Clones, The
Entry updated 4 April 2017. Tagged: Film.
Film (1973; vt Dead Man Running). Filmmakers International/New World Pictures. Produced by Paul Hunt. Directed by Lamar Card and Hunt. Written by Steve Fisher from an original story by Card and Hunt. Cast includes Stanley Adams, Michael Greene, Susan Hunt and Gregory Sierra. 95 minutes. Colour.
Nuclear physicist Dr Gerald Appleby (Greene) discovers to his horror that an exact duplicate of himself has been attending his workplace and seeing his girlfriend Penny (Hunt). He has been Cloned by a secret government project to replace various important Scientists and others with such replicas. The clone (also Greene) escapes from the secret research laboratory; most of the film comprises a long pursuit of both the clone and Appleby by the project's assassin Nemo (Sierra). Appleby survives, only to learn in a twist ending characteristic of the 1970s that the cloning project is no longer of prime importance, having been taken over from within by Dr Carl Swafford (Adams) and his partners in a conspiracy whose ultimate aim is to conquer the world by Weather Control.
This modestly budgeted film was seemingly the first to introduce the term "clones" to the US cinema public; the word was not used in the earlier The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler (1971), whose premise is similar. [GSt]
links
previous versions of this entry