Review: Head of the Family (1996)
Directed by: Charles Band (as Robert Talbot)
Starring: Blake Adams, Jacqueline Lovell, J.W. Perra
Written by: Benjamin Carr
Music by: Richard Band, Steve Morrell
IMDb
I’ve seen a lot of Full Moon movies in my day, but Head of the Family was not one of them. It was released in that un-sweet spot in the latter half of the ‘90s, when my childhood fascination with all things Band was waning and I was starting to head into darker horror territory. This film actually has a reasonably good reputation considering its pedigree, but I had a super difficult time finishing it. It starts out as a silly but not terrible attempt at a B-grade Southern gothic yarn, with the requisite rural mutants and some decent acting. But alas, this enjoyment is swiftly derailed by a script that doesn’t know when to quit. Writer Benjamin Carr seemingly fancies himself the low-brow Aaron Sorkin or Amy Sherman-Palladino because this is the talkiest piece of trash cinema I’ve ever been subjected to, and he single-handedly sinks the film with verbosity of the utmost banality. Once the titular “head of the family” shows up, the dialog — which isn’t as amusing as everyone obviously thought it was — never, ever stops. Ninety percent of this movie is a tiresome conversation between the main character and the “head,” Myron (who’s supposedly really smart but he’s mostly unforgivably magniloquent), or a conversation between the main character and his girlfriend, usually while screwing. It’s absurd how many exposition dumps occur while these two copulate. While actress Jacqueline Lovell, who plays the girlfriend, is a beauty, she’s naked so often during these stale discussions that I found myself tuning out despite the titillation. And for a movie about a giant-headed freak who runs a freak crime family, the movie never gets very freaky, nor is it especially funny for a comedy. Other than the gratuitous nakedness of Ms. Lovell and some adult language, this is actually a tame, tame horror movie. I think the body count is zero, which just can’t be abidden (sure, that’s now a word) in movies of this caliber. I had such high hopes that this would be a ridiculously weird, funny, and ludicrously good time, but it ends up a daunting test of patience instead.
Rating: 3 out of 10