Head (1968) User Reviews

Make it a 6.5!

[AlsExGal · 6/10 · 20 November 2023]

"Head" is a surreal and groundbreaking film that catapults the audience into a psychedelic journey through the bizarre mindscape of The Monkees, the iconic pop-rock band of the 1960s. Released in 1968, during the peak of the counterculture movement, the film stands as a testament to the era's experimental and anti-establishment spirit.

Directed by Bob Rafelson and co-written by Rafelson and Jack Nicholson, "Head" challenges traditional narrative structures and blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. The movie unfolds as a series of disjointed and seemingly unrelated vignettes, featuring The Monkees-Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, and Michael Nesmith-in a variety of surreal scenarios. From a war zone to a giant Coca-Cola machine, the film takes the audience on a wild ride that defies conventional storytelling.

One of the film's strengths lies in its self-awareness and willingness to deconstruct The Monkees' manufactured image. "Head" serves as a meta-commentary on fame, the music industry, and the constraints imposed on artists by commercial interests. The Monkees, who were initially created for a television show to be an American analog of the Beatles, use the film as a platform to break free from their manufactured personas and express their frustration with the industry.

The soundtrack, featuring music by The Monkees and compositions by Jack Nicholson and Harry Nilsson, adds to the film's psychedelic atmosphere. The eclectic mix of songs complements the film's disjointed narrative and contributes to its overall trippy vibe.

"Head" was ahead of its time in its approach to filmmaking and storytelling. While it was not a commercial success upon its release, it has gained a cult following over the years, appreciated for its bold experimentation and artistic ambition. The film's non-linear structure and unconventional style make it a unique and memorable piece of 1960s cinema, offering a glimpse into the counterculture's influence on popular media.

Thumbs Up For The Music; Thumbs Down For The Gags

[ccthemovieman-1 · 5/10 · 24 September 2007]

I had read where this is a wild-and-crazy movie that was a lot of fun to watch and nostalgic for the period of the late '60, with decent songs thrown in. I agree with some of that but disagree about the overall presentation.

I found the songs were the highlight: excellent stuff. These guys were not just "fluff." they could sing and sing well, and their instrumentation isn't bad, either. They are definitely underrated in the music department.

In the humor department, I would say the opposite. This film is a compilation of small comedy bits. There really is no story, which I knew before I saw it. I didn't mind that, but I was expecting some things that would really make me laugh. I wound laughing very little as most of it is just dumb humor....almost embarrassingly bad.

This 1968 movie which wasn't released for three years, which wasn't fair to the guys. Their TV program had been off the air, so their popularity was waning. I don't know why the delay as there is nothing controversial in here. There is no profanity, either. It's pretty clean stuff....just not that entertaining.

I really wanted to like this movie, but mostly I didn't.

[dave13-1 · 5/10 · 15 April 2012]

I grew up watching the Monkees on TV, and when I was old enough to own my own stereo, I got both of their Greatest Hits albums. On vinyl. To say that I eagerly awaited the VHS release of their single long lost feature, HEAD, back in the mid-80s is an understatement. I was pestering video clerks for a solid year until it appeared on the shelves. And when I finally watched it... I found myself confused, disappointed and bored. The music was different from the more familiar pop-friendly tunes on the show - darker lyrically and musically - but that was okay. Musical groups evolve and change. The movie lacks a coherent story line and often makes no sense whatsoever, but part of the appeal of their show was its scatter-shot approach to anarchic comedy. The individual vignettes which often spoof classic Hollywood warhorses and which make up most of the movie's length are silly and don't really go anywhere, but then the show was not exactly a story-driven affair either.

Ultimately, what made the show irresistible was the individual appeal of the four Monkees themselves and their chemistry as a group, and the movie simply doesn't give us any of that, substituting instead a bizarre parade of unrelated images and events that lacks for any coherent or unifying viewpoint. It's much ado about nothing and when it's over, the viewer finds himself wondering, Is that it? Was that the best they could come up with, given Bob Rafelson as director, Jack Nicholson as head screenwriter and two months of studio time? Ultimately, HEAD's a harmless trifle, but it's one of those late 60s movies like CHE or HIERONYMUS MERKIN that just leave you wondering when the clowns took over the circus. These movies came out while the Hollywood old guard who were still in charge of the studios were green-lighting stuff that they hoped would appeal to a youth audience whose tastes were beyond their understanding.

The movie might appeal to Monkey fans or maybe not, but keep your expectations low.

Toni, Mimi, Acid Dance

[tedg · 2 October 2003]

The Beatles had just done 'Magical Mystery Tour.' There was the general feel that performance, peace and drugs went together naturally. In LA, there was a film subculture that knew something was up. Nicholson was in several of these gangs.

Before he decided to seriously become an actor, before 'Easy Rider,' before 'Pink Flamingos,' before 'Day for Night,' there were several experiments with what to do about this. An important one is 'Saragossa Manuscript.' This is another.

Jack writes. He plays with circular narrative, self-reference, film reference, performance self-loathing, the pain of creation, all on the outskirts of safe kiddiepop. You must see this, if only to know something about Jack.

Certain actors act by digging into themselves. It is a common technique. Some dig deep, but after a while, they become boring because they are incredibly shallow people. There isn't just enough stuff in there to sustain a career. Think of DeNiro and Hackman.

Others are pretty interesting people, who seem to become more interesting over time. When they dig into the barrel, they put stuff back in because of the pain of the digging. Think Sean Penn and Jack. At the bottom of Jack's barrel, at the end of the thread he spins, as the base of every character is this experimental, risky writer/filmmaker.

