Head is The Monkees' big feature film yet few people actually seem to know about it. Opinion tends to be divided between the whole project being a brilliant psychedelic satire on the entire Monkees phenomenon, and unwatchable crap. It is however the favourite film of at least one of the SOTCAA editors and that’s a good enough reason for us to dissect it

Observations:

By the time of the second Monkees TV series the band were getting decidedly bolshy over the amount of creative input they had into the music and shows. Having more or less sorted out the former worry (their third LP, Headquarters, was almost entirely played by themselves as a band), the second hassle was resolved over a number of meetings. After the second series The Monkees would release a feature film. Initially they hoped to script it themselves but a compromise was reached over a series of tape-recorded chat sessions about the sort of film they’d like to make. The script was written (by Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson) as a result of these chats.

This wasn’t to be a cash-in teenybop affair (the time for such films had long since passed anyway, although the Monkees magazine still continued the gushing over Davy’s features).

The film is ‘non-linear’ (a phrase we despise but sort of fits here). More accurately it could be described as a direct satire of the American movie industry, with the group bouncing from scene to disparate scene with little to connect them. The effect therefore is that they’d made a dozen separate films, then snipped random scenes out of each and stuck them back together. Director Bob Rafelson has said that one intention was to make as many films as possible.  For the most part the scenes aren’t even played as comedy which, to anyone familiar with the frivolous antics of the TV series, makes the whole affair look decidedly creepy. Some scenes appear as fake ‘rushes’, with cameramen and directors looming into view with clapperboards. All this is linked with the songs – not Monkees 'classics' (as one might expect from such a cash-in) totally new tracks.

There’s no title-caption. The film starts with a scene of a Mayor attempting to open a new suspension bridge, going through all the rigmarole of addressing the crowd. He has problems with microphone feedback (which miraculously fixes itself when the Chief of Police tests it.). Finally the PA works to his specifications and he starts to cut the ribbon. At this point – a whole two and a half minutes into the film – Mickey Dolenz runs through the ribbon as if winning a race, closely followed by the other Monkees. They appear to be running for their lives - screaming klaxons and horns announce some sort of emergency throughout -  but there doesn't appear to be anybody actually chasing them.

Micky reaches the end of the bridge. There's nowhere else to run so he climbs onto the edge, looks back a final time and jumps into the river. The other three look over the side in horror and disbelief.

This opening scene is often misquoted, with reviewers claming that all of the group commit suicide.  In fact it could hardly be counted as suicide in the first instance - more that since whatever is chasing them is so horrible, Micky decides to take his chances in the water!  As the film later reveals the scene alludes (via a contrived yet unnerving metaphor) to the band attempting to escape the clutches of the very studio which has made them famous.  But why does Micky jump rather than Mike Nesmith or Peter Tork, both of whom - being serious musicians (man) - were always far more indignant and irritated about their 'synthesised' image than Micky Dolenz or Davy Jones (both trained studio actors).

Micky falls and the beautiful ‘Porpoise Song’ begins. A Goffin and King song still hailed as a psychedelic classic.  The visuals match the song note for note with an eye-popping explosion of pre-LSD-sequence-in-Easy-Rider colours as Micky hits the water and starts to drown.  At which point two mermaids rescue him and carry him to the surface. 

Mix through to Micky being kissed by a girl near a fishtank. We are in the Monkees' pad.  Not the wacky house from the TV series but a reasonable facsimile.  The same girl then kisses Mike Nesmith, Peter Tork and Davy Jones in turn (the latter producing a pleasing effect of orchestras and birdsong). After all this, the girl announces that the score is ‘even’ and leaves. This scene doesn’t appear to allude to anything, other than perhaps exposing the fleeting nature of fame.

The Monkees present ‘Ditty Diego’ which is a searing dismissal of their fame, accompanied by screenshots of each of the scenes about to feature in the film. The final screen is filled with the famous film of a Vietcong suspect being shot through the head at point blank range. A girl screams hysterically. Not at the war atrocity but at The Monkees. We see a crowd of kids in an auditorium chanting 'We want the Monkees...'

The band do a war chant on a football field, mix through via a short montage of explosions and war footage to a battlefield. The band are in battlegear in a trench. Davy complains that the trench is too deep. Micky offers his helmet for Davy to stand on, complaining that he doesn’t want to wear it anyway (‘It’s a drag, it presses down on my head…’).

