A Era dos Robots

Human Duplicators stars Richard Kiel as Dr. Kolos, an alien sent to prepare the Earth for invasion. His mission is to contact Prof. Vaughn Dornheimer, Earth's leading scientist in regards to cloning, and use Dornheimer to aid in creating a colony of clones (androids) on Earth.

It doesn't take long for Kolos to locate Dornheimer and start producing clones. However, not everything goes as intended, and an investigation by an agency into investigating stolen parts and the death of a scientist related to Dornheimer's research. Also Dr. Dornheimer's lovely but pesky niece weighs more and more heavily on Kolos as the story develops.

Now on to why I think many people enjoy this film. Personally I find it reminds me of the original Star Trek series. As fan a fan of Star Trek TOS, I'm not blind to stiff acting, mediocre sets, and goofy special effects. But it's part of the charm of Star Trek, these things are less important than the story telling and dreams that TOS represented. This film, although not related to Star Trek, manages to capture a bit of the same charm for the same reasons.

An alien (Dr. Kolos, Richard Kiel) is transported to Earth to prepare for an invasion by perfecting human duplication, with which an unlimited supply of obedient slaves and soldiers could be created. Written by the usually imaginative Alfred C. Pierce, the plot is a throwback to the numerous 'alien duplicate' films of the 50s and early 60s with a minor plot twist before the otherwise cheap and predictable ending. The towering Kiel is amusingly robotic as the alien who becomes infatuated with Lisa, Delores Faith's short and extremely unconvincing blind girl, 'Leave It to Beaver's Hugh Beaumont shows up as a cop while 'Robot Monster's George Nader is the stalwart secret-agent hero Glenn Martin, complete with a superfluous, brassy New Yawker girlfriend (Barbara Nichols). The story doesn't make a lot of sense, especially the inconsistent duplication process, which seems to result in super-strong, bullet-proof yet oddly fragile mannequins. Other than an early scene of Kolos being sent to Earth via "teletrasporter" (a process remarkably similar to the transporters in 'Star Trek', which debuted more than a year after this film came out), the special effects are cheap and laughable (especially the climactic "pulse laser beam"). Pierce's low-budget science-fiction films are usually better than they should be (such as 1966's 'Cyborg 2087') but this one isn't, and beyond an undeniable appeal to camp and/or genre fans (primarily due to the cast) has little to offer to justify sitting through 80 minutes of boring bargain-basement 'spy-fi'.

Aliens come to earth and try to take over by converting people into animated ceramic zombies.

At least, that's what the IMDb write up says. I found this movie to be a bizarrely awful one, because it was simultaneously dull and incomprehensible. This is unprecedented in my movie-viewing - although it is possible that my steel sieve of a memory has blessedly let slip others that match this description. Incomprehensibility usually draws my attention as I try to figure out what is going on. Is this the result of an abysmal script? Terrible editing? Poor actors? There were those, certainly, like Ted Durant as 'The Galaxy Being'.

Maybe it was because there were also some fine actors trying to treat what was going on as normal, performers like George Macready and Hugh Beaumont and Richard Arlen. Well, Arlen was the Mikey of film actors. He'd play in anything. The others, though, are a bit more puzzling. Perhaps they simply liked to keep their names before the public, or needed the money. There are certainly people like that.

I just don't know. Given that I spent a couple of hour looking at it, and half an hour puzzling over this review, I am going to drop the matter. I've wasted enough time on this one. However, if you ignore this review and look at this one, let me know if you figure it out.

This silly and incredibly cheap b-movie finds Richard Kiel as a giant alien intent on turning the population of America into ceramic figurines. Watch late at night in a state of alcoholic excess. Fun but stupid.

Hugo Grimaldi's directorial work will not win him any awards from mainstream Hollywood, but he has made his niche on the world of B-Movies.

This effort was a step up in some ways from his classic, "The Phantom Planet", where he teamed up with production designer and associate producer Robert Kinoshita (the designer of "Forbidden Planet"'s Robbie the Robot and the B9 bot from "Lost In Space"). For openers, this movie was filmed in color, a small process that could have perhaps helped lift "Phantom Planet" out of it's near obscurity today.

However, for all his efforts, "The Human Duplicators" was saddled with the same problems that sank it's predecessor: poor scripting, cheap sets and effects, borrowed soundtrack music and audio effects, even using "Phantom Planet" veteran bad guy, Richard Kiel (Jaws of "Moonraker" and "The Spy Who Loved Me")as an android with a heart, as well as other questionable casting, such as Hugh Beaumont ("Leave It To Beaver"), which hindered the credibility of the characters, ergo so went the plot and any chance of suspense (This debate still rages when you ask the question "What if Hitchcock knew that Ted Knight would be forever associated with the egotistical, clueless TV anchorman Ted Baxter? Would he have removed him from the closing scenes of "Psycho"?).