Who cares if it is a bad movie? It is bad because it took risks. Watch when a tear is wiped from Annette's cheek by the director. It is a loving goof on the whole Brando thing, something that I heard Marlon laughed about. That is one of the richest moments in Hollywood film history.

There's another reason to watch this. Music in film is has a strong root in dance. Revolution in film often relies on music. Whole cultures are thus swept along.

An unsung giantess in inventing how billions now dance is Toni Basil. She was as influential in pop choreography as the Beatles were in music. She was already well into her career when called upon to work on this. But this is one of her earliest screen appearances. You can see her work throughout and she herself in the pretty cool 'Daddy's Girl' segment, over one of Nilsson's better songs. (Followed by the Frank Zappa cameo.) McCartney would reference this scene in his TeeVee special years later.

A third reason to watch is early (about 6 1/2 minutes) in the film: a character named 'Lady Pleasure' kisses each Monkey in a long continuous shot and then dismissively departs. She is credited as I. J. Jefferson but is really Mimi Manchu, Nicholson's lover at the time and LSD partner. Red hair, psychedelic demeanor. Lovely. That scene says it all for me, about how Jack feels about the boys.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Just a product of its time

[bellino-angelo2014 · 6/10 · 23 May 2022]

I have never been a fan of the Monkees mostly because they are from another generation than mine. However, I am one of those movie viewers that would try everything, and since it was on Youtube, I had to see it.

HEAD hasn't really a plot to talk about. It's just like an extended music video for one of the Monkees' songs with also lots of scenes of hippies from newsreels and some cameos by Victor Mature, Abraham Sofaer, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson. Some vignettes (like the ones with Mature and Sofaer) were actually funny.

Overall, while I didn't loved HEAD, I found it ok. Just something that could have been made only in those years with the generation that had something to say.

Everything that The Beatles' Yellow Submarine should have been

[BrandtSponseller · 10/10 · 25 June 2005]

This is one of those films where it is easy to see how some people wouldn't like it. My wife has never seen it, and when I just rewatched it last night, I waited until after she went to bed. She might have been amused by a couple small snippets, but I know she would have had enough within ten minutes.

Head has nothing like a conventional story. The film is firmly mired in the psychedelic era. It could be seen as filmic surrealism in a nutshell, or as something of a postmodern acid trip through film genres. If you're not a big fan of those things--psychedelia, surrealism, postmodernism and the "acid trip aesthetic" (assuming there's a difference between them), you should probably stay away from this film. On the other hand if you are a fan of that stuff, you need to run out and buy Head now if you haven't already.

Oddly, the film has never received much respect. That probably has a lot to do with preconceptions. After all, it does star The Monkees--Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork--and The Monkees were a musical group of actors put together by producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider to be a kid-friendly, bubble-gummy Beatles for a television series. In their era, they had as much respect as, say, Menudo, New Kids on the Block, The Spice Girls, and so on. As a fellow IMDb reviewer rightly notes--"Perhaps people in 1968, thinking of the Monkees as a silly factory-made pop band rip-off of the Beatles, refused to see (Head)".

The Monkees and Head have never been quite able to shed that negative public perception. It's a shame, because there was a lot of talent, both musically and otherwise, in The Monkees. It's probably odder that Rafelson, who directs here and co-produces with Schneider, and Jack Nicholson (yes, _that_ Jack Nicholson), who wrote the script and also co-produces, decided to take The Monkees in this unusual direction. It's as if New Kids on the Block suddenly put out an album equivalent to Pink Floyd's Ummagumma (1969) or Atom Heart Mother (1970). In fact, the songs in Head, written by The Monkees and frequent collaborators such as Carole King and Harry Nilsson, have a Floyd-like quality, somewhere between the Syd Barrett era and the immediate post-Barrett era. This is much more prominent than any Beatles similarity. Some people have complained about the music in the film, but to me, all the songs are gems. For that matter, some people dislike Barrett era (or other) Floyd, which is just as difficult for me to empathize with.

But what _is_ Head about? The basic gist is just that The Monkees are taking a trip through various film genres--there are war scenes, adventure scenes, horror scenes, comedy scenes, drama scenes, western scenes, sci-fi scenes, romance scenes, and on and on. Except, in the film's reality, this turns out to be happening primarily (if not exclusively) on a studio lot. At root, we're watching The Monkees shoot a film. Of course all of the scenes in the various genres have something surreal and self-referential about them, and they, and individual shots within a scene, tend to lead to one another using dream logic not dissimilar to the Monty Python television show. As a dream, Head tends to vacillate between a good dream and a nightmare, while often being one that would cause you to laugh in your sleep (something that I frequently do, by the way).

Technically, Rafelson uses a wide variety of techniques to realize the above. There are scenes with extensive negative images, there are a lot of very fast cuts (including a great sequence that features Davy Jones and Tony Basil dancing alternately in a white and a black room, wearing a combination of white and black reversed in each, that occasionally toggles back and forth as quickly as two frames at a time), there are a lot of bizarre segues, there is an animated cow mouth, there are odd editing devices, and so on. For my money, I wish this stuff wasn't just a relic of the psychedelic era. This is the kind of artistic approach I relish. It seemed like a good idea back then and I still think it's a good idea. I'd like to see films like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou using (2004) using these types of extended techniques. Now that would make that film surreal.

