gavin6942 Mrs. Pringle (Elizabeth Davis) owns a wig shop in a little town in Florida, but she is a demented woman who lives with her mentally disabled son, Rodney (Chris Martell), in a home where she rents rooms to young co-eds attending the local university."Gruesome Twosome" was developed in part because exhibitors were telling H. G. Lewis that his films did not have enough blood, leading him to make this gory film. This request is ironic in that "Blood Feast" (1963) was seen as too bloody just a few years before. He went from pioneering the gore movement to being seen as too light! This film corrected that.Although I have been a fan of Lewis for many years, even publishing an article on his "Gore Gore Girls", I had not seen this film until Arrow Video put it out as part of their "Feast" collection. I can only imagine how rough previous copies are, because even with their painstaking efforts, the sound and picture are pretty rough. The physical film must have been rotting away, fading and getting holes.Some have praised the film, but I find it to be one of his weaker entries. The introduction was made later to pad the picture, and it shows. But much of the film seems like padding. The dance scene, the long trailing by Kathy Baker (Gretchen Wells in her only role) of the college janitor... the film could easily have been better paced at under an hour.Other filler includes some shots of Ray Sager ("Wizard of Gore") eating potato chips for no reason. Reflecting years later, Lewis admits he spent too much time on "the periphery" with things "not germane to the plot", but Lewis feels this had the unintended effect of giving audiences a recovery period between gore shots. He may be right, but it would have been nice if the time was filled with plot and not filler.The strength comes in the gore. While the effects are in some ways pretty awful, such as the clear use of wigs for the victims being scalped, the actual blood and guts is very much ahead of its time and of course became Lewis' hallmark. Sure, a "dead" girl may be seen blinking her eyes, but at least the audiences were grossed out.The Blu-ray from Arrow Video is pretty good. The picture and sound, as noted above, is far from perfect, but it is probably the best version released to date. The audio commentary is full of wonderful stories, including great asides about the "Blood Shed Theater" in Chicago. Some of the other features are unusual... an interview with filmmaker Peaches Christ seems out of place. A short piece on low budget films that came from Florida is really good, but not nearly long enough. A segment with an interview of Lewis on "censors" turns into more of a rant on his views of Facebook, which is a bit obscure.

MartinHafer The very beginning of this film might just be the stupidest introduction I have ever seen. Two styrofoam wig heads are decorated with paper eyes, brows, nose, ears and mouths--and look as if they were made by a talents 10 year-old. Then, the two heads supposedly begin talking and talking. Now the faces don't move in the least and what they talk about is pretty tedious. The total effect is super-lame to say the least.The next scene shows a young lady responding to an add for a room to rent. The old lady in this scene can't act and terribly overdoes the scene--she might just be one of the very worst actresses I've seen in a very long time. She pushes the young lady into a room--at which point the old lady's retarded son comes into the room and scalps her. There is tons of fake blood and it is a bit disturbing--until you notice that the actress is wearing a wig and the wig is being cut off--you can see the lines pretty clearly. It seems that these two psychos have a wig business and take the wigs from people!! The rest of the film is made up of a bunch of vignettes starring various people with no acting talent whatsoever. Some (such as the stupid lady who loves to accuse people of the crimes) are meant to be funny, others scary--but with such bad acting and difficulty reading their lines, it's unintentionally funny and not especially scary. A few of the blood and guts scenes look pretty good--as it looks like they used real livers and lots of blood (or very realistic looking fake blood). In fact, the gore of some of the scenes is the best part of the film--though this certainly isn't enough to carry the film. Due to bad acting and a poorly executed plot, this film is only for bad movie fans.By the way, this film is from director Herschell Gordon Lewis--the same man responsible for such masterpieces as BLOOD FEAST, A TASTE OF BLOOD and MONSTER A GO-GO. Among bad movie fans, he's a bit of a god--in the same league as such rotten movie directors as Al Adamson, Ray Dennis Steckler, Ed Wood and Ted Mikels.I give this one a 2--simply because some of the gore looked realistic. A thoroughly cheap and dumb film from start to finish.

Scars_Remain I've only seen three of Herschell Gordon Lewis's films thus far but I think this is the worst one yet. I loved Two Thousand Maniacs and I wasn't too fond of Blood Feast but it had its moments that I did indeed enjoy. I don't think I enjoyed anything about this movie except for some gore. Stay away if you can.If possible, this may have the worst acting I've ever seen on film. The storyline is idiotic, the lines are stupid and the filming, editing and direction are all miserable. I expected a fun and cheesy little horror film but what I got was 72 minutes of agony on screen. Do yourself a favor and see Two Thousand Maniacs instead.The Gruesome Twosome gets a gruesome two out of ten.

Infofreak Look if this was the first Herschell Gordon Lewis movie I'd ever seen it would probably be the last. Luckily I've seen his blood trilogy so I can't dismiss him entirely, but this is easily the weakest of his movies I've seen. The script (by the 'Blood Feast' writer) is trash, and while the movie only goes on for 70 minutes it really drags on and is full of unnecessary padding. Some of this padding is quite odd, such as the opening talking wigs sequence, and the gratuitous KFC eating go-go dancing bit (an early bit of product placement from Lewis), but mostly it's dull. I will admit that the handful of gore sequences are quite realistic for Lewis (that is certainly not always the case!), and Chris Martell makes an okay baddie in the Arch Hall Jr mold, but he doesn't get anywhere as much screen time Elizabeth Davis who is awful, unfunny and totally irritating. Acting in Lewis movies is very variable to say the least, but 'The Gruesome Twosome' has one of the most untalented casts I've ever seen. So, the verdict is only watch this if you are a Lewis obsessive, otherwise newcomers should avoid this one and go straight to 'Two Thousand Maniacs!' or 'Color Me Blood Red' which tie as his best two gore movies.