Head of the Family | |
---|---|
Directed by | Charles Band (as Robert Talbot) |
Screenplay by | Benjamin Carr |
Produced by | Charles Band Kirk Edward Hansen |
Starring | Blake Adams Jacqueline Lovell J.W. Perra Bob Schott Alexandria Quinn |
Cinematography | Adolfo Bartoli |
Edited by | Poppy Das Lazar Djokic |
Music by | Richard Band Steven Morell |
Production companies | Full Moon Entertainment Tanna Productions |
Distributed by | The Kushner-Locke Company |
Release date |
|
Running time | 82 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Head of the Family is an American 1996 B movie black comedy released by Full Moon Features. It concerns a Southern couple who blackmail a family of mutants to get money and revenge. [1]
Howard is the meanest nastiest thug in town, a Harley riding criminal with an attractive wife named Loretta. Loretta's problem is that she is having an affair with Lance, owner of the town diner and Howard is getting suspicious.
Driving back from one of their nightly flings, Lance witnesses the local family of weirdos, the Stackpools, dragging a man from his truck and into their house. Seeing this as an opportunity, Lance discovers the Stackpools' terrible secret. They are quadruplets, and each was born with one exaggerated human faculty: One is extremely strong, one has extremely well-developed senses, one is extremely attractive, and one is extremely intelligent. The whole family is run by the intelligent one, the titular "head of the family": Myron. Little more than a giant head with hands in a wheelchair, Myron psychically controls his other siblings, but seeks more. When idiotic locals fall for his trap, he experiments on their brains, trying to find a normal body to house his superior intellect.
Lance blackmails the Stackpools with their secret, getting them to kill Howard. He also demands $2,000 a week in cash, since the Stackpools are rich in oil and coal, among other things. Eventually Myron tires of Lance's bottom-feeding, and captures him and Loretta, to get them to destroy the evidence of their secret. To force Lance's hand, he puts Loretta in a mock play of Joan of Arc in the basement, complete with a burning at the stake. Otis, seeing the "pretty girl" in trouble, carries her off before she can be hurt, and burns the house down. With the Stackpools and Lance dead, the ever scheming Loretta realizes that Otis Stackpool, as the sole survivor, is heir to the family riches. She marries him, inheriting all the Stackpool fortunes and becoming Loretta Stackpool. The ending, however, suggests that Myron is still alive and is controlling Otis from the shadows.
Plans for a sequel titled Bride of the Head of Family date back to as early as 1997, when Charles Band first mentioned it in the Videozone for The Creeps. stating that it was intended as Full Moon's next release before Curse of the Puppet Master. [2] This project never materialized.
Promotional material for a new version of Bride of the Head of Family was released on February 14, 2020. This was promoted as a part of the Deadly Ten series [3] and was set to be directed by Charles Band. The plot of the film will follow the events of the previous film. [4]
Moonstruck is a 1987 American romantic comedy film directed by Norman Jewison and written by John Patrick Shanley. It stars Cher as a widowed Italian American woman who falls in love with her fiancé's hot-tempered, estranged younger brother, played by Nicolas Cage. The supporting cast includes Danny Aiello, Olympia Dukakis and Vincent Gardenia.
Loretta Young was an American actress. Starting as a child, she had a long and varied career in film from 1917 to 1953. She received numerous honors including an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and three Primetime Emmy Awards as well as two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her work in film and television.
Them is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates, the third in her "Wonderland Quartet" following A Garden of Earthly Delights (1967) and Expensive People (1968) and preceding Wonderland (1971). It was published by Vanguard in 1969 and it won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1970.
Red-Headed Woman is a 1932 American pre-Code romantic comedy film, produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, based on the 1931 novel of the same name by Katharine Brush, and a screenplay by Anita Loos. It was directed by Jack Conway and stars Jean Harlow as a woman who uses sex to advance her social position. During the course of the film, Harlow's character breaks up a marriage, has multiple affairs, has premarital sex, and attempts to kill a man.
Shannon Bruce Snaith, better known as Shane West, is an American actor, singer and songwriter. He is known for his portrayal of Eli Sammler in the ABC family drama Once and Again, Landon Carter in A Walk to Remember, Dr. Ray Barnett in the NBC medical drama ER, Michael Bishop in The CW spy drama Nikita and in the WGN fantasy adventure historical drama Salem as John Alden. West received critical acclaim for his performance portraying Darby Crash in the biopic What We Do Is Secret.
