I'm gonna say it right off the bat I personally think this movie is a lot better than the TV show it was based on. The TV show is so formulaic by today's standards it's become hard to watch. HEAD on the other hand greatly strays from that.When I first saw this movie years ago I hated it due to the non-linear storytelling (if there was any lol). This was back when I used to love the TV show. Now that I've grown up a little bit and got more exposure to other films, HEAD has become one of my all time favorite films. What I love about it is how it completely destroys the Monkees persona and the film techniques used in the film hold up surprisingly well (particularly the solarization effect).If you wanna watch something that's very 60s and "out there", you will love HEAD.It's like watching a "YouTube Poop" that was made in the 60s lol.

This criminally underrated film, released in 1968 as the last "hurrah" for the Monkees, was intended to be end of the idea of the Monkees. Their career was on a rapid, stupefying decline. What they created was an epic acid trip, a bitter criticism of mass media and pop culture, and a surreal deconstruction of the IDEA of The Monkees--thus alienating the fans of the original show, and with the baggage inherent in BEING the Monkees, the young adult philosopher & artist crowd were unlikely to take interest. With a shoestring budget and poor marketing, it failed utterly in the box office. I was first turned on to this film by a friend of mine almost 10 years ago and it has yet to stop fascinating me.This film is many things, and the story surrounding it is as important as its content. As you peel away its layers, it reveals more and more to you. Some of the puzzle pieces actually require some research, and I have no doubt that there is more to be understood about this film than what I currently know of.On the most superficial surface layer, it appears to just be The Monkees being silly with significant format changes from the show. Presented are a series of disconnected sketches that could plausibly have been part of the serial, although edgier. It is technically an extended Monkees episode--gag driven sketch comedy, absurd, and inflatable.However, when you deflate the film you are surprised to find that, unlike the TV show, it actually is not empty, and you get to the essence of what this film actually is. The Monkees were, in the film's own words, "a manufactured image with no philosophies," its artistic choices were dictated by corporate committee, and, legions of misguided Monkey-haters to the contrary, they had incredible talent. For some reason, perhaps lack of education, people projected this frustration on to the four guys themselves and mocked them mercilessly, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of media culture. Yes, the Monkees project is manufactured. The four individuals themselves, however, were innocent pawns.I have a difficult time understanding why people never got that; continue to not get it.Knowing this was their last hurrah, they recklessly deconstructed their own image. So here we have this motif of a self-aware fictional band put through manufactured situations attempting to become real. The underlying desire to be legitimate colors everything in this film. It is absolutely futile. Even if corporate media would allow it, the public wouldn't. Soon they are trying to break out, tearing up costumes, breaking the fourth wall, walking off set, waking up dead extras, any rule of cinema you can think of was broken. They individually tried, in futility, to break from character. Davie tries in vein to become a boxer, but it's just a publicity stunt. Mickey Dolenz tears off the fake arrows and kicks over the fake set to no avail. Peter's the dummy. He's always the dummy. Look through the metaphor. As human beings, artists, they were trying to break free from the image that they themselves were fictitious. They set out to accomplish this with the mentality that it was hopeless, I suspect. They get so desperate they actually start committing acts of war (blowing up the Coke machine, a simple but effective statement about corporate sponsorship), murder, and finally they commit suicide by jumping off a bridge. Even then it is not enough for them to break free of the image that's been created for them. Their deaths were just another scene for the film, and they are simply put in a tank and hauled off to storage for the next production.Another layer to this film concerns some of its symbolism. The all-encompassing box represented their confinement both by pop culture and by their hateful director who forced them to break/lunch in a tiny room not unlike the Head box. They feel like marionettes being made to dance for their puppeteer's pleasure, forced to carry on this charade. This is why the only place in the film free will is discussed or even considered is in the box.The final example I'll bring up--the list goes on but possibly the most telling, is the appearance of industry people in the film. If the party is watched frame by frame, you can see the director showing himself holding the camera in the mirror. And Victor Mature appears as a Godlike figure towering over the four, kicking them around. The sequences that include Head's staff in these contexts remove any doubt as to what this film is really all about.They knew there was no chance whatsoever of this film ever receiving the recognition it deserved, and 40 years later that appears to still be true. But this mentality was huge to the underlying meaning behind this film, and what they actually were able to do with it. The Monkees at some point ceased to feel like people and started to feel like products. This film is an expression of the bitterness and resent created by the situation they were forced into and the people that forced them into it, and in a sense a triumph that their true selves finally came through and real art was created--against the most impossible of odds. In the end, real expression was accomplished and the Monkees project matured.What the whole Monkees project, capped off with this film, accomplished, belongs with Andy Warhol and his multicolored photocopied Marilyn Monroes, and any number of likeminded self-indulgent postmodern/pop culture deconstructionist artists forced down the throat of every art student since 1970.There is no other pop group before or since that could have created such a scathing, incisive criticism of media and popular culture. The factors that came together to create this situation, and subsequently, "Head," are completely unique and I highly doubt they would ever happen again.Hey hey, they're The Monkees.