Interpretationally, some folks who aren't so in tune with the acid trip aesthetic have complained that it's basically b.s. to offer meanings for something intended to not have any. I disagree with such a pessimistic/nihilistic view; Head was intended to have a lot of meaning(s), and it's not just films without conventional plots that have multiple interpretations. Nicholson, Rafelson and Schneider have a lot of interesting things to say about The Monkees--the film postmodernistically comments on their manufactured status; pop stardom--way before Pink Floyd, Head conflates pop stardom and violence, from images of war to images of fans cannibalistically dismantling their idols; and naïve U.S.-oriented ideas of international perceptions and respect--well-armed foreigners in a desert surrender to Micky Dolenz just because he's an American, then later they blow up a Coke machine (again in the desert) for him because he's thirsty and can't gain access. The film comments on many other topics--from big Industry to police, surveys, spectatorship (especially in relation to tragedies), and on and on. Head is full of ideas, appropriately enough, with intelligent, multifaceted things to say about them.

Head deserves to be considered a classic--it's basically shooting for the same vibe as The Beatles' Yellow Submarine. Both premiered in November of 1968, interestingly enough, and both were intended as something of a summation of the psychedelic aesthetic. Yellow Submarine wasn't quite successful. Head is everything Yellow Submarine should have been.

Neither good or bad.

[mononkmike · 7/10 · 8 February 2020]

Just a reflection of the times when LSD and peoples where groovy. Oooh! The memories and the lacks of!

I finally got Head the other day.

[implaxis · 1/10 · 7 April 2015]

I finally got Head the other day.

The only benefit of watching this was being able to make that joke. It's a movie. Sort of. Featuring The Monkees. (1960s musical group that had a TV show).

Now, one would expect that it would have been a fun romp with the boys in the band going on all sorts of crazy adventures, and featuring their popular songs. Nope.

This was the worst POS I have ever seen, and I don't say that lightly. Not a single popular song, long stretches where the stars are not even in it, non sequitur segues from one boring scene to another. I got exactly one laugh out of the whole thing, and only found Davy's little dance solo the most mildly interestingly shot bit of the whole thing, for all its cheesiness.

I do like some bad movies. I can see why this one has languished in obscurity for decades. Oh, and Jack Nicholson, Annette Funicello, Teri Garr, Frank Zappa, and Victor Mature are in it. For no reason whatsoever. Except that Nicholson wrote it

A Psychedelic Documentary

[Saturday8pm · 8/10 · 29 September 2002]

"I am ... proud of 'Head'," Mike Nesmith has said. He should be, because this film, which either has been derided by many of us or studied and scrutinized by film professors, works on many levels.

Yes, it's unconventional. To many, frustrating. It's almost as if the producers hand you the film and tempt: "You figure it out."

You probably already know that The Monkees TV show was a runaway marketing success that depended upon business acumen and no small serving of public deception. TV shows are about selling soap and toothpaste first, than to entertain. That The Monkees broke out of the box for a short time to make "Head" is a testament to the group's popularity and importance in pop culture, despite where your head's at. Get one thing straight: "Head" is not The Monkees TV show.

So what we have here is a "psychedelic documentary" about Western pop culture from a source that has authority on the subject. "Head" is a movie that could only come from those "inside the box". By 1968, The Monkees' cast and crew were seasoned and weary professionals who had seen their share of promise and disappointment. The movie was a deliberate attempt at market repositioning. So, it did three things: Make a film the way The Monkees envisioned. Most importantly, reinvent the group to one not subservient to it's old bosses - and yas, hipper than before. Make a film that exposed American attitudes of information dissemination.

"Head", therefore, really is about media manipulation and its net result: deception. The mass media is supposed to inform, educate us on the happenings in the world at large, and ultimately asks us to form opinions of these events that can shape thought into positive action. Thus we assume the information we absorb to be complete and unbiased - otherwise, how can one establish a valued conclusion on any one idea presented by a book, newspaper or TV show? In one of the street interviews in "Head", a guy admits, "I haven't looked at a newspaper or TV in years." Is he lesser or better the man? Even the drug parallels are a soft veiling of "Things are not as they seem." Remember the old joke, "Everything you know is wrong"? The screenplay starts with The Monkees' public admission of it's own "manufactured image" and runs with the football - literally. Is the football scene in the movie a visual manifestation of the whole idea behind "Head"? Is the film a stream-of-consciousness exercise? Is the film the culmination of pot smoking marathons? There are too many coincidences that occur in the film that suggest otherwise. My guess is that "Head" is the culmination of motivations somewhere between intended and unintended.

Largely, the insiders responsible for "Head" seem to enjoy themselves in the revelries that take place in the film, but there is anger - anger at the chaos that characterized the late '60s and anger at the way the media, television especially, had changed culture in negative ways. Drugs and violence were strong negative forces in the late '60s and still are, but the producers of "Head" want you to know that poor "information" is a far greater danger.

Wars have been attributed to hoaxes and lies. What perfect way to spread disinformation than through TV? Repeatedly, the mysterious black box is seen as an obstacle to The Monkees and seemingly, all of us as well. In one scene, Peter is sullenly sitting in a saloon holding a melting ice cream cone, and is asked by a fellow Monkey, "What's wrong?" "I bought this ice cream cone and I don't want it." The movie suggests that the first purpose of the media is NOT to inform, but to sell en mass blindly. "Head" goes further: put any idea into someone's head, and merrily goes he.