Charles Robert Band is an American film producer and director, known for his work on horror comedy movies.
More American Graffiti is a 1979 American coming-of-age comedy film written and directed by Bill L. Norton, produced by Howard Kazanjian. The film, shot in multiple aspect ratios for comedic and dramatic emphasis, is the sequel to the 1973 film American Graffiti. While the first film followed a group of friends during the evening before they depart for college, the sequel depicts where they end up on consecutive New Years Eves from 1964 to 1967.
Pixel Perfect is a 2004 American science fiction comedy film released as a Disney Channel Original Movie. It aired in the United States on January 16, 2004, and in the United Kingdom on January 21, 2004.
The Devil's Rejects is a 2005 American black comedy horror film written, produced and directed by Rob Zombie. It is the second film in the Firefly film series, serving as a sequel to Zombie's 2003 film House of 1000 Corpses, and followed by its own sequel in 2019, 3 From Hell. The film is centered on the three fugitive members of the psychopathic antagonist family from the previous film, acting as the film's villainous protagonists, with Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, and Zombie's wife Sheri Moon Zombie reprising their roles, and Leslie Easterbrook replacing Karen Black as the matriarch.
Night of the Creeps is a 1986 American science fiction horror comedy film written and directed by Fred Dekker in his feature directorial debut, starring Jason Lively, Jill Whitlow, and Tom Atkins. The film is an earnest attempt at a B movie and an homage to the genre. While the main plot of the film is related to zombies, the film also mixes in takes on slashers and alien invasion films. Night of the Creeps did not perform well at the box office, but it developed a cult following.
The Even Stevens Movie is a 2003 American comedy film released as a Disney Channel Original Movie that is based on the Disney Channel Original Series Even Stevens. It premiered on June 13, 2003, serving as the series finale. The movie drew an audience of 5.1 million viewers.
James Bernard Florentine is an American comedian, actor, author, and television personality. He is best known for co-hosting That Metal Show on VH1 Classic and voicing several characters on Crank Yankers, including Special Ed and Bobby Fletcher. He hosts The Jim Florentine Show on Sirius XM Satellite Radio and a podcast called Everybody Is Awful . He has released six albums of stand-up comedy, two comedy specials, seven installments in the Terrorizing Telemarketers prank call compilation, and three installments of the Meet the Creeps hidden camera show. His 2018 book Everybody is Awful reached No. 1 on the Book Soup nonfiction chart.
Puppet Master II is a 1990 direct-to-video horror film written by David Pabian and directed by Dave Allen. It is the second film in the Puppet Master franchise, the sequel to 1989's Puppet Master, and stars Elizabeth Maclellan, Gregory Webb, Charlie Spradling, Jeff Weston and Nita Talbot as paranormal investigators who are terrorized by the animate creations of an undead puppeteer, played by Steve Welles.
The Haunted World of El Superbeasto is a 2009 American adult animated superhero comedy film directed, co-written and co-produced by Rob Zombie. The film was written by Zombie and Tom Papa from Zombie's comic book series of the same name. The film was also produced by Starz Media and Film Roman, with animation provided by Carbunkle Cartoons and Big Star Productions.
Something for Everyone is a 1970 American black comedy film starring Angela Lansbury, Michael York, Anthony Higgins, and Jane Carr.
The Best Man Holiday is a 2013 American comedy-drama film written, co-produced and directed by Malcolm D. Lee. A sequel to Lee's The Best Man (1999), it stars Morris Chestnut, Taye Diggs, Regina Hall, Terrence Howard, Sanaa Lathan, Nia Long, Harold Perrineau, Monica Calhoun and Melissa De Sousa, all reprising their roles from the previous film. Along with Lee, the film was produced by Sean Daniel.
It Happens Every Thursday is a 1953 American comedy film directed by Joseph Pevney and starring Loretta Young, John Forsythe, and Frank McHugh, loosely based on the 1951 autobiographical book of the same title by Jane S. McIlvaine. It was Loretta Young's final theater-released film, as she switched to television work after this movie. The film cost $617,085 to make, with Young receiving $75,000 for her appearance. After It Happens Every Thursday, Young took a 33-year hiatus from film work of any kind until 1986 when she starred in the TV movie Christmas Eve directed by Stuart Cooper.
Fade Away is a novel by author Harlan Coben. It is the third novel in his series of a crime solver and sports agent named Myron Bolitar.