I barely remember this film for many of the reasons cited in this effectively illustrative review. Reading now, I am on my mission to seek it out and live through everything that writer Petra Mayer describes here. I was a prime audience member of the Monkees time on the public stage, both during and after their heyday, including most poignantly, the national and world events attached to their demise. Deep chords struck.
If you’re of my vintage, perhaps you will be too. Read the article, and find the movie to watch. Here’s a link on YouTube that might go away eventually, so check it out if you can in time.
The Monkees Tried To Cut Their Strings With ‘Head’
In Head, the Monkees made a play for creative and cultural respect. Did it work? No. Was it a strangely great movie? Heck yeah.
Photo by Moviestore/Shutterstock
I don’t think, as a teenage fangirl, that I realized exactly how bitter, how cynical, how teeth-grittingly furious the Monkees’ 1968 movie Head is. How it starts with — more or less — a suicide: Micky Dolenz running in a panic through a municipal ribbon-cutting ceremony and taking a leap off of a shiny new suspension bridge, tumbling through the air and crashing into the water to the stately chords of “Porpoise Song” while the rest of the band watches in consternation from the railing. How it ends the same way, except this time it’s all four of them jumping. How the Gerry Goffin-penned lyrics that play over both scenes go “a face, a voice/an overdub has no choice, an image cannot rejoice.”