Meet The Hollowheads (1989)
Starring: John Glover, Nancy Mette
Juliette Lewis, Richard Portnow
and Anne Ramsey
Mom’s got a problem: her husband’s informed her at the last second that
his new boss has invited himself for dinner. Junior’s got problems of
his own, having just received a black-eye from a playground fistfight.
Meanwhile, teenaged daughter Cindy deals with preparations for her
first grown-up party. It’s the typical suburban sitcom scene, right?
Clearly, you have never seen Meet The Hollowheads.
Meet The Hollowheads was the first, and last, feature film
directed by acclaimed Hollywood make-up artist Thomas R. Burman.
Usually, it’s a
bad sign when a technical person directs a film, but there’s really
something about this film. Beginning life as Life On The Edge,
the distributor had so little faith in it they dumped it on theaters
under an alternate
title, then promptly exiled it to home video purgatory.
Obviously, such a unique film didn’t deserve such a fate. As My Friend Al so
succinctly put it, “This film should either be completely unknown, or
have a huge cult following.” But it’s not really either; it’s somewhere
uncomfortably in-between.
The whole affair has the feel of a short film project that just
ballooned out of control. Everything about the film has been
painstakingly stylized, every last prop, the tiniest detail of
set-design and costuming, even details in dialogue—absolutely everything—clearly
had lots of thought put into making it unique, weird and disorienting.
The result of the combination of the ultra-familiar suburban situation
comedy plotline set in the completely alien universe is what sets Meet
The Hollowheads apart from just
about anything else.
After an almost painfully 80’s credit sequence to ersatz-Danny Elfman
music, we’re whisked off to a terrifying-looking industrial workplace
full
of steam-pipes and tubes. It looks almost like something out of Terry
Gilliam’s
Brazil, an uneasy mix of hyper-futurism and Victorian era
proto-industrialism.
It’s here that we meet Henry Hollowhead (played by John Glover), who’s
talking through one of those Victorian tube devices trying to speak to
an operator. Over this, we hear the voice-over of a young boy, “That’s
my dad! Hi! I’m Billy Hollowhead. And this is about that terrible
shift where my dad
brought his boss home for dinner. Of course, I had problems of my own
that
shift. But then…we all did…”
All right, cheesy narration is not the best way to start a film. I was
skeptical too at first. And the cheesy rap theme song that followed
certainly didn’t help matters. The images of pulsating tubes and pipes
and whirring machinery helped a bit, but really, this is the bit we
just have to get through.
At least the crappy stuff is all at the very beginning.
At the other end of the tube, we find Miriam Hollowhead (Nancy Mette),
matriarch of the Hollowhead clan. She’s your typical 50’s-style sitcom
housewife, and that’s why we meet her in a pretty tight close-up at
first. All right, she’s talking on a tube, and that’s not exactly
normal, but we gradually get the feeling that all is not as normal as
it seems. First, look at the clothes she’s wearing. It looks like
they’re all made out of vinyl, and the
funky pastel colours further dissociate the look from normality. Then
she
finishes her, um…tube-call and we cut away to a tank full of tentacles
with
an eye poking out from one of them as creepy music swells. Suddenly
Miriam
is startled by youngest son Billy. It’s also here that we get our first
look at the kitchen.
How to describe the décor…early “Star Trek” perhaps? The kitchen
is round, and looks something like the bridge of the Starship
Enterprise. Lots of curved orange counters, recessed cabinets and
porthole windows.
The center of the kitchen is a weird control-panel like area full of
what
look like a bunch of dental instruments. Cylindrical pillars full of
bubbling
water complete the picture.
Oops! In all the freakiness, I nearly forgot there was a plot going on!
Billy, you see, came home with a black eye. Miriam says that he can’t
meet dad’s new boss in such a state. She pulls a sort of stretcher out
of one
of the cupboards and straps Billy in. Then she puts a weird
robotic-looking
helmet with big eye-holes over his head. “Mom, I really don’t like
this!”
he says with mounting panic, but she just shushes him. “Stop being
childish,”
she chides as she sticks a corrugated plastic tube over his black eye.