The filmmakers know this, and the danger is real. "Head" is either a movie that creates itself "as we go along", or is a deliberate statement. Perhaps, perhaps not. Maybe it is just "Pot meets advertising", as critics scathed in 1968. The jokes are on The Monkees and us. Be careful what you ask for, you may get it.

Cheers: A true guilty pleasure. Very funny. Intelligent. Will please the fans. Find the substance, it's there. Unabashedly weird. Bizarre collection of characters. Good tunage. Length is appropriate. Lots of great one liners, including my all time prophetic favorite: "The tragedy of your times, my young friends, is that you may get exactly what you want."

Caveats: Dated. Drugs. No plot. No linear delivery of any thought in particular. At least twenty-five stories that interweave in stop-and- go fashion. So, may easily frustrate. May seem pretentious to some. People who can't stand The Monkees need not watch, though that in itself is no reason to avoid it. The psychedelic special effects may kill your ailing picture tube or your acid burnt- out eyeballs.

Match, cut.

7/10

[shrugfestival · 7/10 · 17 October 2002]

I've seen "Head" 3 times: twice on video, and just recently on the big screen. I've decided I like it.

"Head" came at a time when the Monkees' popularity had waned, their TV show had been cancelled, and their breakup inevitable. They were the first band ever to be a pure creation of the media -- and took the heat for it. The Monkees were, to the showbiz world at large, the first band to be assembled via auditions and head shots, right when color TV was hitting its first stride. Only Mike Nesmith had any real musical ambitions as a songwriter and performer.

Their records in fact were not terrible, by any means, but the "manufactured" attacks kept coming. And when their short-lived media success was over, and they were staring down their own archaic nature right in the face, they did something you'd expect from an Andy Warhol creation: They willfully committed career suicide with "Head."

It helps to look at "Head" right now, when the music industry's boy bands and teen queens -- many of them manufactured exactly the same way as the Monkees were -- are starting to see the mortality of their OWN careers. The Monkees were scrubbed, goofy, shriek-inducing teen stars, and for their last act they just said "The hell with it," and deconstructed themselves in a way people have not yet gotten used to.

I've spent 20 years seeing "Head" and not really developing an opinion on it. In my last screening I was surprised at how well-shot and interesting most of the scenes were. The film LOOKS quite good. And while you can't accuse the film of having any kind of plot, knowing the background of the Monkees' story, maybe juxtaposing it with how, say, the Bay City Rollers quietly faded out, you definitely get a sense of "story" if you pay close attention.

"Head" satirizes EVERYTHING of its time -- drug culture (the Monkees never look stoned in this movie, I noticed), the star-making studio system, the iconoclasm of Hollywood, and especially hippie culture. Frank Zappa's appearance alone -- he despised hippies -- proves that point. In their own way the Monkees even playfully deflated the spiritual and philosophical pretensions of -- egad -- the Beatles. In a scene where Peter Tork, sick of being "the dumb one," relates to the band, word-for-word, what he learned from a mystic guru in a sauna, he completes by saying, "Why listen to me -- I know nothing." Davy Jones indignantly stands up and says, "What are you talking about? You made us listen to you all this time and you know NOTHING?" It's that kind of annoying neutrality that bugged the Monkees, even if they were products of a TV executive's imagination.

Jack Nicholson and Bob Rafelson "wrote" the script, but it was obviously just a set piece with contained social commentaries, linked together by thin transitions, kinda like an acid trip. In fact I'm pretty sure "Head" is making fun of LSD too, even as it gets a pretty good grasp of its narrative qualities. As ramshackle and anarchic as the images in "Head" are, they're really not pointless at all. These are not random flashes from a freakout; most of them are very clever bits of symbology.

It drags a little bit, but the constructs are quite interesting most of the time, and there were a lot of laugh-out-loud moments in the theater where I saw it. The loudest laughs came at the end of the movie, where the placard informs us that "Head" was rated "G". It's the most subversive G-rated movie in cinema history.

Not the greatest rock and roll movie ever -- nowhere close -- "Head" is nonetheless one of the bravest, up with "Gimme Shelter." Every boy band should be required to watch it. And it's a hell of a lot more fun than "Woodstock."

Just a lousy movie

[rcraig62 · 3/10 · 8 August 2004]

The Monkees "Head" is one of those peculiar phenomenons I've noticed- that when something doesn't make sense, people will try to read things into it and give it great deep meanings, which its creator never intended. Such is the case here.

The movie is a stream-of-consciousness spectacle of The Monkees floating in and out of various sketches, blackouts, set pieces, etc. similar to the ones on their TV show. But while the TV show was played for laughs, this doesn't seem to be played for anything except a sort of deep, trippy, pseudo-intellectual state that this brand of psychedelia imposes. All in all, it's The Monkees doing the same schtick, but now it's "consciousness-raising" because the laugh track is removed. There is not a stitch of humor or meaning to the whole thing; it just drones on with colored lights.

The music in "Head" should prove to anyone, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the Monkees had not a scrap of songwriting ability. The tunes are mostly garbage; the only one that's even listenable is "Porpoise Song", which opens and closes the film. But the thing is, that was a Gerry Goffin-Carole King song, and, while it's above-average for the Monkees, it's below-average by Goffin and King standards. It's like hearing one of the old Peter And Gordon songs that Paul McCartney wrote for them: you might think it's a pretty good song, but then you find out who composed it, and you realize it's a throwaway. Mike Nesmith's song is maybe passable, the rest is worthless. Davy Jones has, I guess, what the filmmakers imagined to be "the big number" in the picture, since it's the only song presented As Show Biz and not cut into a film montage or dream sequence, but it falls flat, too, just because the song isn't any good.