Peter volunteers to get more ammo from the next trench. As he darts across the battlefield, bombs and shells exploding all around, a photographer appears. ‘Hold it – this is for Life’, he announces. He see the life cover, with appropriate fanfare.

Peter looks heroic on the cover which obviously doesn’t show the truth of the war.

He reaches the trench and is suddenly confronted with an American football player who charges at him repeatedly, using the confused bass player as a practise partner or something. Peter leaves immediately, much to the chagrin of ‘Number One’ who is dismayed at the loss of someone to play with. He throws his football helmet at Peter who later gives it to Micky to replace his army issue headgear.

The Monkees go over the top and run toward a cave. But when they emerge they are no longer in army uniform – in fact they’re running towards a stage where the screaming girls await them. They play a song called ‘Circle Sky’, a damning protest against war. The screaming girls are intercut with more scenes of war atrocities, again blurring the line between what they’re actually screaming about. Micky’s drumkit has the word ‘Drum’ written on it which, with the constant overlay effects of mirror images sometimes appears backwards as ‘Murd’, perhaps short for ‘murder’ (a la The Shining – a film which was to feature Jack Nicholson).

The song is performed live and is possibly there as proof that the band could play their own instruments – and they bloody do too. ‘Circle Sky’ stands as one of rock’s greatest live performances. A special free gig was arranged for the filming during which the song was played several times along with others from their repertoire. A second gig was also arranged to accommodate the vast response from the fans who wanted tickets.

At the close of the song the audience rush the stage and tear the band to pieces, or at least plastic dummy replicas of them. A comment on plastic, manufactured pop – showing that even singing about serious issues doesn’t stop the audience from viewing them as disposable icons.

The scene changes with a click. Somebody is channel-hopping through TV channels. We get a series of quick shots of black and white films, news bulletins, commercials. We don’t yet see who is clicking the remote control however. The final scene on the TV screen is Micky Dolenz, wandering through a desert.  Mix through to the actual film.

He is thirsty and desperate. His voiceover announces ‘My canteen is empty, for once it was full…’. His willpower and drive leads him to continue to reach his goal however – the goal revealed as a large Coca Cola vending machine. Unfortunately the machine is empty and he loses his temper, kicking the shit out of it to the strains of a merry Coke jingle.

A tank appears on the horizon. A man jumps out and, after ensuring that Micky is American, hands him a gun and insists on surrendering to him. He leads a large group of soldiers off over the opposite hillside. Micky gets into the tank, points the shooter towards the vending machine and blows it to bits.

Cut to all four Monkees in a harem, relaxing, smoking hookahs and being entertained by provocative dancing girls to the strains of ‘Can You Dig It’ .

Cut to a cowboys and indians film. Testy True (a young Terri Garr) is asking a cowboy (Micky) to suck some venom out of a snakebite on her finger. Mike is also wounded and requests help in pulling an arrow out of him. Davy and Peter meanwhile have been sent for reinforcements (a quick cutaway shows the two at the harem). While Garr’s acting is melodramatic, the two Monkees seem to be plodding through their lines irritably. Garr faints from her wound but Micky kicks her awake, announcing ‘Come on, lady, wake up, you’re not dead!’. He then loses it, announcing that he doesn’t want to do it anymore (he is immediately shot by two arrows which he just brushes away, denouncing their fake-ness). He walks off the set, ripping through the background scene, closely followed by a faintly surprised Mike.

Cut to a street front. Davy is entertaining admiring neighbours with a violin recital. Micky and Mike walk straight into the scene and lead him away from it while the violin backing sticks.

Tim Carey (as ‘Lord High & Low’) appears. He is a melodramatic actor type with a cape. He tells the group that he’s been ‘looking all over the world’ for them, before announcing that he wants to exploit them with by-products and spin-offs (‘the whole phallic thing is happening’). The group walk off, disgusted. Tim Carey was a renowned character actor and also the star of The World’s Greatest Sinner , a film scored by Frank Zappa (who has a cameo in Head).

A series of smoke signals, morse code bleeps and whatnot alerts several people on the studio set that The Monkees are heading for the canteen. ‘They’re coming, they’re coming…’, warns a lookout. At this point the entire canteen empties in disgust. ‘I can’t eat with these stinking kids around’, growls one such deserter. This is based on the group’s experiences in the studios when they started making the TV shows – with their long hair and everything, nobody wanted to eat with them. Also interesting is the link with the Micky-in-the-desert scene in which he had announced ‘My canteen is empty…’.

