They took actor Michael Caine's advice you
see. Mr. Caine once mused as to why don't filmmakers
just remake the crappy movies he's made, instead of the good
ones like 'Alfie' or 'Get Carter' or 'Sleuth'. Of course
why anyone would remake 'The Swarm' or 'Jaws Revenge' is
beyond me, but I see where the old dude was going with
this. That brings us to today's movie 'The Clonus
Horror', a movie from the late seventies, more famous for
being lampooned by MST3K than anything else, but Dreamworks
went ahead and remade it anyway and called their version 'The
Island'. But be it a good movie or a crappy movie,
Dreamworks… you still need permission. That's what the
courts said, not me. The truth of the matter is that
'The Clonus Horror' isn't really all that bad, even though
it's really light on the horror part of its title.
Today is a big day for the oafish George (Frank
Ashmore). He has passed all of the necessary physical
tests and finally, after years of training, he's going to
America! A place where everybody is happy and all of
your dreams can come true. The most awesomest place
ever! Unfortunately, when George is wheeled into the
operating room lorded by Darren #2 (Dick Sargent), he's
actually going to be embalmed alive, placed in a plastic bag
and put in the frozen attic with the rest of his dead clone
buddies who have been organ harvested in one way or
another. Poor George.
Unlike George though, Clone Richard (Tim Donnelly) isn't quite
so slow. Whereas most of the clones are genetically
designed to be idiots, Richard and his control group are
allowed to keep a large portion of their cognitive thinking
abilities, for testing purposes, which in retrospect was
really stupid. This has led to Richard being very
curious about a lot of stuff
going on around him that makes very little
sense. Then Richard meets the voluptuous Lena (Paulette
Breen), a woman who has turned the simple act of bike riding
into a front row spectator sport. Lena is also on
the smart side, and thus when these the two put their heads
together, as well other body parts, they come to the
conclusion that there are questions that need answers and
those answers lie outside their compound and out somewhere in
this place called America.
So Richard enacts a daring info gathering assault on
headquarters, and an even more daring escape mission, and soon
he's out in the world, along with a couple of gunshots to the
back. He's found by a kindly old dude (Keenan Wynn) who
happens to be a reporter who takes Richard to the original
Richard Knight (David Hooks), a kindly philosophy
professor. There's a strange thing about this scene
however. Lounging in the pool in a tiny Speedo is Ricky
Knight (James Mantell), Richards adult son. Now when we
see an old man in a bathrobe by a pool and a young stud in the
pool damn near naked, we automatically think the worst.
We apologize to the Knights for this, that is until Ricky
started interacting with his dad's clone. Because we
think, according to the way this was presented, that Ricky
loves his dad. I mean he really loves his dad in a way
you shouldn't love your dad. That's just what we got out
of that.
Anyway, original Richard needs to find out what's going on so
he consults his baby brother and presidential nominee Jeff
(Peter Graves) who gives him the whole low down. At
first original Richard is appalled at the concept of mining
humans for spare parts, until Jeff told him that the people
behind this will kill his ass if he says anything. Now
Richard is all compliant and stuff. The problem for the
Clone company is that Clone Richard also stole a video tape
which details everything about the clone process and the evil
cloners need this back. Why they made this video is
beyond me, but who knows about evil cloners?
Now that Clone Richard knows that America is some bullshit,
metaphorically speaking, he has to get back home to save his
girl, who is being tortured by Darren #2. Also, the evil
cloners have arrived at original Richard's home, with his
brother Jeff by their side, to find out where the videotape
is. Now original Richard knows how bad this stinks and
he's not having any of it. Bad move old man. For
your whole bloodline. Let's just say Clone Richard won't
be giving his parts to his original self. But can Clone
Richard save his buxom clone girlfriend before they lobotomize
her? And will Evil Clone Corp. get theirs?
Robert S. Fiveson's 'The Clonus Horror' isn't really near bad
enough to deserve the MST3K treatment, plus it possesses some
borderline brilliant concepts wrapped around a very low budget
and some questionable acting. And it has the underlying
concept of being gay for your cloned dad, which is freaking
mind blowing. Maybe. I might've made that up.
But a son being gay for his dad aside, there is something
oddly involving about this movie. Again, it just could
be the way it handled the cloning concepts, or Tim Donnelly's
rather unique approach to the craft of acting, or Paulette
Breen's figure, or Peter Graves hair, or Fiveson's desperate
attempts to keep his low budget film in constant motion.
And there is something inherently evil about the late Dick
Sargent. This is why Dick York was always preferred
because Darren #2 looked like an asshole just waiting to
happen. That totally worked here.
Despite the flaws of 'The Clonus Horror', of which there are
many… overall poor acting, non-existent set design, a great
concept somewhat under developed as it tried to veer more
towards an action movie… I ultimately enjoyed this
movie.
