For sheer novelty value few British films can compete with Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe’s quirky “documentary”, Brothers of the Head, about a pair of conjoined twins who decide to form a punk band in the 1970s. Barry and Tom Howe (Luke and Harry Treadaway) are plucked from a corner of East Anglia by an old school impresario looking for a new freak show to flog. He books the teenagers into a decrepit country house where a motley collection of minders and musicians trains them in the black arts of three-chord tunes. There’s a tactless daring about this gothic satire that’s enriched by the chaotic way the film is assembled.

The brothers’ transformation from hicks to club belters is as morbidly fascinating as the thick tube of skin that binds them at the chest. But their anger and energy lights up this doomy film like a hundred-watt bulb. What makes the melodrama so unsettling and raw is their almost mystical intimacy, which is threatened when Tania Emery’s trendy journalist falls in lust with the soulful Tom. The sex is mesmerisingly awkward.

The Spinal Tap trajectory is deliciously predictable, but a host of cameos featuring venerable mavericks such as Ken Russell add splashes of original spice to the mix.

JAMES CHRISTOPHER

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