She
then starts cranking a crank on the device the tube is connected to,
then
we cut between shots of Billy looking more and more freaked out, and
shots
from inside the tube. And what’s inside the tube you ask? Good
question. It looks kinda like a lamprey and kinda like an alien being
from the ninth dimension. Apparently the thing, whatever it is,
has attached itself to Billy’s face.
While this is going on, Billy’s pal Joey enters. Miriam plugs him for
info on how Billy got his black eye, bribing him with the possibility
of
a snack. She’s so pleased with the boys’ conduct that she says that
they’ve
each earned one of her “specials.”
Good Lord, if ever there was a movie that made you never want to eat
ever again, this is it. Her “specials” consist of some sort of legged
fish-like creature (which she skewers on a fork then shoves through a
sort of press that slices them into neat little slices) rolled in
sheets of what looks like foam-rubber with some sort of grayish paste.
All served up on a metal cocktail skewer. Yum yum. The boys take their,
um…“treats” back to Billy’s bedroom.
I guess they went whole-hog on the “tube” motif with this film, as
Billy’s room, likewise, is round. The doors and windows are also round,
as are the shelves, tables and bed. Note also the wacky blue/yellow
colour scheme. Billy and Joey play the “Splat-Spray Game.”
I have no idea what the rules to the “Splat-Spray Game” are. I don’t
even know if there are any rules. It basically consists of a sort of
dartboard with a motorized pinwheel in front of it. The boys take turns
shooting the board with gummybear-like things from a makeshift
slingshot. Joey thinks this is small potatoes stuff, so he brings in
Spike, their infested…um…dog? I’m a bit confused, as it seems to have
the face of a wrinkled old man. Some sort of small pet in any case
(actually, a puppet, but this is their world so I’ll give ’em the
benefit of the doubt). They take Spike back to Billy’s room and pick
big tick-like creatures off of its body, and use these to play the
“Splat-Spray Game” with. Naturally, this splatters bug-blood all over
the damned place, and Billy feels sick and worries that he’ll get into
trouble.
In the meantime, Miriam is busy making dinner. Various odd things
happen in the kitchen. I’d go into deeper description, but let’s not
make this sound more like a dream journal than it has to. The
Hollowheads’ eldest son Bud enters. Miriam asks him to play (music) at
the dinner, then asks him to
fetch Billy. Naturally, he runs in on Billy and Joey playing
“Splat-Spray” with bugs (Billy, having overcome his queasiness, is now
gleefully joining in with Joey in splattering arachnid-blood all over
his room and himself), and decides a little blackmail is called for. He
won’t tell on him if he “feed[s]
Grandpa for the next three turns.” Then back in his room, he practices
his
musical instrument, which looks like it was built from a trombone, a
saxophone
mouthpiece, a length of rubber tubing, one octave of a synth keyboard,
several
funnels and…a rubber chicken!
Back in the kitchen, Miriam is cooking up more disgusting treats for
dinner as daughter Cindy (a young Juliette Lewis with bottle-blonde
hair and an ugly pink/white vinyl dress) makes her first appearance.
Miriam asks her to
help with dinner, but she whines that she was invited to a party later,
which
Dad said she could attend. To try to make nice-nice, she says she’ll go
to
Bud’s room and tell him to keep it down. She starts dancing and singing
along
(or, to be more honest, lip-syncing to whoever did the actual singing).
Eventually,
Miriam stops them by yelling, “QUIET!”
Meanwhile, Miriam has run into a little snag in making dinner…all her
tubes are stopped up! Oh, the horror! So she sends Billy on an errand
to
Stationmaster Babbleaxe to get the tubes flowing again so dinner can
proceed
as planned. Is any of this making any sense? It might make a little
more
sense if you actually watched the film, but then, maybe not.
