Embryo

"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.

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.

I think this movie was WAY ahead of it's time. Very few people were aware of the scientific manipulations that could be done for development of new life.

Also it doesn't hurt that the leading actors are absolutely gorgeous. Barbara Carrera has nude scenes that even a woman can appreciate. What a goddess!

If you like sci-fi from olden times that mimics the life we are living now, you'll love this one.

That said, I agree with the other reviewer who noted that it was absolutely ridiculous to put in the scene about the natural language query to a computer that came back with a good answer. I worked with mainframes in 1976, and we were still feeding trays of punch cards into readers to run programs. CRT's were still command line interfaces.

There are a bunch of hater's for this movie for resistance to scientists assuming the role of gods.

I happen to be a Monsanto HATER, ABHORER, LOATHER, DESPISER!

Did ya'll know they "own," legally, but NOT morally IMO, a terminator gene, that renders their seeds unable to reproduce? Imagine if that gene got loose and started mutating flora and fauna. That could be the absolute end of life on our planet. Fortunately, our government, stupid and clueless as it is, has so far denied Monsanto the ability to deploy such a dangerous assault against us.

Watch "Bitter Harvest" with Ron Howard to see some of the corporate antics this toxic multinational corporation gets up to: contaminating (getting loose on) neighboring farms with their genetically modified seeds and pollen, then suing them for stealing their patented stuff. They get away with it, and have put many hard-working people out of business and off their land.

i really enjoyed this movie.i thought the acting was very good,and the storyline well developed.i'm sure the movie was inspired by past literary works and movies,but i think it also inspired other movies and novels.so,obviously it's not wholly original,but it does have its own original elements to it.it's a cautionary tale for sure and it's just as relevant today, probably more so .the only negative thing i can say about it is that it can be a bit slow,and the first half has an almost clinical feel to it.by this i mean at times it's a bit dry and almost too scientific.overall,though i think it was a well done movie.i give Embryo a 7/10