The canteen scene reveals Peter Tork, sitting forlornly staring at a melting ice-cream in his hand. He is gripped with inner turmoil as he now longer wants it but can’t throw it away because ‘There are starving Chinese…’. The rest of the canteen scene is a masterwork of densely-written wit with the waitress (drag act T.C. Jones) continually berating the group with sarcastic digs at their manufactured image (‘Are you still paying tribute to Ringo Starr?’, she asks Micky). The group elegantly return vicious barbs about the quality of the food. Eventually the group decided to leave (aside from Peter, still gripped with remorse). ‘What about the food?’, asks the waitress. ‘Have it cleaned and burned’ , slurrs Mike. Davy however goes too far and, for his last dig, is rewarded with a slap across the face.

Cut to Davy in a boxing ring being pummelled really badly by Sonny Liston (who’s other big link to pop culture is appearing in waxwork form on the cover of Sgt Pepper). In the audience Mike is playing a shady boxing promoter, with Micky as his manic sidekick. It would appear that the fight (somewhat unevenly matched anyway) has been fixed in Liston’s favour.  With each fall to the canvas, Micky continually shouts ‘Stay down!’ but heroic Davy doesn’t appear to hear.

The scene is a parody of 60s B-movies about heroic young boxers (Kid Galahad , etc)and features a straight performance from Annette ‘Beach Party’ Funacello who appeared as the girly heroine in a lot of such films.

Through Davy's hazy bruised eyes, we get a flashback which shows how he got himslf into the unfortunate position of being clobbered by an enormous boxer. A melodramatic scene in which Funicello begs him not to do it. It transpires that this is part of the same film which featured Davy as a violin player (the same sacharine-drenched score playes in the background). He insists to his girlfriend that he’ll never make it to Carnagie Hall but he could excel at boxing . ‘They pick the round and I pick the guy’, he announces. During the scene, a mystery hand wipes a tear from Funicello’s sweetly sobbing face.

The link to the next scene (in which Davy is led to a line up of potential boxing competitors) is odd. It appears to turn into a sort of TV documentary with hand-held camerawork and out of vision interviewing. However, watching the scene in slow motion reveals that Davy simply walks off the living room set and straight into the new scene. This was obviously planned as yet another snook-cock at the fake nature of the filming process but has seemingly been disguised through quick-cut editing.

Davy chooses Sonny Liston, announcing that ‘he looks like a nice guy and I like his smile’ (Liston’s face is expressionless throughout). Cut back to the violence in the ring. Micky is still yelling ‘Stay down’. Mike calls Micky a dummy. Micky is incensed by this and leaps into the ring himself, flattening Davy with a single punch, then Liston, then Mike (‘Dummy, huh?’) and triumphantly puts his arm around Carol Doda before punching her out too. As hoards of policemen swarm to arrest him, proceedings are interrupted by Peter, standing in the corner of the ring who declares. ‘I’m the dummy, Micky. I’m always the dummy’. Micky admits that this is quite correct and apologises to everyone for his mistake. A policeman pats him on the shoulder in a sort of there, there way…

Mix back to the canteen scene. Peter is still there with his ice cream. ‘I’m always the dummy…I’m always the dummy’ are his thoughts. The waitress tells him not to worry what the others say – ‘They’re wiseguys, punks, all they wanna do is hurt people and abuse them…’. Peter hits her very hard in the face.

We hear a voice. ‘Okay, cut it – print it, please’. It’s Bob Rafelson the director of the film. T.C. Jones takes off his wig. Everyone comes out of character. Peter is worried about the last scene – ‘Hitting a girl, it’s not right – especially the way I feel about violence and all that stuff’. The scene actually looks remarkably realistic as a mock behind-the-scenes sequence. Jack Nicholson is evident at one point (as is Dennis Hopper). Peter’s pleas fall on deaf ears. Rafelson insists that if the scene doesn’t work then they’ll cut it (‘Yeah, well, you tell me that but it never happens, man’). Davy reckons it looks great, as does T.C. Jones. However, Peter’s insistence that his image will suffer immediately comes true as he leaves the set – everyone gives him a wide berth. He sits down, forlornly, as fake snow, or plaster dust, falls on his head.

