PARTS: THE CLONUS HORROR-1979 -Former second Darren Stevens on TV’s BEWITCHED Dick Sargent (who was in Paul Schrader's HARDCORE the same year) runs a camp of young people training to go to a place called America. Surprise! He’s actually in charge a secret cloning project called “Clonus” and is “harvesting” the poor dopes so their vital organs can later be used to save the lives of politicians, millionaires and other evil people.
Meanwhile Presidential shoo-in Jeffery Knight (Peter Graves) campaigns. One camper member and future organ donor named Richard (Tim Donnelley) falls in love with the strange looking Lena (Paulette Breen). After he finds a beer can in a nearby river, Richard decides all is not what it seems to be. He runs away and winds up in LA. He steals a bicycle and crashes into the garbage cans of retired reporter Jake Noble (Keenan Wynn). Richard kind of explains his situation (“Can you help me find my other part?”) and Jake argues with his wife (Lurene Tuttle) providing the most entertaining scene in the whole movie!
After viewing a film Richard brought with him Jake takes the clone to meet his DNA counterpart a professor named Richard Knight (Wow! What a coincidence! They are both named Richard!). He lives with his weird looking son Ricky. They seem more like lovers than father and son. Anyway, when Prof. is convinced that Richard is his clone he decides to contact his brother Jeffery who just happens to be running for President. Bad move! Jeff knows all about Clonus and in fact arranged to have the Richard clone made! That’s brotherly love!
The whole thing plays like a typical but slightly more violent ‘70’s TV movie. It’s bad and boring but funny and entertaining in spots. Director Robert S. Fiveson never made another movie but sued the makers of THE ISLAND in 2005 for plagiarism. I'm not even sure if this was ever released into theaters. I originally saw on cable in the early '80's.
Graves played George Washington in the made for TV THE REBELS the same year as this. Good commercial roles seemed to elude "Mission: Impossible"'s Mr. Phelps until AIRPLANE in 1980 but who can really complain about the guy who played the hero in KILLERS FROM SPACE??
MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 later used this and produced one of their funniest episodes…
Thanks for reading!
1 comment:
I think I saw this on TBS as a kid. I remember absolutely nothing about it so I guess it didn't make much of an impact on me even back then.
Post a Comment