Opening on a bright sunny day, we watch as a small crowd gathered to witness the dedication of a new suspension bridge face an interminable delay as the mayor and the chief of police of ... wherever the hell we are deal with some massive feedback problems over the PA system. And, with the crowd already restless, the ribbon cutting ceremony is rudely interrupted again when four men storm the bridge and break through the assembled luminaries. These men, the Faux Four -- better known as The Monkees ... Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, Davy Jones and Michael Nesmith -- appear to be fearfully running from something. At the head of this frightened pack, Micky makes an abrupt right turn and dives off the bridge, into the water below, where the surrounding liquid quickly transmogrifies, shifting and swirling into amorphous blobs of psychedelic colors. And then, while "The Porpoise Song" contemplatively serenades, several mermaids join him and they swim away...

Cut to the Monkees' house, where a beautiful girl passes from Micky, to Peter, to Mike, and finally, Davy, kissing them all as she goes. When Mike wants to take the smooching a little further, she just laughs him off and leaves ... Cut to a wall of television screens, showing life in the late 1960's. And as our boys piss and moan about being stereotyped by their manufactured origins, and after they promise to give the people what they expect, all the screens shift to the brutal assassination of a Vietnamese POW -- except for the one in the lower left corner, where a woman is screaming; soon revealed to be just a rabid fan of the group, oblivious to the committed atrocities all around her...

Cut to a football field, where the boys lead a raucous crowd in a cheer for war, and then jump to a four-man foxhole. Under heavy fire, Peter goes for more ammo, pauses for a photo for LIFE magazine, and runs afoul of a mixed-metaphor in the form of a football player (Green Bay Packer legend Ray Nitschke), who just wants to win the big game. Getting by this lunatic, Peter makes it back to the foxhole. Then, together, Sgt. Nesmith and his Howling Monkees storm into Ro-Man's cave, fight their way in, only to emerge out the other side in a concert arena, where they tear through a rousing rendition of "Circle Sky". But as they play, mixed with shots of the frenzied audience are clips of terrified Vietnamese refugees fleeing for their lives. To punctuate the obvious to the oblivious, when they finish the song, the crowd rushes the stage and tears the band apart...

Okay, let’s get this outta the way first: I love the Monkees, and love 'em almost unconditionally. Were they a manufactured pop group? Absolutely. Did they play their own instruments? I don’t care. But they didn't even write the majority of their major hits, you counter. Again. Don't care. How many songs do you think Elvis wrote for himself? And we all know how I feel about Elvis, right? Right. Now, my only real beef with the Pre-fab Four is when they get a little too whiny over their artistic merit, or a perceived lack of street-cred, musically speaking, trying to make the whole Monkee phenomenon out to be more than what it rightfully was. And I have no intention of doing that, here, either. For, what it rightfully is/was/whatever is pretty damned clever, funny, and catchy as all hell as is, whether we're talking about their music or the TV series, and it doesn't need me or anyone else blowing smoke and sunshine up anybody's wazoo to prove it. And yet, sadly, it was the belief in one's own hype that destined the group, which had flashed so big, so bright, and so fast in 1966, to just as quickly fizzle out in only two short years.

The brainchild of Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, who, inspired by The Beatles recent hit, A Hard Days Night, pitched a copy-cat combo-franchise to their bosses at Screen Gems, a subsidiary of Columbia Pictures, known mostly for distributing Hanna-Barbera cartoons and re-introducing The Three Stooges to a brand new generation of fans via the boob-tube in the 1950's. (The duo had met and formed a partnership while working on the studio's The Wackiest Ship in the Army.) Originally, Rafelson and Schneider wanted to plug The Lovin' Spoonful into their proposed series, but the band was already under contract with another label. So was The Dave Clark Five. Thus, en lieu of any other legal entanglements, the decision was made to start a band from scratch. Thus, a wide net was thrown out, whose catch was eventually whittled down to an apprentice jockey, a former child actor, a refugee from the Greenwich Village folk scene, and a guy whose mom invented White-Out.

History shows that these creators and collaborators managed to catch lightning in a bottle, everything seemed to gel, and whether the show was a vehicle to help promote record sales or the records were released to help boost the ratings is open for debate. What isn't, was the popularity of both. And while the series was breaking ground and raking in Emmy awards, the records, under the guiding hand of Don Kirshner, with some hideously infectious tunes penned by Neil Diamond, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, the Monkees were rocketing up the charts and spinning gold records with each new release. It was alchemy. Pure alchemy. Alas, while things appeared to be gelling on the surface, underneath things were already starting to curdle. 