I have to admit I always liked the Monkees, so the movie is a real disappointment. Sure, they were cheesy, but they were so cheerful about it.

They knew they were cheesy and they were cool with it. But then they got ambitious. In "Head", they actually joke about being a manufactured pop product, but the truth is, they wanted something more. They wanted to be Great Musicians and taken seriously as artists. Maybe not like the Beatles, but something approaching that. "Head" proves that they failed on all counts. 1* out of 4

Perfect 60's oddity

[agapejournal · 10/10 · 30 May 2003]

"Head" is one of those films you'll have a lot of trouble convincing your friends to see, but once they do they'll fall in love with it. I don't know how many times this has happened to me. This film is just so funny and bizarre, really a deconstruction of everything the Monkees had been up to this point in their career. A lot the credit goes to Bob Rafelson who pretty much ended the Monkee's career with this film. My guess is he wanted to get out of directing the TV show and get into features, which he did in a big way after this one. Micky Dolenz is absolutely hilarious. I can't believe he didn't have a second life as a comic actor after this film. This film has a lot of great cameos and a lot of wonderful psychedelic nonsense. I feel like the reputation of this film is continuing to build and it wouldn't surprise me if it eventually becomes a full on cult classic

Hey hey, they were the Monkees

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 8 April 2018]

One thing about Head, it's not a film you should view while doing any pharmaceuticals. It will be life in the booby hatch forever afterward.

Davy Jones, Mickey Dolenz, Mike Nesmith, and Peter Torke were the members of the Monkees who were a rock group put together by TV executives and given a half hour television show back in the 60s. As the Beatles became popular, America had to have its own group of mop tops who did in fact have a few good song hits.

Jones and Dolenz were performers, Nesmith and Torke were musicians yet they did fit together naturally as if they all grew up together. I remember Mickey Dolenz as a blond kid in Circus Boy as Mickey Braddock. Davy Jones had been known for being the Artful Dodger in Oliver.

No use in describing the film, it's a music video ahead of its time. A few folks like Teri Garr, Victor Mature, Jack Nicholson and Timothy Carey make some brief appearances. You can interpret the sequences almost any way you would like.

I wish some of their song hits were feature in Head. Still fans of the group who at that time were the young generation will have some of their expressions voiced.

After all then they were the young generation with something to say.

Hey hey, it's the Monkees... and yet, not.

[asdodge · 4/10 · 10 March 2009]

As their entire career was a pale impersonation of The Beatles, it is no surprise that, shortly after the great fiasco of the Beatles "Magical Mystery Tour," the Monkees would follow up with their own insipid and creative morass of a movie, called "Head." Both movies are not so much a true story with a plot (though MMT attempted to define a plot) as they are a hodge-podge of skits and snippets, interspersed with music and songs and out-takes.

"Head" has no plot, other than the pre-fab-four trying to break free of "the box" they are in (i.e. the type-casting of being "Monkees" and the surrounding commercialism) and yet, always finding themselves back in the box. Most skits involve breaks in the "fourth wall" and crossing over into other, seemingly unrelated scenes. Filled with anti-Vietnam war messages and attempts by the group to show their other talents, the film bounces around haphazardly- also to be blamed on the multiple directors.

The film, like Magical Mystery Tour, is now excused by some fans as "wonderful symbolism and misunderstood artistic statements." Phooey. Like MMT, it is too many guys with access to too many drugs all trying to make something artsy and making crap.

Like MMT, "Head" has some clever moments and offers some relatively unknown Monkees songs that are quite decent. It does develop a bit more charm than MMT and is a bit easier to sit through, but it is not ironic at all that, like everything else the Monkees did, this was just a mimicry of something the Beatles did first... even when it comes to laying an egg.

Forget Rocky Horror-this is the best midnight movie

[murking · 7 July 2004]

Forget trying to make sense of this film, you missed the point. Yes it's surreal '60s cheese, but it's well made, thanks to Rafelson and a hefty budget which the monkees were never denied of funding. There are priceless moments like the part where Peter storms off screen trying to voice his complaint to Rafelson while the likes of Jack Nicholson and dennis Hopper also try to grab BR's attention.

The songs by King/ Mann/Weill and the Monkees themselves are fantastic, and the visuals are MTV-transcended and utterly groundbreaking. Gorgeous stuff. Can you Dig it features an incredible fusion of Bellydance and Psychedelic dance. I think Zappa is somehow shortchanged in the mix...the cow is given the punchline (?)

Holy Psychedelia! Head is one trip!

[BlackJack_B · 7/10 · 16 July 2007]

The Monkees, surprisingly, are a big favorite of mine. Yes, they might have been the original manufactured rock band; a gimmick that certainly has reached overkill in the 21st century. However, their music holds up as some of the best the 1960's had to offer. Last Train To Clarksville, Daydream Believer, I'm A Believer, (I'm Not) Your Stepping Stone, Valleri and Pleasant Valley Sunday are great songs, written by good songwriters such as Boyce/Hart, Neil Diamond, Goffen/King and John Stewart. While they weren't great musicians or songwriters, they had a likable screen presence and plenty of appeal and some of their own stuff was actually decent. Their T.V. show is dated stuff in 2007 but I still watch the show on occasion as a time capsule to life in 1966-1968; that magical and dangerous time in U.S. history.

