Terminally ill racist surgeon Dr. Maxwell Kirshner (Ray Milland) has been experimenting with head transplants in his basement.

His plan is to have his own head grafted onto a donor body to continue living. Kirshner's head unwittingly ends up transplanted onto the body of a death row inmate played by former NFL defensive tackle Rosey Grier - the latter's head still attached. Neither head is happy about it.

What follows involves twenty-plus minutes of motorcycle chase footage, two chimpanzees, a helicopter, and extensive footage of a man running through parking lots with an extremely unconvincing dummy head on his shoulder. The dummy head is meant to be Ray Milland.

THE THING WITH TWO HEADS (1972) was Rick Baker's first film credit. Baker subsequently won seven Academy Awards for makeup effects.

Rosey Grier - in addition to being an NFL Pro Bowler - had been a bodyguard to Robert F. Kennedy and was present at his assassination. He is also an ordained minister and needlepoint enthusiast (he wrote a book called Rosey Grier's Needlepoint for Men in 1973).

Ray Milland won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1946 for The Lost Weekend. By 1972 he had adopted what one critic described as the Michael Caine work ethic - accepting whatever was offered in order to keep working - and had signed a two-picture deal with American International Pictures.

It seems highly probable that Milland signed without knowing exactly what he was getting into.

The Medved brothers gave The Thing with Two Heads a Golden Turkey Award for Worst Two-Headed Transplant Movie.