The Lucifer Complex

I was one of the clones! The curly haired guy in a few scenes behind Robert Vaughn. He didn't say much, just smiled and did what he was told. Many of us were acting students from the Lee Strasberg Drama Institute - so much for method acting. It was filmed across the street from Paramount at a small sound stage we entered through a back alley. They feed us from MacDonalds! I never got paid for it, so I guess I might as well not hold my breath anymore. You'll notice there is a strip across where our private parts would be, so you couldn't see our bathing suits or underwear, and we just grabbed the feeding tubes and stuck them in our navels.

This movie could have been so much better if they would have had the lone survivor discovering that the video he is watching is really the Lucifer Complex and he was in it. Like he was discovering that he was a clone. But as the movie is, it makes little sense of anything.

If ever a film deserves obscurity this one should be completely eradicated from the first to the last frame, to prevent cruelty to viewers, to film making professionals, and to the actors trapped therein. Watching snails mate IS much more entertaining.

An obvious attempt to "rescue" already shot footage from some aborted movie project, the result is the best demonstrative excuse to outlaw cloning yet devised ...referring to the movie, not the biological process. Even worse, you can tell when the editors intentionally "stretched" the film by repeating the same scenes over and over and over and over and .... sow on. It is shocking to see reference to "script" personnel in the closing credits. I suspect this was an attempt to perpetrate a fraud. In the film there is no evidence of a script, nor coherence or continuity. The only plot possible for this film is the one into which it should be put.

Bury this movie, don't view it.

Why did I view this film? I cannot think of a single good reason other than stupid disbelief ...sort of like a deer frozen motionless in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle.

But it has its moments. Not a great sci-fi flick, but not a total waste of time either. I thought the choreography was poorly done, and certain special effects, principally blowing stuff up, weren't done to well. But Robert Vaughn was, as always, cool. The "Nazi bitch" with the bride of Frankenstien hair style was kind of campy. Aldo Ray, and I've always enjoyed his work, didn't have much of a part or come across that well. The premise is okay but the plot, not to mention the characters, is never really developed. And the guy in the cave, watching all of this via computerized film footage? Well, lots of what he sees, which is what we watch with him, took place behind closed doors and in swamps and ... Who was holding the camera? Ahh, nothings perfect. This is OK sci-fi if you don't set your expectations to high. Its worth a watch.

The trivia says this movie was never released to theaters, and I believe it. It's pretty bad.

It doesn't help that there's some sort of frame story involving a guy sitting inexpressively in front of a bank of TV monitors, watching a library of all the videos ever recorded (or something like that). He muses to himself in voice-over how there is more about wars than anything else. Most of the movie is something he's watching about a war in 1986 (or 96?). That story doesn't start until about twenty minutes in; probably once you realize how long the opening drags, you'll fast forward judiciously like I did.

A bunch of important people are killed on a bus. Robert Vaughn's character investigates, after he watches a belly dancer in a bar. He finds a camp of Nazis and is captured, and they try to convince him he never saw the Nazis. It turns out they're cloning world leaders, and the women in the camp help Vaughn fight the Nazis. That might sound sort of exciting, but it's not terribly engrossing at all, and it doesn't help that they keep cutting back to the guy watching all of this on video.

Not recommended at all. This is the sort of movie that would be helped by some special features explaining what they were going for with the movie, the trouble with releasing it, etc. I saw it on video, though, an old big box from a closing video store.