However, as we all know, as a portent of things to come for the likes of Kelly Clarkson, The Monkees didn't want to be considered manufactured and just puppets for their recording company. Despite their average talents, they wanted to write their own songs, produce their own albums and call the shots when it came to tours. Sadly, this turned out to be a disaster; especially when Peter Tork's choice of Jimi Hendrix as an opening act was nixed due to his stealing of the show and heavy sexual suggestions in his music compared to The Monkees G-Rated content.

However, the final nail in the coffin for the Monkees (until 1986) was the infamous motion picture Head. Head was written by Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson while they were allegedly high on the Mary-Jane. The film received poor reviews and only made $16,000 in the box office. Today, the film is a cult classic, ahead of its time and delivers a message of what was on the minds of the youth in 1968, the Summer Of Anger.

Head really has no plot. Basically, one to four of The Monkees lurch from scene to scene without any rhyme or reason. They go from eating in a diner, to seeing Davy Jones getting bashed by Sonny Liston, to a Western, to being sucked into a vacuum, to performing at a concert and so forth. The film basically offers up oblique opinions of what was wrong with American society. The Monkees bash commercialism, the war in Vietnam, American policy, censorship, the Establishment and greed. You have to read between the lines to see what the targets of derision were.

The Monkees spend a lot of time boxed up at certain junctions of the film, symbolizing how they felt their record company saw them; as nothing but toys for them to play with when it was time to record another hit album. A scene where they are outnumbered 16-4 in the Western scene could be a symbol of them against the session musicians, songwriters, record producers and whatnot who controlled their careers and the cannon they fire at them is their way of saying "Begone!".

The film is truly a psychedelic trip to behold. The flashy tie-dye colors, the hypnotic concert and belly dancing scenes and the druggy imagery is everywhere. The acting is actually very good but that's being biased as I like The Monkees T.V. show. A small soundtrack features "The Porpoise Song" and three songs written by The Monkees themselves.

The film actually has some hilarious scenes on occasion; although maybe they weren't supposed to be. Mickey Dolenz beating up a Coke Machine that didn't give him a soda or his violent punch-ups in the boxing scene (I mean, he was a wiry guy who probably weighed no more than 135) had me laughing it up.

All in all, this movie is an absolute must-see for any Monkees fan. I think a lot of people will feel this movie is indeed "over their Head" but for those obsessed with the 60's and society at the time will find it a great time capsule.

Historically important

[BruceCorneil · 8/10 · 23 March 2003]

You would really need to remember the Monkees and have a clear understanding as to where and how they fitted into the second half of the 1960s in order to fully appreciate this movie.

There is no plot as such. Basically, it's a crazy, mixed up pastiche of various, unrelated sequences. But, it IS interesting AND entertaining in its own peculiar way once you get onto its wavelength. In short, it was a classic, cleverly conceived and well crafted example of late '60s experimental cinema. It contains some good songs, some ultra-groovy cinematography and plenty of other worthwhile ideas in terms of film technique.

I give it 8 out of 10 for several reasons. First, it took a lot of courage to make such an unorthodox movie in the commercial mainstream where both its stars and its producers were firmly ensconced at the time (whether they liked it or not). It seems that almost everyone who was associated with the project (with the exception of Columbia who paid for it) knew that it was probably not going to be a big money maker. Their reasons for wanting to do it were as unorthodox as the film itself. Secondly, it was, for the most part, a creative success. And, finally, as already mentioned, it is, unquestionably, a classic of the genre and, as such, it is now historically important.

Unfortunately, "Head" came too late in the Monkees career. But, there again, they wouldn't have been allowed to make it earlier on because it was essentially a very pointed and cynical satire of their own image.

Clearly, the members of the group knew, only too well, that the whole Monkeemania thing had pretty well run its course when they started work on this movie. In a way, it was to be their swan song and they were determined to let it all hang out. They were tired of being treated like mere pawns in the high powered corporate game in which they had been manipulated and exploited over the preceding few years. In short, they "wanted out" and they were going to say a few things before they left.

History, however, has vindicated the band. Let the critics be damned. The Monkees, left behind some of the best, most polished and successful pop records of the decade. Yes, they had plenty of help. But at the end of the day, THEY stood in front of the studio mikes, THEY fronted the movie and TV cameras and THEY did the concerts. They were fun and just a little bit crazy. But, unlike some of their contemporaries, they were never threatening. You could safely introduce a Monkey to your elderly aunt.

"Head" probably borrows a bit too heavily from the Beatles "Hard Day's Night" but it's still worth another look for those who were around at the time or for younger retro fans who can appreciate its significance.

Enjoy!

HEAD (Bob Rafelson, 1968) ***

[Bunuel1976 · 7/10 · 5 August 2007]

It seems appropriate that a pop group who had started out on TV should sprinkle various TV clips of Hollywood feature films in their own feature film debut (while an anonymous character is ostensibly channel zapping) and, among the ones I recognized where THE BLACK CAT (1934; the "Supernatural, perhaps…Baloney, perhaps not" exchange), GILDA (1946) and Charles Laughton's turn as Herod Antipas in SALOME' (1953)! Having said that, I have never watched any of the original TV shows of The Monkees' myself or, for that matter, listened to any of their albums – although, naturally, I'm familiar with a couple of their hits.

