Embryo

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 The film's heartening lack of moralising is almost as much of its time as the outdated hardware.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.

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.

Okay, I'll admit it--you need to suspend disbelief on this one--A LOT of disbelief! But, you have to do this all the time in movies so stretching this just a bit further might enable you to enjoy this film. I know that I went in with very low expectations after reading the IMDb reviews, but it turned out to be a decent little movie about yet another doctor who wanted to play God.

The film begins with a doctor (Rock Hudson) hitting a dog. He takes the pooch home and tries to save it, but he's unsuccessful. But here's the weird part--using some special serum he'd been working on, he injects the dog's surviving puppies to try to save it. That's because the puppy is WAY too young to survive. Speeding up its growth at an astronomical rate enabled the puppy to grow many weeks in a matter of hours and it survives.

A short time later, the doctor decides to play God with a human. Taking a recently dead pregnant woman, he's able to remove the small fetus and grow it in his lab at an even faster rate. The problem is that for some time he cannot stop its fast growth and the fetus ends up becoming a full-grown woman by the time he's arrested the fast growth. At first, things seem great as the woman is a sort of super-woman--with amazing learning skills and intelligence and the ability to be well-coiffed despite being raised in a lab. Plus, and here's the best part, it turns out to be an amazingly HOT young lady (Barbara Carrera). What's next? Well, I'd say more but don't want to spoil the plot. Suffice to say that the lady's moral reasoning abilities are at times VERY suspect...yet hot! Despite the prologue that makes it sound as if this technology is possible, it certainly is not! But, it did make for an interesting film with a few nice surprises (such as at the very end). A word of note--you WILL see a lot of Miss Carrera in this one, so perhaps it's best not shown to your small children or mother!

Okay, I admit, the movie theme isn't as frightening now as it might have been in the 70s when the film was made. Still, the movie was an interesting and somewhat disturbing view of a scientific experiment gone wrong.

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