The most iconic and popular film that came out of the acid-fuelled 1960's was undoubtedly Easy Rider (1969), with the clip of Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper riding their motorbikes to the sound of 'Born to be Wild' now embodying the very spirit of the hippy movement. Yet, as good as Easy Rider is, it followed very much in the same footsteps as Roger Corman's The Wild Angels, out four years before and following the same attitudes and ideas. A lot of the less successful independents from the 1960's have seemingly disappeared from popular culture - movies that deserve a lot more recognition and respect from more mainstream audiences. One of the finest examples, is Head, released the same year as The Beatles' Yellow Submarine, but sharing little of the Liverpudlian quartet's success, perhaps due to it being a vehicle for The Monkees, a band manufactured from actors for the purpose of a bubble-gum sitcom, and who received very little adoration from fans of 'real' music.The Monkees TV series ran between 1966 and 1968, and was a massive success for the band and its co-creator Bob Rafelson, which makes it very strange given the direction Rafelson (directing here) and co-writer Jack Nicholson chose to take them. Head follows the Monkees - Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, Michael Nesmith and David Jones - on a studio lot making a film. They wander aimlessly through different genres - war, horror, adventure, western - playing out surreal and comedic vignettes throughout. The Monkees are tired of their studio image, frequently attempting to disrupt the proceedings as they are followed by an ever- present camera, and repeatedly find themselves locked in a large black room, while a giant Victor Mature tries to squash them. Sound strange? Well, it is.I would imagine people either loving or hating this film, depending on their attitudes towards acid-trip art and the youth culture of the time. Head is complete with psychedelic negative imagery, screaming female fans and a dreamy, Pink Floyd-esque score, all the elements that can now be considered as clichés of the era. But where a lot of these types of surrealistic films were there to mean nothing, Head very much means something, and lays out its attitudes and aims at the beginning, as The Monkees sing a strange diddy about acknowledging their manufactured reputation and ponder their destiny. The film then switches to the opening of a bridge, where the announcer struggles to operate the microphone when the Monkees dash past him, desperately fleeing some unknown danger. They then jump off the bridge, killing themselves, and the titles play over images of their lifeless, floating bodies. These images would hardly endear them to their young, screaming fanbase, therefore finally breaking out of their squeaky-clean shackles.The film has many satirical focuses - war, politics, America, the studio system, advertising, the World War II generation - employing everything from flashing images of napalm bombings and the famous execution of Nyugen Van Lem, to scenes of outright farce such as a foreign army surrendering to an unarmed and shirtless Micky Dolenz in the desert, no doubt signifying America's bullying attitudes to world politics. It's the sheer anger of the satire that makes Head so good, even though it's usually peppered between seemingly light-hearted, playful comedy. There's a few nice songs (although the soundtrack is nothing ground- breaking) and features a wonderful song-and-dance routine featuring David Jones and Toni Basil. I don't know why history has been cruel on Head, as it is as memorable and as outright bizarre as the better- remembered films from this period, but hopefully soon this film will find itself with the cult following it deserves.

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.