Soon tiring of the same old formula and fed-up with the restrictions of the canned, "hands-off" hit-making-machine, the four-headed monster Rafelson, Schneider and Kirshner had created was soon rebelling. Wanting more input into what went on onscreen, and, especially after word broke that they weren't playing their own instruments, just adding vocals, the Monkees began to exert more influence in the recording studio, and, against their producers' explicit wishes, began touring. Tork and Nesmith were already established musicians and Jones had a successful musical theater run under his belt, which may leave a person scratching their head since Dolenz took lead vocal on most of their hits. Also, Dolenz had never played the drums in his life. And though Jones was a better drummer, initially being the face of the franchise, the powers that be forbade this because Jones was too short and became obscured by the drum-kit. And while the tours proved successful, acrimony behind the scenes soon found Kirshner getting himself fired, leaving the Monkees to their own recording devices. And while the music might have been more creatively satisfying, sales were quickly leveling off.

As for the TV series, despite calls to dump the comedy and transform it into musical variety hour by the cast, Screen Gems and NBC were content with leaving things as is. However, it was soon becoming apparent that the series might be more trouble than it was worth. Despite all this, the Monkees still had enough juice for Rafelson and Schneider to convince Columbia to fund a feature film. And so, while the second TV season floundered, as the story goes, Rafelson, collaborator Jack Nicholson, and the collective Monkees met at a resort hotel in Ojai, California, lit-up, licked-up, and bounced ideas off each other and into a tape recorder, which was roughly translated into a shooting script. Which is why HEAD can be best described as less of a film and more of a stream of consciousness committed to film, or random thoughts being constantly bombarded by non-sequiturs, bound together by metaphor that is, at times, subtle and other times, not so much. As for me, I think it can be best described as some late-night channel surfing, where you've already cycled through the circuit several times, stopping and randomly sticking around long enough to see what a program is before moving on, hoping not for something better, just something else. 

Here, though, Rafelson and his kooky quartet have their hands on the remote control. And as we bounce around from Ronald Reagan giving speeches, Bela Lugosi doing his thing in The Black Cat, and some commercials for Ralph Williams Ford Dealership, we finally settle on another war film, with Micky stumbling through the desert. Alone, out of food and water, he finds a stray Coke machine amongst the dunes. But when he puts in his change, the machine clunks empty. Flying into a rage, Micky assaults the machine while a Coke jingle merrily plays. Then, an Arab horseman rides up, says "Pssssst" in subtitles, and then rides away. Next, a tank rumbles over a dune but the driver quickly surrenders; and then more soldiers appear, hundreds of them, all laying their arms at Micky’s feet before filing away. After they're all gone, Micky crawls into the tank, takes aim, and blows the Coke machine to smithereens ... When the smoke clears, we have another musical interlude as our heroes find themselves in a harem and indulge in both the pleasures of the flesh and the pipe....

Change the channel to the wild west, where a wagon train is under Indian attack. The situation dire, an injured woman (Teri Garr) begs trooper Micky to suck the poison out of her wounded finger. Nearby, Mike also lies gravely wounded against a tree. As the Indians close in for the kill, Mike tells Micky how to remove the offending projectile; but Micky, tired of playing make believe, storms off the set, breaking through the backdrop, and disappears. Mike follows him ... Change the channel, and we find Davy in front of a Brownstone, playing the violin. But Mike and Micky, still in their cowboy garb, interrupt his scene. Davy follows them, and they wind up in a train yard, where a Phantom Kook appears and bellows at them for wandering off the set. (Timothy Carey -- who's made a career out of playing phantom kooks.) Leaving the Kook behind, the trio head down a street, their mere presence triggering a panic, as everyone else quickly disappears. Inside a cafe, they find Peter and a surly waitress, who chides them as "God’s gift to the eight-year olds." But Peter isn't listening; intent on staring at -- nay, staring into his melting ice cream cone as we change channels again...

Now, we settle on Davy, who's in a boxing match with Sonny Liston -- and he’s losing badly. And as he's pummeled senseless, our boy flashes back to his violin playing, where he argues with his girl (Annette Funicello) about agreeing to be in this fixed fight. But back in the ring, Davy refuses to take a dive. In the crowd, when Mike criticizes Micky for messing up the fixed fight, Micky loses it when he's called a dummy and storms the ring. Mayhem ensues until Peter magically appears and reminds everyone that, no, he is the dummy, and always the dummy, and then we jump back to the cafe and the melting ice cream...