Anyway, this (pardon the pun) heady concoction clearly follows the lead of The Beatles' own feature films although the template is clearly more the uncontrolled zaniness of HELP! (1965) rather than the freewheeling, pseudo-documentary feel of A HARD DAY'S NIGHT (1964). In fact, our heroes (who, by the way, are also far less endearing and talented than the four British moptops) are first seen disrupting a public ceremony while being chased through the city streets by all and sundry and evading capture by jumping off a bridge; at the end, the film comes full circle as this sequence also concludes the film and both times the chase is accompanied on the soundtrack by perhaps the best tune in the film – the haunting "The Porpoise Song" which, ironically, is not a Monkees original but a Goffin/King composition. The rest of the songs are quite decent actually with "Can You Dig It?" (performed live as part of the specifically shot concert footage) emerging as perhaps their best number here.

But, while this may not have been the intention, the film's lasting impression is not the band members or their music but the disarming energy and inventiveness with which director Bob Rafelson/co-writer Jack Nicholson (here at the start of their impressive – and subsequently very different - collaboration) infuse the proceedings: The Monkees' image and music may have been far removed from hippiedom and the drug subculture but the film ironically epitomizes perhaps more than any other of its time the kaleidoscopic feel of psychedelia in which, literally, anything goes. Of course, this makes the end result spotty, uneven and not a little slapdash for those unwilling to succumb to it but, for the rest it's quite (perhaps mercifully) unique. And so it is that here we find Victor Mature spoofing his "Hunk" image as the gigantic Big Victor(!) and, in one memorably surreal sequence, sporting The Monkees themselves as his dandruff; Timothy Carey hamming it up as a Western badman of the silver screen who storms off the set in relentless pursuit of the band; veteran character actor Percy Helton appearing, for no good reason, in one shot as a messenger boy; The Monkees' comical stint at war, manning the trenches and meeting surrendering Italian soldier Vito Scotti in the desert; an excursion to a Sheik's tent; a lengthy and particularly politically incorrect skirmish with a fat barmaid (in which Davy Jones punches her in the face and complains to director Rafelson of how this will adversely affect his clean image with the kids); Jack Nicholson and his pal Dennis Hopper interrupting Bob Rafelson while shooting this movie!; Frank Zappa walking his talking cow around the studio lot; and, also playing themselves are Teri Garr, Annette Funicello and boxer Sonny Liston (who even takes on one of the boys on the ring).

The film originally premiered at 110 minutes but the general release version is only 86 minutes long; however, the former has reportedly just been restored and might perhaps even be released on DVD!

A Warning Against Drugs

[aesgaard41 · 3/10 · 26 August 2001]

Rumor has it that this movie was pieced together by the Monkees while they were in a stoned out trip. First off, I could never believe from looking at the guys that they would be stupid enough to fool around with any illegal substance, and second, after seeing this movie, I guess I have to believe it. This "movie" is really nothing more than a series of half-finished sketches which are thread together incoherently. None of them seem to have endings or make any sense. I would rather the movie be more like their series: the struggles of a band trying to make it big with the same Marx Brothers/Three Stooges slapstick that made them such a hit. Instead, we are subjected to the acid trip that nightmares are made of. This movie serves best as a commercial for "Say No To Drugs" than anything else.

A Triumph

[jlarkin5 · 10/10 · 26 May 2007]

To experience Head you really need to understand where the Monkees were when they filmed it.

This was as their series was coming to a close and the group was near break up. Their inventive and comedic series (sort of an American Idol of their day) took four unknown actors and formed a manufactured supergroup around them.

This is their take on their "manufactured image" and status as the 2nd tier Beatles. They always felt they were in a box, trapped, and unable to find credibility despite their talents.

It is also a hell of a musical-trippy, inventive (I have the soundtrack) and full of surprises.

See it with an open mind.

The Monkees commit suicide...

[moonspinner55 · 7/10 · 22 October 2005]

With their TV series about to go down the drain in real-life, the Monkees (Davy Jones, Peter Tork, Michael Nesmith and Micky Dolenz) seem to say 'the hell with it' and drive this theatrical vehicle (literally) right off a bridge. According to Dolenz, Jack Nicholson concocted the script, which no one in the group understood. It's a G-rated acid trip which attempts to turn nostalgic slapstick and black-out sketches into modern psychedelia. If not a pleasant picture, it does indeed have the Monkees, and they truly are a charming foursome. The songs (particularly "As We Go Along", co-written by Carole King) are very good, and the look and concept of "Head" is at once astonishing and perplexing. Extra points on the hipness factor for including Victor Mature, Frank Zappa, Teri Garr (years before "Young Frankenstein") and Annette Funicello. Pretty good, once you get the idea. *** from ****

Can I give it ZERO stars?

[bluetulip-84703 · 1/10 · 24 April 2021]

Zero stars- it's that bad. Stupid - moronic and just plain dumb. Trying desperately to be hip-with it and funny. Fails al all three attempts. A completely inept pathetically poor-cringe worthy attempt-at mimicking "A Hard Day"s Night". Absolutely stinks. P. U. Jack Nicholson's writing results in a film that's a megaton bomb.

Much more entertaining than I remembered.

[ejonconrad · 8/10 · 4 March 2019]

I grew up watching the Monkees, and the first time I watched this movie as a kid, I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. Then I watched it again a few years later and dismissed it as pretentious crap. I decided to watch it again right after Peter Tork died, and to my surprise, I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.

If you haven't seen it, you should definitely watch it. Not to say it's good - because it most certainly isn't, but it should definitely be seen, if only as a fascinating window into the time.

It has some great cameos, including Frank Zappa with a talking cow, Annette Funicello, a gigantic Victor Mature, and this time I even caught a very brief glimpse of the writer of the movie, Jack Nicholson (yes, THE Jack Nicholson).