Mix through to Peter walking through a snowy hillside to the strains of the beautiful ‘As We Go Along’. In this sequence each Monkee is filmed in a different season. Peter in Winter, Davy in Summer, Mike in Spring and Micky in Autumn (or ‘The Fall’) as they might put it. Amusingly, the British Monkees magazine gleaned info about this scene before the film was released and waxed lyrically about it. Ironically the film was never released in Britain.

The pastoral scenes are overtaken, at the close of the song, by shots of increasing industrial enterprise which hampers the tranquillity.

Cut to the group being given a guided tour of a factory. This too is based on true life experiences when visiting different cities. Odd things appear to be going on in the factory – workers are experiencing accidents, drinking waste from pipes and losing their heads. Nobody notices apart from Davy but nobody listens to his queries. ‘Pleasure – the inevitable by-product of our civilisation’, lectures the factory owner, ‘The tragedy of your times, my young friends, is that you may get exactly what you want!’. This last was once sampled on a Carter USM track.

The factory owner leads the innocent band into a doorway, and then slams it behind them. They are stuck in darkness. A voice – Rafelson again – asks them to walk forward and treats them as auditionees. He requests for them to get into an enormous mass of hair, telling them ‘Look fellahs, you’re supposed to be dandruff, will you move it please?’. The band comply, jumping about within the giant wig to a jingle for a dandruff treatment.

Pull back to reveal they were actually on the head of Victor Mature. An assistant with a vacuum cleaner sucks the miniature Monkees off his head and they disappear up the pipe, emerging into the inside surrounded by oversized drawing pins, buttons and cigarette ends. ‘This is not one of your standard brands’, jokes Mike, giving it a sniff. They notice that Davy isn’t present, being stuck up the tube.

The cleaner is switched off and Davy falls out of the other end, once again surrounded by darkness. He is disorientated and confused, but suddenly breaks into a song and dance routine – ‘Daddy’s Song’. This jumps back and forth from two sessions – one with Davy dressed in white against a black background and one with his dressed in black against a white background (although the negative has rendered it yellow for the most part). His dancing partner in the scene is Toni Basil who choreographed all of Head’s dance sequences and who later went on to have a hit single with ‘O Mikki’ which is apparently not about Micky Dolenz.

His big dance number finished, Davy emerges from the blackness to applause. The doors of a large lock-up open and he steps out. A ‘Critic’ (Frank Zappa) is leading a bull along. ‘The song was pretty white’, he tells Davy and gives him advice on how he should spend more time concentrating more on his music because ‘the youth of America depends on you to show the way…’. The bull meanwhile announces, with suitably animated cartoon mouth, that ‘Monkees is the craziest people!’.

Frank Zappa’s role here is ambiguous to say the least. As a purist, one would have expected during the 60s that he would hate the Monkees and their supposed manufacture. Instead he championed them, suggesting that at least there was no insidious nature to their manufacture (unlike a lot of the supposed ‘serious’ groups of the time). Describing Davy’s song and dance as ‘pretty white’ is more of a Zappa phrase (purist rhythm and blues fans of the late 50s despised ‘white’ imitators) and the rest of the dialogue isn’t too removed from his views either. But the fact that, as a critic, he’s treating Davy like a serious contender (while the bull – for which read ‘critical bull’? – simply announces a twee media-like appraisal of nothing) is probably more the point.

Zappa walks off and Davy asks some nearby G.I.s if they’ve seen the others. These are the same soldiers which the Mayor inspected at the start of the film. Here, for now, they are sitting around as extras. Nearby a large black box emerges from the ground, watched with interest by a cop. The top opens up and Mike, Micky and Peter emerge. ‘Hey, why have we stopped?’, asks Micky, suggesting that, following their adventures in the vacuum cleaner, they may have worked out a way of driving the box as a means of transport.

The cop interrogates the three, asking what they were doing in the black box. They try to explain that ‘first, we were in a factory…’ and appear to start questioning the non-linear storyline themselves at this point. The cop refuses to listen to their story but they are saved from arrest by the sudden arrival, through the miracles of quick-cut editing by the troop of G.I.s doing a marvellous choreographed display. With their arrival, the group are reunited with Davy Jones. The cop meanwhile is caught up with the marching off of the soldiers.