Here, after Peter decks the surly waitress, the scene is a wrap and the director and crew spill onto the set, including Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper. Peter, meanwhile, visibly upset, tries and fails to corner the director (Rafelson), the producer (Schneider), anyone who’ll listen, really, that he isn’t happy about having to hit a girl. Suddenly, it starts snowing inside the cafe, signaling another musical interlude; which begins with several serene scenes of nature that quickly dissolve into chaos with the intrusion of civilization, billboards, power lines etc ... Change the channels, again, and suddenly, we find the boys in a factory. And while the tour guide spends his nickel, Davy notices something isn’t quite kosher, here, but this realization comes too late as the group is herded and then locked in a large darkened room -- to be known from here on out as the Dreaded Black Box. Floodlights soon blind them, and the unseen director orders them to come forward and crawl onto a giant false head; seems they're supposed to be dandruff for a shampoo commercial. And so, they rummage around in the hair -- revealed to be the scalp of one Victor Mature.

__  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __

This soon to be running gag of a giant Victor Mature is a poke-in-the-eye at RCA Victor, who distributed their records, were in cahoots with the brass at NBC, and whose logo was a trained dog transfixed by his master's voice.

__  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __

Then, a vacuum cleaner sucks the miniature Monkees up. And while the rest wind up in the bag, where they marvel at the giant reefer butt found within, Davy gets stuck in the nozzle. Managing to crawl his way back out, we get another dazzling musical interlude, where Davy gets his Anthony Newly on something fierce as he sings and dances with Toni Basil. When the number ends, Davy heads outside, where he bumps into Frank Zappa and a talking Hereford bull. Both are critical of Davy's number, and Zappa advises Davy to worry less about the dancing and more about the music because the youth of America are depending on him to show them the way.

Suddenly, the Dreaded Black Box emerges from out of a nearby street and the other three Monkees bail out. Accosted by a passing police officer (Logan Ramsey), who, after listening to their story about the factory, the dandruff, and the vacuum cleaner, is ready to haul them all in on suspicion of drug use, when Davy and a passing military parade saves them ... Herded into a restroom, Davy sees a large, bloodshot eye in the mirror; but Peter doesn’t see it. When Davy looks again, he's suddenly zapped into the House of Usher set -- complete with some sinister laughing. He heads for a large red door, opens it, and we spy a very large bug. Only he isn’t looking at it -- Micky is, decked out in a safari gear, pith helmet and a magnifying glass. And then Micky’s captured by jungle savages and chained to a wall next to Peter and Mike. But the wall quickly revolves and they find themselves in the bathroom where Davy saw the giant eyeball. And after the same surly policeman rousts them out of the john, he looks in the mirror, sees Victor Mature, and passes out...

Change the channels, and we find Mike in bed, who is rudely awakened by a doorbell. Answering the call, Peter receives a telegram, and, as he reads, he inexplicably winds up on the House of Usher set, too. Back in the house, when he finally wakes up, Mike finds everybody gone, and then trips out as the film solarises while he slowly retreats back into his bedroom, pursued by a bunch of silver balloons. Turns out this was all for a surprise party for Mike, who isn’t all that happy about this because all he really wanted to do was stay in bed. Then, the Phantom Kook shows up again, compliments Mike on his surly sentiment, rants some more, and then appears to have a stroke ... Change the channels, and we find Mike and Davy in jail. Peter, meanwhile, is in a steam-room with the mystical guru, Abraham Sofaer, getting some advice on the cosmos and our place in it. When Peter thinks he has it all figured out, he seeks out the others, finding Mike and Micky betting on whether a distressed girl will jump off a building or not. Peter tries to clue them in on his big revelation, but they won't listen. Moving on, he tracks down Davy in that trippy bathroom; but he won't listen, either. When they all regroup, Peter tries again, but his warning comes too late as they all wind up back in the Dreaded Black Box. Trapped inside, Peter finally has a captive audience and goes into his mystical spiel, inspiring Davy to just kick the walls down.

Free again, the Monkees fight their way out of the factory and begin revisiting earlier sets, where they run into the Phantom Kook, who is determined to rein them in permanently. But our boys manage to dispose of him with a handy cannon. Alas, the 50-foot Victor Mature returns and scares them back inside the Dreaded Black Box. The Box is then airlifted and dropped into the desert, where it breaks open on impact, revealing that they're now surrounded by everyone we've met so far -- the soldiers, the Arabs, the Indians, all the women, Victor Mature, and even the Coke machine! And here, as the film kicks into a kind of surreal-overdrive, the group is thrown back into the factory, fight their way back out, and wind up in a dune-buggy ... Peter floors it, and they're magically back in the desert, with Big Victor right on their tail. Big Vic then kicks the car over, making the Monkees flee for the lives on foot. 

