Horror Movie Review: The Gruesome Twosome (1967)

From legendary director Herschell Gordon Lewis (and writer Louise Downe) comes The Gruesome Twosome, a splatter film that is in keeping with the man’s better-known work. One that has comedy elements, and features a frustrating amount of padding.

While you never expect greatness from a Herschell Gordon Lewis film, The Gruesome Twosome is pretty poor when you compare it to much of his other work. It’s dumb, it’s boring, it’s poorly acted, but it does at least feature some graphic gore. Which, considering who the director is, should come as no surprise.

Elizabeth Davis plays Mrs. Pringle, who is introduced after a lengthy opening that is the first egregious example of padding in this film. Mrs. Pringle is mad, just listen to her talk to her stuffed cat, Napoleon, to understand that. However, she is able to contain that madness when it comes to running her wig maker’s shop. That is until she sees hair that she wants. Pretending to rent out a room, before setting her mentally unstable son on them. Which is where we get the gore.

Of course, this many women disappearing eventually means the police are going to come a-knocking, but who would ever suspect this kindly, old lady?

The Gruesome Twosome does exactly what it says on the tin, with no twists and turns to the formula. That results in its predictable story plodding along at a snail’s pace, until we get to the next murder scene. All while Gordon finds ways to make this a feature-length film by adding unnecessary scene after unnecessary scene. Sure, they add some weirdness to the film, but nothing fits.

Something that doesn’t help the non-existent characters, and the actors doing a horrendous job of making any part of this film enjoyable.

Forget everything else wrong with this film, and there is quite a lot, the fact that is only 72 minutes long, but only has around 20 minutes of actually worthwhile content, is enough to make this one to avoid. Even fans of Herschell Gordon Lewis will struggle with this.