Davy visits the bathroom, muttering to himself that the others are ‘crazy’ but assuring himself that ‘they’d better not mess with me’, with a bit of shadow-boxing (a back-reference to the fictionalised boxing scene earlier).

He opens the cabinet in the bathroom and is confronted by a large eye, staring at him. Davy is scared shitless and slams it shut. Peter Tork enters, whistling ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ to himself and moaning about police brutality. Davy, almost speechless with fear, points towards the cabinet. Peter checks it but there’s nothing there. Assuming it’s some sort of joke on Davy’s part, he leaves the bathroom, pointing out (with a flashing graphic strobing throughout) that ‘nobody ever lends money to a man with a sense of humour’.  Is this an in-joke?  A song called 'Zilch' on the Pisces Aquarious Capricorn And Jones LP features the group repeating nonsensical utterings picked up during tours.  Is the 'nobody ever lends money...' another such example?

Davy checks the cabinet again. Still nothing there. However as he closes it, his reflection in the mirror shows he is no long in the toilet. He spins around. He is no longer there, but in a dungeon surrounded by darkness, skeletons and scary mocking laughter. We don’t know who this laughter belongs to. Davy heads towards a glowing door, opens it wide and recoils at something horrific.

We see a close-up of an insect, but this isn’t Davy’s POV – it’s Micky’s. Dressed in an explorers uniform, examining the insect under a magnifying glass, he exclaims ‘The Lancashire Midget Greeny!’ before recoiling himself, and skidding (with an inappropriate orchestral waltz backing) down a gravelly slope. At the bottom, two Zulu warriors seize him and chain him up against a concrete wall, next to Peter and Mike. ‘Now here’s my plan…’, says Mike.

The wall spins around. We are back in the studio toilet – the three are still against a wall, but not chained – they have their hands up as, once more, they’re being interrogated by the cop. ‘Where is whatsisname – the greeny…?,' he asks (is 'Greeny' an American nickname for a Brit? It does at least tally with the ‘Lancashire Midget Greeny’ description – Davy Jones hails from Lancashire and is quite short). It transpires that Davy hasn’t been seen since he entered the toilet (or ‘The john…er, comfort room’ as Micky describes it, sending up American circumlocution of matters of hygiene matters. The cop assures them that the police force will find Davy and orders them out.

Checking first that nobody else is about, the cop dances a provocative dance towards the sink. When he opens the cabinet he too is dismayed. Not a staring eye this time but a very famous actor dressed in safari gear. ‘Victor Mature!’ exclaims the cop before fainting. Victor giggles nonchalantly and creepily at this. We see that he’s standing in the same dungeon as before and was presumably the source of the mocking laughter from Davy’s earlier experience in there.

Victor Mature plays ‘The Big Victor’ which is meant as a satire on the RCA Victor label which owned The Monkees. Not quite so big at this point in the film however. Mature is another odd choice as a supporting player, more suited to burly heroic roles.  Upon reading the script, Mature is reported to have said ‘I don’t understand any of it but it makes me laugh’.

The cop is unconscious. A caption reads ‘The Cop’s Dream’. Mix through to Mike waking up with a start at the sound of a door buzzer.

We are back at the Monkees’ pad. Mike walks through to the living room and chastises Peter and Micky for not answering the door. Davy is not present, being still missing. Although still non-linear (this is purportedly a dream sequence but no further allusion is made to it being a specific fantasy) it appears to start following a logical storyline progression here.

Peter answers the door. It’s a telegram, delivered by a sniggering mailman and an underclad girl. Peter reads the telegram and crumples it up immediately, shocked. He leaves the house, his door slamming waking Mike up once more. Micky raises his eyebrows innocently to Mike’s suspicious manner. Cut to Peter, running through the dungeon from before. ‘Stop!’ shouts The Big Victor’s voice. Cut back to Mike reading the uncrumpled telegram. ‘Stop’ is the only word on it. He turns to Micky for some sort of explanation but Micky has now disappeared too. Mike searches the cupboard and is startled by Micky’s dummy (from the ‘Circle Sky’ scene) which falls out.

At this point the scene turns psychedelic and Mike stumbles in slow motion towards the same dungeon. He approaches the glowing door and opens it. A darkened room greets him with three monks chanting a mournful drone lit by a spotlight.