Soon pursued by everyone, the quartet head for a bridge, where a dedication ceremony is taking place. And as the mayor and the chief of police fiddle with a troublesome microphone, the Monkees plow through the ribbon-cutting ceremony, and then, one by one, jump off the bridge. Plunging deep into the water below, the pretty colors start to swirl, "The Porpoise Song" kicks up again, and, free at last, everything seems nice and peaceful until our boys realize they're trapped in an aquarium -- an aquarium that looks suspiciously like the Dreaded Black Box.

The End

Man ... that is one strange film. And awesome. Strangely awesome. I'll admit, I don't get it. But I like it. Well ... I sort of get it. And I like it. No. Wait. I totally get it. And I really, really like it. A lot. Now, while some would argue that HEAD has no plot, geez, I dunno, I just spent the last couple hours pounding out that synopsis. So, yeah, there is one; it's just kinda hard to follow the circular logic of it amidst the thunder and the chaos as Rafelson and company really blew up the toy-box in their efforts to deconstruct the phenomenon they had created. Deconstruct it? Hell, they demolished it and sewed the resultant wreckage with salt and urine.

Yes, the Monkees felt trapped by the machinations of their success -- the Dreaded Black Box. And whenever they tried to break out, to do their own thing, or try something different, they are met with resistance on all fronts and are then lured or forcefully herded back into the Box. The film also makes a stinging commentary on commercialism, celebrity, and the folly of war by holding a mirror up to their rabid fan-base, who are so caught up in Monkee-mania, what's being spoon fed to them, they don’t see the horrors going on in the world around them. Which is why one could also argue that HEAD hedges dangerously close to the precipice of pretentiousness. [And some would argue it most definitely did take that plunge with an embarrassing belly-flop into the very same pool.] But its saving grace, I believe, is that this allegedly shallow, manufactured pop group was completely sincere with their message. But in their search for deeper meaning, keeping it real, and standing or striving for significance, they tended to overlook the fact that they did serve a purpose already by making folks laugh, a lot, offering an escape from those very same horrors. I mean, Didn't Sullivan's Travels teach us anything?

__  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __

"Of course HEAD is an utterly and totally fragmented film. Among other reasons for making it was that I thought I would never get to make another movie, so I might as well make fifty to start out with and put them all in the same feature."

-- Bob Rafelson       

__  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __

Despite this schizophrenic nature of this most extraordinary adventure - western - comedy - love story - mystery - drama - musical - documentary - satire - film ever filmed, Rafelson did a commendable job of holding the film together. Honestly, I think he did his best work in the editing room, with Mike Pozen and an uncredited Monte Hellman, which keeps this patchwork assault on the senses moving forward -- the highlight being Jones' "Daddy's Song", where the director seamlessly spliced together the different colored takes into one helluva an eye-popping show-stopper. In fact, the original cut of the film was nearly two hours long; but after a disastrous sneak preview, the studio forced Rafelson to go back and gut over a half-hour out of it. 

Even before the cuts, while the film was still in production, Screen Gems, NBC and their cantankerous cast had had enough of each other and pulled the plug on The Monkees TV series after the second season wrapped. And with no faith in the film, and fearing that what they felt was an incomprehensible mess would only hurt record sales, the initial advertising campaign for HEAD neglected to mention the Monkees at all. And then, two months after the show got cancelled, HEAD was quietly released in November of 1968, where, after a lukewarm reception by critics and ticket buyers, Columbia left it to wither and die.

It should be noted that Rafelson and Schneider didn't put up much of fuss when the Monkees' plug got pulled. The two had always acted as a buffer between the studio and their unruly stars, but that came to an abrupt end when HEAD got a green light. Remember that hotel script-session I mentioned earlier? Well, apparently, when Nesmith found out that he and the others weren't going to get a screenwriting credit, those tapes mysteriously disappeared. When that didn't work, Nesmith, Jones and Dolenz went on strike, and only Tork showed up for the first day of filming. Again, the bluff backfired, and, worse yet, the damage to their creative partnership could not be undone. Which goes a long way in explaining why Rafelson and Schneider so casually cut bait and moved on to their next counter-culture project, Easy Rider, leaving the already fragmenting Monkees to finish falling apart all on their own, allowing them to finally break out of the box and do their own thing -- mostly reunion tours.