Shudder recently acquired a movie called Head of the Family. It is a B-horror from 1996 and was produced by Full Moon Productions. As usually is the case with some of their offerings, it was pretty laughable and not that great.
So the film is about Lance who has the worst toupee ever who unwisely decides to blackmail a family of mutants known as the Stackpools. We aren’t given much information as to what lead to their mutation except they were born as quadruplets and each have their own unique ability.There is Myron who is a giant head and is the brains of the family. Otis is the muscle. Wheeler is the eyes and ears. Ernestina who is the only female of the bunch is the sex appeal.
So why does Lance want to blackmail this family again? Well he has been running around with the bimbo whose boyfriend is the town thug. I’m just going to call him Mullet Man. Lance wants to keep having sex with the bimbo. That is essentially the entire movie. I am not kidding. Every other scene is them screwing.
So Lance discovers the mutants are trapping people and taking them away to their home so Myron can experiment on them. He uses this information to blackmail the family into doing away with Mullet Man. So they do. Lance should be happy right? Nope. He wants money and lots of it.
Lance lets everything go to his dumb toupee, and gets in over his head. The Stackpools kidnap Lance and the bimbo, and they force her to do a reenactment of the burning of Joan of Arc to get Lance to talk. During this process, the bimbo gets the bright idea to seduce Myron. The whole scene is just groan worthy and despite her attempts, it does not work. She lives anyway as Otis saves her from the fire. The house burns down and everyone dead. The conniving bimbo quickly realizes this means Otis is the heir to the family fortune and marries him for the money. The movie ends with the implication that Myron survived the fire.
But wait there is a sequel because of course there is. It is called Bride of the Head of the Family, so guess that means Brainy survived after all.
It is so hard to take the film seriously, and yeah between the acting and the dialogue, I was between laughing and scratching my head. Sometimes something can be so bad that it is good, but sadly not the case here. If you’re used to some of the ridiculousness that Full Moon offers, then check this out. You will end up with a laugh either way, and as we know, laughter is the best medicine.
Till next time, stay scared!
-Tha Thrilla-
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