The three unmask themselves to reveal themselves to be not monks but Monkees – it’s Davy, Peter and Micky. They sing ‘Happy Birthday’ as crowds of Mike’s friends emerge from their hiding places and start some furious back-patting. A swinging party ensues to the strains of the song ‘(Long Title) Do I have To Do This All Over Again’. A swinging psychedelic party ensues intercut with scenes of dancers from an ancient black and white newsreel for contrast.

The song ends but Mike is far from pleased. He party-poops angrily, declaring ‘if you want me to come to a party, you don’t kidnap me – you send me an invitation. Happy Birthday – hah!’ The consternation of the party-goers turns to pantomimetic reaction as Mike says ‘The same thing goes for Christmas!’. Mike Nesmith has always been known as the miserable git of the group and this scene appears to play up to that. The crowd however suddenly appears to change its tune, announcing ‘Attaboy’ .

Tim Carey arrives, in cowboy garb, in a hand-pedalled wheelchair. He stands up and announces ‘Attaboy, Mike, attaboy’ . He approaches them, repeating this line as a mantra while slowly turning into a spastic. The group are initially very scared by this but, as the spasmodic gurglings of the character grow wilder, they end up collapsing into laughter, mocking their tormentor.

A gunshot is heard. The spastic cowboy is seen, outdoors surrounded by gunmen. No longer disabled, he slyly announces ‘Boys, don’t never, but never, make fun of no cripples…’

Cut to a black and white vox pop sequence of members of the public announcing what should be done to people who laugh at other people. The last one suggests that ‘jail’ is the only answer.

Cut to the Monkees in a darkened cell. The jury’s whispered verdict announces ‘Guilty…guilty…guilty…’

A Swami delivers a lecture.  We were speaking of belief...beliefs and conditioning'.  This is perhaps the most telling part of the film as it appears to attempt an explanation of what's going on.  The lesson deals with perceived realities and advocates keeping an opened mind.  The mist clears slightly and we see his one disciple, Peter Tork, wrapped in a sheet, intently devouring his master's words of wisdom.

At the close of the lecture, The Swami announces 'But why should anyone listen to me?  Should I speak - since I know nothing' and giggles a bit.  We then see Sonny Liston sitting in the corner.  ' How’s about some more steam’, he says and pulls a chain.  Doh - they were in a sauna!  The room fills with steam and Peter gets lost in it all. He emerges back onto the studio lot, searching for the others.  Having received the wisdom of the master he believes he has the answer to why things are so weird. Micky and Mike are too busy watching an hysterical woman atop a high building threatening suicide (and making callous bets as to whether she’ll jump or not) to listen to Peter. He knows where to find Davy however – back at the toilet checking the cabinet for eyes. Davy however is in no mood to listen to Peter either.

Davy ignores Peter’s insistence that everything is going to be fine and rejoins Mike and Micky. Mike has won the bet – the girl jumped (but Mike has obviously caught her). He hands the girl to a still-protesting Peter and the other three walk off. Peter dumps the girl into a passing prop van crate and catches up with them just in time to see a recreation of the factory scene – the factory owner leading them towards another black box. Too late – once more they’re stuck.

Peter has obviously gained enough insight from the Swami to see this coming but the others are just as confused as before. Looking to Peter for answers – a second generation of teaching – they sit around and listen to him delivering a similar lecture to the Swami’s, again ending with ‘Why should I speak, since I know nothing’. This does not go down well with Davy who expected a plan of escapeat least. 'It doesn't matter whether we're in the box or not’ , proclaims Peter. Davy disagrees completely and shows a way out – by kicking the door down and battling against the factory workers in an Errol Flynn-style choreographed fight scene. The others soon follow suit.

Having left the factory environment they stumble onto the exterior cowboy set. Tim Carey’s cowboy, along with some heavies, attempt to stop them getting further but Davy shoots them down with a cannon which appears from nowhere.  'Where'd he get the cannon?' asks Peter.  Micky returns a resigned shrug, just going with the flow.

At this point they are stopped in their tracks by The Big Victor who suddenly appears as a giant, looming over them.  An Attack Of The 50 Foot... scenario.  He cackles again and claps them back into the black box which a helicopter carries through the air and unceremoniously dumps into the desert where Micky had staggered before. The box opens and they see, standing accusingly on the horizon around them, most of the characters from the film. The camera tracks slowly past these - the factory workers, the GIs, Victor Mature in his actors chair, etc,  and finally alights, ominously, on the Coca Cola vending machine.

