A movie can’t be visited by the suck fairy if it sucked from the start: two films

I rewatched THE MAN WITH 2 HEADS (1972) — Turner Classic’s website says the title was an attempt to mockbuster the movie The Thing With Two Heads — because I found I hadn’t written up my notes and barely remembered the movie. Possibly I blocked it out because it’s wretched low-budget crap, about the level of a mediocre high-school stage play and with way too much time devoted to Hyde abusing his mistress. The abuse scenes in the 1932 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are horrible but this one seems to dwell on them more gratuitously. Perhaps because that’s all we see of the victim, without the Jekyll/Ivy early encounter from 1932; perhaps because the movie’s overall quality is so much worse.

The science is idiotic, too; admittedly that’s true of lots of these adaptations, but I’m feeling judgy here. Jekyll’s research develops 1)a treatment that detects the presence of evil because it’s a biochemical problem; 2)a vaccine to restore the brain biochemistry. Burt how can injecting guinea pigs or dogs with drug A prove that it detects evil? Animals aren’t. Interestingly, the problem with drug B is that Jekyll’s assistant messed up his formula — does that mean it would have worked if it had been the right formula? In any case, very not-recommended. “There’s nothing a man likes more than to come home to a beautiful wife, a good cigar and his dog. Only you’re not so beautiful and I don’t have a dog.”

Ang Lee, who can direct both personal drama (The Ice Storm) and action (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) should have been a natural for HULK (2003) but despite online articles arguing it’s an underappreciated gem, it’s a tedious bore. Though Lee did make a great call casting Sam Elliott (above) as Thunderbolt Ross.

I think it start’s to go wrong in the opening, giving us the backstory on David Banner’s (Nick Nolte) experimental genetic/immunological research, his conflict with Ross and how David’s son Bruce (Eric Bana) wound up with a genetic quirk that turns him into the Hulk after doses of nanobots and gamma rays). I think it’s to set up the film’s theme that Bruce and Betty Ross (Jennifer Connolly) are coping with trauma inflicted by their distant fathers but it comes off as generic mad-scientist stuff on David’s part. Making him “David” obviously hat-tips the Bill Bixby TV series; like the series, this assumes the Hulk is born of a pre-existing mutation rather than gamma radiation alone but I don’t thinks this adds much.

Bana’s Bruce comes off not so much repressed (which Anthony Andrews pulls off beautifully) as bland. He saw his father’s rage close up (as we learn in flashback), strong feelings are anathema to him, though he may not realize it. That killed his romance with Betty. Peter David introduced this idea in his long and memorable run on the Hulk, which built heavily on Barry Windsor-Smith’s concept of the Hulk as a product of Bruce’s child abuse. I think (as I did at the time) the movie would have worked better without this concept — lord knows, it’s not like turning into a rampaging, destructive giant couldn’t give Bruce enough trauma.

The Hulk Smash side of the movie is okay, but not memorable. The power level here is much closer to the Hulk in the comics than Lou Ferrigno was but the CGI Hulk is less interesting on screen that the flesh-and-blood Lou Ferrigno smashing things.

While some reviews gush over Lee trying to do some serious character stuff in a superhero movie, the Bixby pilot film did that and did it better. Hell, Raimi’s Spider-Man, which much more comic-book, still dealt with Peter’s personal pain and angst. Ultimately Ang Lee’s film doesn’t bring anything memorable to the table. “It was as if she and the knife … merged.”

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