As they proceed through a darkened soundstage bearing a lantern with
some sort of glowing creature inside, we get more narration from Billy:
“Whenever Joey said, ‘No problem,’ I knew we were gonna have one. As we
walked to the pumping station, Joey told me about our friend Seymour
Leggs. It seems Seymour was playing the Splat-Spray Game, except he got
caught using his baby sister. His parents were gonna put him in the
Punitration Box for just about ever! That is, until Seymour ran away.
Some say he fell off The Edge…”
Not the U2 guitarist of course…
As they pass some Goth-punks, Billy says he doesn’t believe in The
Edge, and thinks it’s just some story parents make up to scare kids.
Then Joey tries to scare Billy with a story about someone he knew who
fell off The Edge.
Then they pass a guy who looks kinda like a fat Anthony Hopkins in a
top
hat and black-and-white stripey clothes (who, if this is indeed the
“Crazy
Man” from the credits, seems to have been portrayed by Burman himself).
Then
it’s off to the pumping station.
Here we see a sort of drill sergeant grilling his charges on their
first run. It’s these guys that clean the tubes, as evidenced by their
goggles, headgear, brush-brooms and freaky fibrous skirts. “Tube
Reamers,” they call them. Joey decides to create some mischief, so he
pulls on a lever which makes steam burst out and sirens go off. Before
they know it, guys in fibrous skirts are chasing them through the
corridors. They think they’ve lost ’em by hiding behind some big tanks,
only to be discovered by a man carrying a
giant metal fly-swatter. He takes them to see Stationmaster Babbleaxe
herself, who’s played by none other than character actress
extraordinaire, Anne Ramsey*.
You probably thought you’d seen it all before you got to this scene.
You were wrong, because this scene may be the strangest and hardest to
explain to your friends of any movie. First off, Babbleaxe is wearing
some sort of insignia on her coat and hat (the latter looks like a
converted bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken). We later learn this is the
logo of United Umbilical, the mega-corporation that runs all these
tubes, and that Henry Hollowhead works for. Second, she’s subtitled,
which kinda make’s sense if you’ve ever heard Anne Ramsey speak. But
she’s not the only one. Everyone’s subtitled in this scene!
Additionally, the characters’ thoughts are subtitled as well!
Huh? Incidentally, Ramsey gets one of the best lines in the entire
film: “I suppose your mother thinks it’s our fault that her
tubes
are blocked.” One could take that several ways, and I’m certain that
the
filmmakers knew exactly that.
Babbleaxe pawns Miriam’s order off onto her drone, ordering him to fill
it. By the way, the items ordered by Miriam are, in order: Smooth,
Chunky, C-risp (yep, how it’s spelled in the subtitles), Brackish and
About Two
Pounds. Then we learn what happens to naughty boys who get caught
pilfering
from United Umbilical: they get their hands chopped off! The drone
shows
them a hand preserved in a crystal ball. They think it’s Seymour’s and
run
off screaming.
You’re surely thinking, “How can you top that?” Believe it or not, you
can. You’ll see how shortly. In the meantime, we get to see Miriam
having a heart-to-heart talk with Cindy about the use of “softening
jelly.” What exactly “softening jelly” is supposed to do, like many of
the references in this film, is left to our imagination. Best not to
ponder it too long, it’ll make your head hurt. Just take a gander at
that crazy bathroom, with the piano-key tiles encircling the mirror and
the weird makeup-mask device.
At last, Henry returns home through the front door, accompanied by his
boss, Martin Crabneck. Mr. Crabneck is dressed in purple lounge-lizard
finery, with slicked-back hair and a pencil-thin John Waters moustache.
Before he’s even spoken a word, cold chills are already running up and
down your spine just from looking at him. The man oozes slime (Not
literally. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t need to explain that, but this is Meet
The Hollowheads we’re
talking about, so I could easily see them introducing a character that
secreted
a mantle of mucousoid slime. They don’t, but it’s not beyond the realm
of
possibility for this film.)
Henry introduces his boss to Miriam. He immediately starts putting the
sleazy moves on her. While this goes on, Cindy uses the weird makeup
device we saw earlier, then tries on an assortment of gaudy new-wave
inspired outfits, all of them uglier than sin. Cindy’s scene is set to
godawful 80’s pop music.
