“We Stackpooles all have our… peculiarities.”

Justin’s rating: I’d prefer MST3K’s Big Brains instead

Justin’s review: I guess I have to ask myself the question, is my life more enriched after having seen so many of Charles Band’s Full Moon pictures, or is part of my brain now resembling a mushy, 14-day old banana?

To answer that I say… let’s watch another one of these stinkers!

Today’s thespian masterpiece is Head of the Family, a film that might boast one of the strangest premises of all of Full Moon’s library. It has to do with a really odd family called the Stackpooles — a foursome of mutants who each have a superpower of sorts. There’s Otis, the super-strong one; Ernestina, the super-attractive one; Wheeler, the one with super-senses; and Myron, the super-intelligent one. Myron is the titular head in more ways than one (precisely, two) — he’s the leader who telepathically controls the others, and he happens to be little more than a giant noggin on a wheelchair with little arms.

The Stackpooles are content to keep to themselves — they are secretly rich — until an aspiring thug named Lance tries to blackmail them when he spies the family kidnapping locals for nefarious experiments. Lance hopes that the Stackpooles can help him bump off the abusive husband of a girl he likes, but he ends up pushing them a little too far in this pursuit.

Meanwhile, Myron’s trying to figure out a way to transfer his brain into a normal body. I guess I sympathize, although if that were me, I’d totally go the Krang route from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and just put my talking brain into the belt buckle of a giant robot.

Head of the Family is a yard sale of jumbled ideas that don’t fit together. It’s trying to be a weird dark comedy that dabbles in horror, super powers, crime drama, and exploitation. It wouldn’t mind being compared to the Munsters or the Addams Family, although that would be giving Band’s film far too much credit. It’s a mess — an interesting mess, but a mess nonetheless.

The way I see it, the freak family is a cool setup, but the tone of this movie misses the mark. Instead of being purely tongue-in-cheek funny, it often skews to being crass and tiresome. Plus, having three of the Stackpooles being essentially remote controlled zombies removes the potential for a trio of characters that we’d get to know.

While I liked the acting and prosthetic effects for Myron, Head of the Family was a big miss for me. About half of this movie is completely unnecessary sex scenes and the other half lacks a strong plot to carry the interest of the viewer. By the time this wraps up with a meandering play of “Joan of Arc” in a basement theater, I had the sinking feeling that even the filmmakers lost their train of thought on this.

There really isn’t anything edifying here, and so the banana gets a little bit mushier. Thanks for nothing, Charles Band.

Intermission!

• There were a few attempts at a sequel called Bride of the Head of the Family, but this never happened.
• “Sometimes I feel like a big ol’ turd in a small toilet.” “Whatever makes you happy, honey.”
• “What a man. What a brain.”
• HUNKALUV license plate. From Florida, of course.
• Basement cell of the lobotomized
• “Them’s some big eyes, brother.”
• Swampland is convenient for a family looking to get rid of cars and bodies
• Two potatoes! TWO!
• “Every stupid word is a deposit at the pain bank!”
• “We are striving for some fragment of artistic integrity here.”