Movie Info
Premiere: 11/6/68 in New York City
General Release Date: 11/20/68
Running time: 86 minutes
Starring:
The Monkees
Annette Funicello
Victor Mature
Carol Doda
Ten Garr
Sonny Liston
Timothy Carey
Frank Zappa
Written by: Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson
Directed by: Bob Rafelson
Produced by: Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson
Executive Producer: Bert Schneider
Assistant Director: Jon Anderson
Choreographer: Toni Basil
Music Coordinator: Igo Kantor
A Raybert Production presented by Columbia Pictures
Filmed from 2/11/68 to 5/21/68 in Screen Gems Studios and on location in Utah, California, & the Bahamas on a budget of $750,000
Music:
"The Porpoise Song"
"Circle Sky"
"As We Go Along"
"Long Title: Do I Have To Do This All Over Again"
"Can You Dig It"
"Daddy's Song"
"Ditty Diego - War Chant"
Historical Notes
- All four Monkees, Bob Rafelson, Bert Schnieder, and Jack Nicholson spent a full weekend in Ojai, CA throwing out ideas for the movie, speaking into a tape recorder. All four Monkees have recently expressed an interest in listening to these tapes again, but they are thought to be destroyed or lost.
- One reason for the commercial failure of "Head" is due to the promotional advertisements having hardly made any mention of The Monkees as the main stars.
- Although The Monkees did indeed have a part in writing "Head," they were not given credit as writers of the film. In response, Micky, Davy, & Mike did not show up at the scheduled first day of shooting. Their plan didn't prove successful.
- Only $16,111 worth of tickets was grossed in the U.S., mainly due to poor distribution.
- The film has since gotten critical acclaim for being ahead of its time and has evolved into a cult-classic.
- A proposed deal for a second Monkees movie has been talked about since 1986, but has never occured. This project nearly came to be in 1998, when all four Monkees were offered contracts for the film. One idea for their sophomore movie effort was for The Monkees to go to Weekly, Mississippi, where the supermarket tabloids in the Weekly World News actually come true. Micky, Peter, & Mike agreed to the contracts, while Davy declined. The movie idea popped another time in 2001, when Micky claimed he had a deal in line with Paramount Pictures for himself, Davy, & Peter. Peter refused to take part due to prior committments & rising tensions between the group and the project was scrapped once again.
The Monkees Micky Dolenz, Mike Nesmith, Davy Jones and Peter Tork didn't really enjoy being labeled the pre-Fab Four back when their TV series was all the rage in 1966. With the help and support of Bob Rafaelson (co-producer, co-writer and director) and Jack Nicholson (co-producer, co-writer, and, if you look closely, bit player), the Monkees expressed their displeasure over being packaged for popular consumption in the non sequitur masterpiece Head. At least, it seems that the film is an indictment of the merchandising of pop stars. It's hard to tell at times, because Head literally has no plot; it is instead a patchwork of loopy sight gags, instant parodies, "camp" cutups, musical numbers and wry inside jokes. Clips of such old movies as the 1934 Karloff-Lugosi epic The Black Cat pop up every so often, as does an impressive lineup of pop-culture icons: Victor Mature, Annette Funicello, Sonny Liston, Frank Zappa (he's the one leading a cow) and Ray Nitschke, as well as such movie-trivia "answers" as Timothy Carey, Vito Scotti, Teri Garr, Percy Helton, Logan Ramsey, Carol Doda, and pre-Divine cross-dresser T.C. Jones. The best bits include a lengthy Golden Boy parody which does double duty as a lampoon of the network's efforts to create "personalities" for the individual Monkees, and a psychedelic buck-and-wing performed by Davy Jones. One gag, in which Micky Dolenz blows up a Coca Cola machine, is usually excised from TV showings. Since viewers also see that infamous clip of a Vietnamese police chief shooting his prisoner in the head, it might be fair to assume that the film has a deep ,eaning but most prefer the songs and laughs. Head did zero business when it first came out thanks to poor distribution, but it has since become a fixture of midnight-movie showings and campus cinema classes. - Hal Erickson (allmovie.com) / Edited by Monkeesrule43 Online
