Embryo

Entertaining nonsense where Rock Hudson learns the secret of growing fetuses to adulthood with the offspring super-fast learners, highly skilled and super intelligent.

The Doberman which is the first successful offspring is a fabulous character (like the diabolical dog in The Omen.) She is beautifully trained and does some great stunts, and is chilling in other scenes. The second success is Victoria (Barbara Carrera) who - surprise - is a stunning beauty. Carrera is good in the role and creates a believable character.

Diane Ladd provides great support as Rock's cynical sister-in-law/live-in assistant who is suspicious of Victoria, and hates the dog. The most chilling (and high camp) scene has Ladd's character, who has been away, return to Rock's estate to rummage through the attic and retrieve a hideous frog-shaped lamp, only to be followed by the snarling dog the entire time. The dog carefully escorts Ladd from the premises, clearly glad to be rid of the ugly light fitting.

The opening scenes are rather dull, padded out with Rock endlessly recounting plot exposition into his refrigerator sized reel to reel tape recorder. The film really begins to feel like a TV movie with its tiny cast and few locations. But once Victoria's up and talking (and disrobing) the pace and interest picks up.

I just saw this film for the first time now. The film has a weird intro with the opening credits playing over pictures of unborn fetus's. That was a little uncomfortable to watch but I sat through the rest anyways.

It's a little slow at times, but all in all it's not too bad. The ending is a little over the top but can still give you chills.

If you've never seen it & you're a movie buff, sure...watch it. Otherwise, it's not really one for the young crowd.

"Embryo" has a touch of "Bride of Frankenstein" plus a pinch of "Lost Horizon", but all in all, I still find it a guilty pleasure.

Dr Paul Hollistan (Rock Hudson) is a genetic scientist who uses experimental growth hormones to speed up the growth of embryos. He has success with a dog, which becomes fully grown in no time at all. He then tries his luck on a human embryo and within a few days has produced a stunning Barbara Carrera. Not bad for his first human. He names her Victoria and sets out to educate her, finding that she absorbs information at a furious pace.

Of course, as devotees of horror/sci-fi well know, these kinds of experiments always have a catch and the growth hormone continues to accelerate Victoria's growth well past the hottie stage into old age; there are tears and screams before the final fade out.

The film has suspense: we wait to see people's reactions when Victoria explores her world and surprises them with her superior intelligence. The film starts stronger than it finishes, it has some interesting bits of pseudo science at the beginning with even a reference to DNA long before the acronym tended to pop up in every second sentence.

The presence of Rock Hudson gave the film a lift. The director, Ralph Nelson, had some big ones under his belt by this stage, and the film is many notches above the standard of many of the science fiction/horror movies that were around at the time.

I think Rock gave it some of the same juice he gave "Seconds" 10 years before; he ends up railing against fate at the end of both. "Embryo" was in that period between his big hits of the 50's and 60's, and before his career had a revival of sorts on television. However he was always watchable and had charisma to spare.

Barbara Carrera is captivating. She played a lot of femme fatales in her time, but that's fair enough; along with a sexy accent, she had a sensuous look that could easily cause turbulence amongst the male population. She works well with Rock, although she looks tiny alongside him despite the fact she was 5'8" (according to IMDb); he sure was a big dude.

"Embryo" is still worth a look even though there have been many variations on the theme over the decades, it doesn't outstay its welcome and the stars make it worth the effort.

The whole question of man tampering with genetics and life support gets a superficial and at times idiotic treatment in this sci-fi yarn. Hudson plays a research scientist who's mourning the loss of his partner and wife who died in an accident years before. One rainy night, while tipsy and distraught, he runs down a pregnant Doberman. He brings it to his mansion/laboratory and tries to revive it, while also trying to save the lives of it's three unborn pups. He decides to utilize theories he and his wife had been working on (but were shelved after her death.) When this approach is partially successful, he tries it out on a human fetus, but the results go haywire. He winds up (within days) with the fetus transformed into long-haired Carrera! He then attempts to acclimate this ready-made person into society, but it isn't as easy as he had hoped it would be. He is soon in over his head and pays dearly for his tampering. The entire first section of the movie has a sort of detached, clinical viewpoint with a rather monotone Hudson dictating endless data into a recorder so that the audience can figure out (if it wants to!) what all he's doing to the dog and then to the fetus. This gets tiresome to say the least and it isn't helped by the dull surroundings of his lab. It all seems like a forced, pay-your-dues prelude to justify having the luscious, naked Carrera pop out later and seduce Hudson. (And wouldn't Hudson be more likely to have Jack Scalia slide out of the incubator?) For some inexplicable reason, Hudson's deceased wife's sister (Ladd) lives in the house as well. Their relationship is very fuzzily detailed and her character rarely makes sense. Fortunately, despite the lame scripting, Ladd brings enough presence and authority to the role that she manages to get a few good lines and icy stares out of her thankless part. (She has one ludicrous extended scene involving the search for the planet's ugliest lamp in the attic while a fierce, threatening dog growls at her.) Hudson actually looks pretty good in many of the scenes, especially the outdoor ones where the lighting is more flattering. He does an admirable enough job with his role in spite of the complete lunacy of the subject matter and the nonsensical actions of his character. (WHY is it necessary for the unborn fetus to know how to multiply a couple of numbers before it can even talk?!) Carrera has been given an impossible role to play. Nothing about her character makes any sense at all, yet she somehow brings conviction, believability and sympathy to the role. (It is never explained, however, why she has a heavy Nicaraguan accent. The poor lady was always playing oddities at this stage of her career. See "The Island of Dr. Moreau" as well...) She has one great sequence opposite McDowall at a party. (This hilarious party full of doctors and scientists even includes Dr. Joyce Brothers as herself!!!!!) Other roles go to Elerick as Hudson's son, Baggetta as a sly wolf with designs on Carrera and Schedeen as Hudson's pregnant daughter-in-law. Schedeen capped her place in sci-fi cultdom when she went on to play the surrogate mom of "ALF". The film is moderately entertaining if one doesn't think about any of the science involved. Even so, it could have been a lot better with a higher budget, stronger script and better direction. One potentially disturbing moment involving a dogfight is rendered fall-down hilarious due to the usage of a preposterous stuffed terrier as a stunt double.

This film has aged as gracefully as Mickey Rourke. The special effects are hilariously bad, the lab equipment belongs in a museum and the plot is dubious to say the least. And yet, these are the very things that make "Embryo" such entertaining viewing.

I think it's only fair to judge special effects in old movies by the technology available to the filmmakers at the time. However, even by 1970s standards, the special effects in this film are remarkably unconvincing. The obvious use of dolls for babies, the fluffy toy that doubles for a dog and the mesmerising plastic canine foetus are all memorable. Personally, I find these kind of effects utterly charming. They inject humour into the film (albeit unintentionally) and due to their lack of authenticity, make the subject matter of experimenting on foetuses more palatable.

Technology junkies will love the bus sized computers and pre-historic lab equipment. The film's heartening lack of moralising is almost as much of its time as the outdated hardware. I hate to think how preachy this film would be if it were made today.

This film is a bizarre and amusing time capsule of 1970s technology and morality. See it, if only for the bewildering dog foetus.