Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has served as a starting point for countless films over the years. The entire mad scientist subgenre is likely inspired by Frankenstein in some way. Some of these films are bad, some are good and some are just interesting. AIP’s The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant from director Anthony M. Lanza falls into that third category.

Bruce Dern stars as Dr. Roger Girad, a recently married scientist who spends most of his time locked away in his lab with his assistant Dr. Max (Berry Kroeger) working on various experiments. Their most recent project is tinkering with head transplantation. This is a weird field of science/medicine to work in. Who could possibly benefit from a head transplant? I guess there could be a really freak scenario in which one person has their body crushed and another person has their head crushed so you could move the good head to the good body and manage to salvage one complete person. That seems problematic for plenty of reasons.

Whatever the reason, Roger and Max are working on it and they’ve had great success, at least with animals. Turns out they’re not replacing heads, but rather adding additional heads. They have a monkey and they give him a second monkey head. This brings a lot more questions with it. If you add a head to a perfectly good body that already has a good head, which brain controls the body? The answers ends up being both, as the two brains fight for control. We find this information out later in the movie.

So what’s the purpose of all this? What do Roger and Max hope to accomplish? I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. This is a movie called The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant. You’re not supposed to think about it too much the way I currently am. You just go with it and have fun.

Roger and Max get the change to try their experiment out on humans do to some rather unusual events. A lunatic killer named Manuel Cass (Albert Cole) escapes from a nearby prison. He happens upon Roger’s home and ends up killing his caretaker (Larry Norton) and kidnapping his wife, Linda (Pat Priest). Roger tracks Manuel down and takes him out with a shotgun blast to the back, rescuing his wife along the way.

Manuel is badly injured, but not quite dead. This gives Roger an idea – he’s going to attempt to save Manuel heads by moving it onto Danny’s body. Danny (John Bloom) is a large hulking man and the son of the caretaker. Despite being fully grown, Danny has the mind of an 8-year old do to an accident he suffered as a child. Roger’s logic is simple – without his father Danny has no one and Manuel is maniac so no one will miss him, thus making both the perfect lab rats!

The experiment works! Danny now has Manuel’s head in addition to his own. Still not sure the point, but it works. What Roger didn’t account for is the whole issue about which brain would control the body. Manuel has a stronger brain than Danny and is able to control Danny’s body. Now in control of a much larger and stronger body, Manuel is able to break free from Roger’s lab and go on a deadly killing spree across the town.

I wonder how they pulled off this effect.

The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant is really stupid but it is a lot of fun. Dern is terrific and plays the whole movie so straight. In fact most of the actors play it straight, aside from Cole’s Manuel who is a little too over-the-top compared to the rest of the cast. This is what helps make the film entertaining – they’re not trying to be extra goofy. This really works in the first part of the movie when things are actually kind of dark and grim. The human transplant doesn’t come until the later third and that’s when the actors do begin to ham it up a bit, but at that point it’s acceptable.

In a smaller supporting role is Casey Kasem as Dr. Ken, a former colleague and good friend of Roger’s. He’s fascinated and impressed with the work Roger has done, but when it gets to people he realizes it’s gone too far and assists Roger in tracking down his “monster.” Kasem didn’t do a ton of live-action films, so it’s fun to see him pop up in things like this.

The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant is now out on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber and I think it’s one of their better B-movie releases when considering the whole package. The transfer is pretty good and what you’ve come to expect from Kino Lorber. It’s not the type that will blow you away like something from Arrow or Vinegar Syndrome, but it’s more than adequate. I will say the finale of the film is a little rough, but that’s not Kino Lorber’s fault. The film had a weird creative choice that resulted in the original print being damaged on purpose to help sell a cave crumbling in. This choice doesn’t really help sell the cave thing and just results in a rough looking image.

The reason I view this as a standout release from Kino Lorber is because it includes a RiffTrax audio commentary! What a cool addition! Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy make this already fun movie and lot more enjoyable. It would be cool to see Kino Lorber do this more in the future. They release a lot of stuff that seems to be in the RiffTrax wheelhouse. There’s also an interview with the film’s writer James Gordon White. This is about 10 minutes long and actually doesn’t talk about The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant very much, but it is a bit interesting. I must say I disagree heavily with White’s assessment of critics.

If you like the old AIP stuff you’ll probably dig this. If AIP movies aren’t your thing, you’ll probably want to skip this. I happen to be a huge AIP fan and am very glad to have this in my collection.

The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant is now available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber.

*By the way, this should not be confused with the Blaxploitation film The Thing with Two Heads which James Gordon White also wrote.