At length, Billy returns to spy on Cindy admiring herself in a totally
unflattering, poofy skirt, reciting love poetry about a boy her parents
disapprove
of. He demands his “feeding Grandpa” duties to be pawned off on her in
exchange
for his silence. This is followed by a very creepy scene of Mr.
Crabneck
in their bathroom, pulling lacy underthings out of a tube, using them
to
dry his face and sniffing them. He’s spied on by Billy, who runs back
to
the living room where Henry lectures on him about the fight he got into
earlier.
Mr. Crabneck then uses the pretext of teaching Billy to defend himself
to
stomp on his feet and capture him in a headlock. Billy stomps on his
feet
and escapes. Henry tries to protest, but let’s face it, the man has
zero
backbone.
Cindy arrives just in time to stop some potential “rough housing”
between Henry and Mr. Crabneck. Naturally, Mr. Crabneck starts oozing
some more figurative slime, coming on to the jailbait Cindy with
absolutely no shame. Cindy,
amazingly, simpers femininely and thanks him, making the whole scene
that
much more disturbing. A nervous Henry asks, “Cindy, don’t you think
that
dress is a little too…?”
A little too what? Hideous? Grotesque? Appalling? If so, we
agree!
To keep Mr. Crabneck’s figurative tentacles off of his daughter, Henry
quickly hustles Cindy into the kitchen. Miriam quickly accosts her and
informs her that Billy said she volunteered to feed Grandpa. For
whatever reason, they can’t let Mr. Crabneck know about Grandpa…it’s
just one of the many weird things about this film that go unanswered.
She hands Cindy a huge syringe full of Green River™ soda (well, that’s
what it looks like anyway)
and sends her on her way.
Cindy opens a heavily barred and bolted door leading to a sort of dark
dungeon full of steam escaping from pipes and muted, coloured lights.
Grandpa seems to be catatonic; he sits in a sort of futuristic-looking
chair with lots of tubes and pipes attached to it. Cindy empties out a
sort of bag with a sour look on her face (ick…best not to ponder that
too long), then puts a sort of bit-tube like thing into his mouth and
syringes the, um…food through that.
Cindy’s nerdy “fake-date,” Oliver Digits, finally arrives to pick her
up. He hands her a corsage of what looks like mutated alien coral and
they
take off. Then at last, the climactic dinner arrives. The iridescent
green
napkins are bad enough, but the freaky food, in some of the most
inedible-looking primary colours imaginable, is bound to kill any
appetite. Add to that Mr. Crabneck’s disturbing come-ons to Miriam and
it all adds up to become one of the most unpleasant meals in cinema
history.
I won’t get into the climactic half-hour of the film. Suffice to say
that it involves various alien kitchen implements, “butt-polish” and an
unbilled surprise cameo by Bobcat Goldthwait.
It’s hard to say what Meet The Hollowheads, ultimately, is
about. Is this a future Earth society? A weird parallel universe? A
completely
alien society who just happen to look like Earthlings? In the end, I
think
such ponderings don’t ultimately matter. Meet The Hollowheads
is
what it is, and we should appreciate that.
I, for one, find the classic sitcom setting in an alien world to be
brilliant. The feeling I got ultimately from this film was that it was
a condemnation of television’s distortion of reality. By placing
fifties-style stock sitcom characters in a grotesquely unfamiliar
setting, we realize how far removed such characters are from reality,
and how truly little such idealized families compare to the norm.
Then again maybe not. Maybe I’m just reading too much into it and
talking bollocks. Still, there can be no doubt that Meet The
Hollowheads is
a delightfully one-of-a-kind experience that more folks should know
about. Ripe for rediscovery.
Buy It: on El Cheapo DVD from Amazon.com, using the link
provided.
Second Opinions: Chainsaw
Fodder, Epinions.com,
The
SF, Horror And Fantasy Film Review, Colin
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*Incidentally, the fly-swatter-toting drone is
played by Logan Ramsey, Anne’s husband.