It also has some genuinely good music.

There's a certain irony to this movie. On the one hand, it was the Monkees' attempt to break away from their teenybopper image and "legitimize" themselves, but on the other, it's hard to think of a more extreme example of Hollywood's move at the time to make a buck by bringing counter culture mainstream - albeit a badly failed attempt in this case. People who were trying to "stick it to The Man" discovered that for the right price, The Man was more than happy to stick it to Himself, or at least pretend to.

That said, the movie had more of a "wink" than I remembered, so I don't think it took itself all that seriously. For example, when Frank Zappa refers to Davie Jones' dance number as "pretty white", Jones responds "I'm a pretty white guy.". At another point, Peter Tork can be clearly heard whistling Strawberry Fields, as if to say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

One thing I'd completely forgotten was how much Vietnam footage there is in the movie, interspersed with shots of the band performing. That was a pretty standard sort of "statement" at the time, but I was surprised how graphic some of the footage was, given the film's G rating. It even included that infamous clip of the soldier getting shot in the head.

A Movie With A Porpoise. :-)

[larry.launders · 7/10 · 30 August 2005]

Sadly, this movie is relegated to 'curio' status it seems. Many people that I've asked "Did you know the Monkees made a movie?" usually answer 'No.' That being said, if you are one of that large number, I recommend you see it, but with the following caveat(s): If you expect Monkey style humor, it is in there. It's just not all over the place like the TV shows.

Yes, they are trying to break their TV mold a bit by poking fun at it like a bunch of no-longer-teenagers who have been on the short end of a lot of sticks.

No, you don't have to be inebriated to enjoy it.

No, you don't have to be inebriated to understand it.

If you like classics, you'll love the interspersed clips throughout.

If you like the psychedelic era, you'll love some of the cameos.

If you are a Monkees fan, you might recognize some of the jabs they are taking at the heavy commercializing of the band.

In the nigh-immortal words of one of my best friends after seeing 5 minutes of it: "This is a weird movie, man." In fact it might be better if you don't try to understand it, just sit back and react to it. It's weird, it's funny, it's a bit surreal, it's experimental (still)...it is many things. Overall, it is an experience.

ADDITIONAL - Not too terribly long ago I was given the following link for a fantastic article that revolves around Head, and the context of the time. If permitted, at the end of this I will copy the link. If not, then just do a search for Monkees Subversive Masterpiece (published 04/01/2013on a zeitgeist-y report site) and that ought to come up with the article I am referencing. The jewel of the article is towards the end:

"This leads to the question, "Where has the art gone in our art?"

Sad to say it's nowhere to be found. Today's starry-eyed (ed. teens) aspire to become scripted. They dream to someday become unreal. They'd sell their souls to sell their souls."

OK it doesn't like the link, so do the search and it shouldn't be hard to find, if not on the top of the search results.

The definition of "trying too hard".

[theskulI42 · 4/10 · 1 July 2008]

"Head" (1968, Bob Rafelson) If there was a literal cinematic dictionary, (and it was the first dictionary to ever have pictures, and thus, to finally make the saying actually work as an idiom), under the entry for "trying to hard", there would be a picture from Bob Rafelson's "Head".

In an apparent response to waning popularity and coolness, and the burgeoning American independent movement, famous television-formed singing group the Monkees decided, instead of making a piece of fluff that would please their loyal fan base, they instead decided to go in the complete opposite direction, and made a piece of fluff that satisfied...pretty much no one.

As a film reviewer, I have cultivated a notorious pass/fail opinion of surrealist films, because for me, they're either a complete bullseye or a pathetic miss. If you succeed, it's a wondrous, hilarious, terrifying, amazing experience that supersedes most anything else in film. If you fail, it just becomes painful because it's not fun and it makes no sense. Surrealism and absurdism, as styles, are not difficult to do. Anyone can think up some random images, jokes and bullsh-t, film them, and call it surrealism. The trick is in doing it well, either making it mean something, or making it enjoyable enough to be able to ignore the lack of meaning. The Monkees, and thus, "Head", fail in this. It's merely a string of nonsense, and it's frequently painful to watch them flail about so desperately.

The other thing that sinks the film are the Monkees themselves. They're not great actors, they're not great comedians, and they're certainly not great musicians, so the fact that the entire movie is the Monkees doing those three things, it's just no good. They all sort of look like they could be funny, but Davy Jones is the only one that has even an ounce of charisma, and he's relegated to lame physical humor, puns and compared with its main inspiration, "A Hard Day's Night", sub-Ringo blasé. As for the rest of them, you can tell Micky Dolenz REALLY *thinks* he's funny, which makes it more painful when he's not. The other two both have sort of vague penis-shaped haircuts, and I think one of them had sideburns, but that was the only thing that distinguished them.

The film has absolutely zero structure, and seems like it's both passing quickly and taking forever. It's akin to taking a nap and having a dream on a car trip: You have no sense of time or distance, it makes no sense and you can't even remember it to tell anybody about it. All in all, "Head" is like watching a documentary about great movies instead of actually watching a great movie; this movie just made me want to round up a bunch of friends and make my own silly nonsense flick, but unlike Bob Rafelson & the Monkees, I know that my movie would be of no interest to anyone not in on the joke, something of which the Monkees could take note, as they needed to make this, and then Jerry-Lewis it into their own personal vaults.

{Grade: 4/10 (C-) / #24 (of 28) of 1968}