Welcome to another Saturday Night Special down in The Dungeon! Unlike a lot of movies we've showcased here, "The Human Duplcators" is indeed special in many ways starting with this cool poster that has absolutely nothing to do with the movie at all, and contains one giant omission!
"The Human Duplicators" is a sonofabitch of a movie to try and find these days, but with a little luck, and a lot of perserverance, you just might find a copy, and believe me, it will be worth the effort!
Yeah, I know it looks like a Tiffany lampshade or a spinning top, but that's just because these aliens have class!
Okay, let's get this space story spinning! Here's Dungeon Super Hero Richard Kiel coming in for a landing on earth as Dr. Kolos! Opening scene, big space alien, back it up a little, do you see Richard Kiel's name on that poster anywhere? Yeah, me neither! Sinful! It's amazing because he's not the star, but he IS the real main character! Nary a mention, I still can't believe it! And besides that, he's the biggest character on the poster! Incredible!
Richard Kiel is indeed a true hero, scraping his way to somewhere close to the top, and then basically out of a job! At 7' 2" I guess they just couldn't find enough roles for him, but Richard's roles in weirdass cult movies is unsurpassed! Here's just a partial list: Richard was The Solarite in "The Phantom Planet," Richard was Kanamit in the "Twilight Zone" episode titled "To Serve Man," Richard was the one and only Eegah in frickin' "Eegah," for Christ's sake, Richard was the Giant in "House Of The Damned," and Richard was also in "The Nutty Professor," "The Nasty Rabbit," and "Two On A Guillotine" and that was all before "The Human Duplicators" was made! Of course his most famous role is that of Jaws in the 007 film "The Spy Who Loved Me!"
Pretty interesting that "The Human Duplicators" was made one year before the first "Star Trek" episode ever appeared on TV! Beam me down Boss!!
Basically, the aliens need the Professor that lives in this house because he's working on some sort of cloning device. The aliens need stuff, so they want duplicated doctors to steal it for them! It's a long way around, but that's one way to get there! It would have been simpler to just hire a bunch of thugs! As you can see, Kolos towers over manservant Thor as played by John Indrisano! John was one of those kinds of guys who managed to parlay a whole career out of largely uncredited bit parts as Bartenders, Referees, Chauffeurs, etc in almost 200 productions! John was also a professional welterweight boxer with a record of 47-8-1 who went on to be a referee for over a decade and an adviser in many a boxing film! No, his name's not on the poster either!
After rendering Thor the butler stupid, Kolos explores the house and discovers a young lady playing the piano! It's the lovely daughter of the Professor of the house, darling Dolores Faith as Lisa Dornheimer! Dolores was also in "The Phantom Planet" as Zetha, and then in her third movie, she got a starring role! I'm not sure it did much for her career because it was titled "V.D." and that doesn't exactly stand for Valentines's Day! Dolores had exactly 13 acting credits until she lost faith and decided to do something else!
It's pretty surprising that the Professor can keep his mind on the job, but then he is a professional! The Professor was played by another powerhouse of entertainment history, George Macready! Among a ton of other credits, George was in all four of the 60's classic TV Horror and Sci-Fi shows, "Thriller," Twilight Zone,"The Outer Limits," and "Night Gallery!" His last role was in "The Return Of Count Yorga!" I honestly don't know who the two knockout assistants are, but it's a good guess that one of them is Alean "Bambi" Hamilton!
Ok, this movie hasn't even got started yet! The cloned doctors are breaking and entering and killing too, so it's time for Secret Agent Glenn Martin to step in! Glenn Martin is played by yet another Dungeon Super Hero, George Nader! Try that little search window over there and you'll get at least nine references to George Nader, and I still haven't done all the Jerry Cotton films yet! The talent in this movie will make your head spin, standing across from George is his Boss Austin Welles as played by Hugh Beaumont! Hugh had a massive and varied career, but will be known for all eternity as Ward Cleaver, the Father of The Beaver! 234 episodes of "Leave It To Beaver," that's difficult to even comprehend!
One of the more lesser known blonde bombshells of the 50's and 60's was Barbara Nichols, here as Austin Welles' secretary, and Glenn Martin's girlfriend Gale Wilson! With her wiseguy Brooklyn accent, Barbara was in a different league than a lot of the other girls! Barbara was Liz Powell in the "Twilight Zone" episode titled "Twenty Two!" Unfortunately, she died way too young at the age of 47 of liver failure after being in a couple of auto accidents!
Is this just a great shot of George in a phone booth or not? I love how atmospheric the background is, and the foreground looks like a watercolour painting! This is a good spot to insert a little
sound from the club where Glenn is getting ready to meet Gale! The music in "The Human Duplicators" was pretty much stock music of the time! They just had somebody really good picking it out!
Glenn sneaks into the Professor's pad, and finds masks of the suspect thiefs!
Then he opens a few coffins and finds more than a few surprises!
Here's a bit of a progression in the duplicating process! I think this is Kim Satana in her one film outing, no relation to Tura! Either that, or it's Kim Sattin, Tura Satana' sister!
One thing about these clones is that although they are tough to fight, they do break easily! It's like their heads are like one of those stupid and creepy porcelain dolls!
In an effort to make Richard Kiel look like he's 8 feet tall, they have him standing on the top step so it makes George Nader at 6' 1" looks like a midget!
Everything is now officially out of control. The Duplications have taken over, and even the Professor and his assistants aren't real any more! They caught Glenn sneaking around, and now it's his turn to get doubled up!
Meanwhile, Kolos has fallen deeply in love with Lisa Dornheimer, and is not willing to go along with the demands of the Duplications to make a copy of her! He only wants the real thing!
They don't really care what Kolos thinks and proceed with the operation anyway!
It's not too complicated to figure out what happens in the end! "The Human Duplicators" was about the funnest movie I've seen lately on multiple levels! It's like the Woodstock of 'B' movies, it's got that much talent in it, so catch it if you can, and if you just happen to not like it as much as I did, then Go Duplicate Yourself!
4 comments:
Coincidentally, I just saw the MST3K version again, and whichever way you see it, it's entertaining. Not all the celebrity imitations on MST worked completely, but Mike Nelson's imitation of Hugh Beaumont - which gives him a comical paranoid streak, of all things! - is pretty hilarious.
This is such a great "pulp" science fiction film, which isn't really trying to be anything else, and it really succeeds at that.
Speaking of John Indrisano playing bartenders, he played one in one of my all-time favorite little-known comedies, SITUATION HOPELESS, BUT NOT SERIOUS. As usual, he isn't in the credits, so I had to learn his name in places like this site.
Thanx Grant! Yeah, I like this movie for a lot of reasons, and for me, it's a keeper!
Wow, I haven't seen this before and it looks just my style. Now to locate it... done!
regards,
Paul
I did see that this movie was streaming on some site after doing a Google search, but I'm a little bit distrustful of some of those sites, so it's up to you. Good luck!
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