The characters charge, on horseback, towards them. The tank makes a reappearance and chases them, firing a shell which once again blows up the vending machine.

The Big Victor swipes them out of the desert with a golfclub. They land back in the studio, Peter onto Frank Zappa’s bull which strays into the canteen which causes the inhabitants to empty once again (and the waitress, still out of character, to get annoyed).

The group are strapped to a treadmill which heads towards some rotating knives. The film suddenly turns into an old black and white slapstick comedy.

They attempt to drive out of the studio in a beach buggy. Tim Carey’s cowboy (alive now) attempts to stop them again but fails. The slapstick continues with silly sight gags. The buggy rips through another paper backdrop and they’re back in the desert, The Big Victor attempting to crush them underfoot. Pull out to reveal this fantastic scene occuring on a TV set.  Victor Mature, apparently out of character, is watching all this in the comfort of his living room. We realise that Mature is the channel hopper of previous scenes. He yawns at the drama unfolding in the film and eventually kicks the TV screen (which causes the group to fall out of their buggy and The Big Victor to hurt his foot).

The Monkees run like mad as everybody from the film pursues them. We hear the voice of the Mayor who made the speech.

Full circle, the group once again interrupts the opening of the bridge by speeding through the tape, this time pursued by all the film’s characters.

As the Ditty promised, 'And when you see the end in sight the beginning may arrive'.  This time however all The Monkees jump. We hear ‘The Porpoise Song’ again. No mermaids, just the group spiralling around in the depths of the waters. They attempt to reach the surface but are stopped by some invisible force. Pull back to reveal that they are in a large fishtank-like packing crate on a van. The van drives off with The Big Victor sitting smugly on the back. The Monkees are trapped, presumably to be filed away until future notice. The studio has won.

The credits roll.

The cast are as follows:

ANNETTE FUNICELLO Minnie
TIMOTHY CAREY Lord High ‘n Low
LOGAN RAMSEY Off. Faye Lapid
ABRAHAM SOFAER Swami
VITO SCOTTI I. Vittefoni
CHARLES MACAULAY Inspector Shrink
T.C. JONES Mr. and Mrs. Ace
CHARLES IRVING Mayor Feedback
WILLIAM BAGDAD Black Sheik
PERCY HELTON Heraldic Messenger

Introducing
SONNY LISTON Extra
RAY NITSCHKE Private One
CAROL DODA Sally Silicone
FRANK ZAPPA The Critic
JUNE FAIRCHILD The Jumper
TERRY GARR Testy True
I. J. JEFFERSON Lady Pleasure

And VICTOR MATURE as The Big Victor

One page of credits comes after the main production crew and features backwards writing:

SREBMAHC YRRET Oreh
SNURB EKIM Gnihton
DRAPEHS REHTSE Rehtom
INSOTSLEH ENITSIRK Dneirf Lrig
NANFFOH NHOJ Dneifxes Eht
REVAEW ADNIL Yratarces Revol
YELMAH MIJ Frodis

This last is possibly some sort of Equity thing. John Hoffman who plays the ‘sex fiend’ may be a mistyping of ‘John Brockman’ who is the face who smiles briefly during one of the channel hopping scenes (and was used in the TV ads – see below). ‘Frodis’ meanwhile isn’t a backward word, but the final episode of the Monkees TV series was called ‘The Frodis Caper’. There may be some very obvious in-joke here but we’ve not seen the episode in question so we can’t elucidate further.

Ads for Head were minimalist and confusing – two radio spots were prepared, each boasting a sound-collage of music and dialogue with dismembered voices droning ‘Coming…sooon…’ or ‘Now…playyingg’ over the top. Legend would have it that the only actual TV ad featured a shot of a greasy man’s face, practically motionless for thirty seconds, then smiling slightly at the end with the film title appearing near his head. The ‘Hey Hey We’re The Monkees’ C4 documentary showed a brief clip of a flashing head logo which was presumably part of a more substantial trailer but the doc omitted any further mention of the film. As we mentioned, we reckon the documentary was much longer originally and presumably the British edit assumed the Head references were discardable.

