David Jones - on a studio lot making a film. They wander aimlessly through different genres - war, horror, adventure, western - playing out surreal and comedic vignettes throughout. The Monkees are tired of their studio image, frequently attempting to disrupt the proceedings as they are followed by an ever- present camera, and repeatedly find themselves locked in a large black room, while a giant Victor Mature tries to squash them. Sound strange? Well, it is.I would imagine people either loving or hating this film, depending on their attitudes towards acid-trip art and the youth culture of the time. Head is complete with psychedelic negative imagery, screaming female fans and a dreamy, Pink Floyd-esque score, all the elements that can now be considered as clichés of the era. But where a lot of these types of surrealistic films were there to mean nothing, Head very much means something, and lays out its attitudes and aims at the beginning, as The Monkees sing a strange diddy about acknowledging their manufactured reputation and ponder their destiny. The film then switches to the opening of a bridge, where the announcer struggles to operate the microphone when the Monkees dash past him, desperately fleeing some unknown danger. They then jump off the bridge, killing themselves, and the titles play over images of their lifeless, floating bodies. These images would hardly endear them to their young, screaming fanbase, therefore finally breaking out of their squeaky-clean shackles.The film has many satirical focuses - war, politics, America, the studio system, advertising, the World War II generation - employing everything from flashing images of napalm bombings and the famous execution of Nyugen Van Lem, to scenes of outright farce such as a foreign army surrendering to an unarmed and shirtless Micky Dolenz in the desert, no doubt signifying America's bullying attitudes to world politics. It's the sheer anger of the satire that makes Head so good, even though it's usually peppered between seemingly light-hearted, playful comedy. There's a few nice songs (although the soundtrack is nothing ground- breaking) and features a wonderful song-and-dance routine featuring David Jones and Toni Basil. I don't know why history has been cruel on Head, as it is as memorable and as outright bizarre as the better- remembered films from this period, but hopefully soon this film will find itself with the cult following it deserves.

A respectable effort for the Monkees attempt at a maturation process. This is a quite wonderful, wistful, experimental conglomerate of trendy sixties pop-culture references and rapid-fire non sequitur editing that is entertaining and stimulating.It was probably too "heady" for their pre-teen fans and considering the disrespect real "heads" displayed toward their pre-fabricated ness, it got lost in the trash bin of critical dismissal and fan disapproval. Truth be told. The Monkees were never as bad as their critics claimed and never as good as their avid fans insist. They had enough talent to produce some catchy tunes and had a likable, innocent charm. Their TV show is fun and their albums are not without their place in the "bubble-gum" arena and were as a whole quite good.This movie's reputation has grown over the years and does hold up to repeated viewings and is partly funny and irreverent. It is never boring and is a solid timepiece. The group did try something different then their TV show and were successful in their only attempt to grow out of their teen-idol restraint (just like The Beatles). The irony is that they were a piece of manufactured plasticized, throw-away, planned obsolescence, pop culture that was designed to self-destruct.

Dada is an art movement that emerged following World War I, a response to the unimaginable brutality and utter destruction of Europe. Dada artists were determined to regain a sense of decency, normalcy, humanity by countering the previous years destructive insanity with their own creative insanity. They were challenging society's outdated, ineffectual, corrupt customs and beliefs by way of absurd means. If the people could be made to see the senselessness of war through the artist's outrageous, sarcastic, demented antics, then maybe war, and other hypocritically destructive behavior, could be prevented in the future. Sane, rational, intelligent means had proved futile so why not give total looniness a fair shot.And that's the deal with "Head" - a valiant, heroic, deranged declaration of peace; a flower in the rifle barrel of polite society's attitude about war. Because America still couldn't understand in simple logic just how preposterous it was to pursue such a pointless, corrupt war (How corrupt? Well, look it up and you'll read the horribly tragic history of failures of leadership, political deceit, and corporate meddling), then absolute wackiness would be the weapon of choice in fighting for the end of US involvement in Vietnam. There's profound logic and genuine sentiment behind, beneath, around and within all the vaudevillian antics on screen. Be warned: You'll laugh only long and hard enough that the real story is permitted entry. This comical Trojan Horse carries within it a potent time bomb of higher consciousness. The Monkeys were subverting their image as carefree, witless clowns, whose only concerns were fun and girls and more fun. It was an image as paper thin and as absurd as the official "story" of Vietnam that was being dumped on a naive populace every night. The national newscasts were still proudly extolling the unqualified successes of our valiant troops, while independent reports from non-mainstream media were describing a much different, much less noble situation. The US was losing, and losing badly. It had become apparent to anyone who wasn't blinded with raging patriotism that we were stuck in an impossible war. The lies our government and leaders were telling us were about to be revealed, and it would be just so hard for so many people to accept. Too hard.So yes, this is largely a bit of promotional hype further inflating that billowing parade float that was the Monkey's image, but the air it's pumping is deadly toxic. There are plenty of images and moments that catch you off guard, stun you with awful reality. Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson (who co-wrote) had some very gritty, harsh things on their minds. Some people feel that Bob was actually hoping to permanently destroy an ungrateful Monkey's career, and it seems he just may have succeed, if you consider what very little work any of the four fellows thereafter did. This dubious aspect aside, you may actually begin to think about things - as they were, and as they are, and as they probably will continue to be. Yes, it has a very serious side, and that's the funniest thing about Head.