The film was actually not released in Britain at the time (despite the British Monkees magazine including several preview articles and production photos). Only in 1977 did it play to British audiences when the National Film Theatre ran a special screening.

Everyone assumes that the reason for it dying, aside from the minimal publicity, was the lack of a viable audience (teenybopper Monkees fans would hate it because it didn’t make sense, hippies or freaks would hate it because it featured The Monkees). The revolt against the group had reached fever-pitch by then. In a week when Yellow Submarine had also just been released, one review of Head sneered ‘Two Beatles films opened this week – one of them stars the Monkees’. Received opinion obviously stopped them from commenting on the content of the film.  Little changes down the line.

The soundtrack LP also sank without trace. This featured all the songs and these were padded out with snippets of seemingly random dialogue and bits of orchestral score. The ‘Album co-ordinator’ was Jack Nicholson.

‘As We Go Along’, also the B-side of the original ‘Porpoise Song’ single is a different mix to the film version and the vocals are slightly lower down in the mix. ‘Daddy’s Song’ also differs as the final verse is sung in the same jaunty way as the rest of the song, whereas on the film it’s sung in a downbeat manner with a tinkly orchestral backing.

The dialogue bits are scrappily-edited in places but are stereophonically interesting. In most instances this amounts to little more than Jack Nicholson pissing about with the panning, but some instances of purer stereo occur too (as is the case with a snippet of dialogue from the canteen scene which features Davy’s chat in one speaker and the background music which accompanies it in the other).

Original copies are rare as fuck (we’ve never seen one) but bootleg copies changed hands for a bit. When the Monkees back catalogue was first released on CD in 1987 by Rhino, the Head OST was ignored. Lightning records eventually released in 1993 in America. The cover was slightly changed (it was white) but was pretty much as per the original LP.

Rhino's second Monkees reissue programme in the 90s included the LP and, along with all the other LPs, made the point of including extra tracks.  These included the two radio promo spots, a few alternate versions of tracks, some sessions-chat and the shit-kicking live version of ‘Circle Sky’.

The LP features a studio re-recording of ‘Circle Sky’ which had apparently infuriated Peter Tork. In fact, two separate versions of the studio cut are available – one with rather rubbish vocals and one with pretty good ones. This points to the existence of two separate releases of the LP. A cassette of the LP taped by an old schoolfriend of this editor revealed the rubbish vocals version of the song, plus lots of orchestral stuff (not from the film) at the end. Very odd.

The film has been shown on Channel 4 several times and has been twice released on video (still available now incidentally). Reviews of the film in the music magazines are always polarised. Tom Hibbert (of Q Magazine) always gives it an affectionate nod whenever he can. The negative critics however always play on the ersatz-Beatles crap and their reviews always betray the obvious fact that they’ve not even bothered watching the film. This is a shame as, for sheer inventiveness alone, Head pisses all over Help!.

There was a documentary on earlier about the band Supergrass.  It mentioned that they turned down the chance to be 'the new Monkees' offered by Steven Spielberg.  Some music journo quoted 'Ditty Diego', adding that the dismissal of manufactured music was very similar to Supergrass' song 'In It For The Money' .  We however were too buy frowning at the fact that they'd blatently nicked the title of said song from Frank Zappa to ponder further.

The band are now totally split over the merits of Head. Mike Nesmith has gone on record as saying it is the project of which he’s the most proud. Micky Dolenz also defends it as great. Davy Jones doesn’t claim to actually understand what it meant but has said it contains some ‘magical moments’. Peter Tork meanwhile is often terribly bitter about the way it killed his free ride and seems to diss the film wherever possible. When the group reformed as a trio in the late 80s they appeared on TV AM. Interviewer Richard Keys had done minimal research ‘Now let me get this straight, you were put together as a group…to make…comedy shows?’ (cue the band bursting out laughing), and some confusion arose as to whether they made films or TV programmes. ‘Well, if you’re talking about our actual film, which died a death…and probably deserved to!’ exclaimed Peter Tork. Dolenz disagreed meekly with this but obviously didn’t want to get drawn on it.

Production photos and quotes from this article were gleaned from Glenn A. Baker’s book Monkeemania which includes a pretty good chapter on the film.  If anybody out there can offer anything more - info, cuttings, opinions, etc - we'll be ever so pleased.