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EMBRYO
Rating: 
USA. 1976.
Director – Ralph Nelson, Screenplay – Anita Doohan & Jack W. Thomas, Story – Jack W. Thomas, Producers – Anita Doohan & Arnold H. Orgolini, Photography – Fred J. Koenekamp, Music – Gil Melle, Special Effects – Roy Arbogast, Makeup – Ed Butterworth, John Chambers, Frank Griffin & Dan Striepike, Production Design – Joseph Alves Jr. Production Company – Plural Service Co/Astral Bellevue Pathe Ltd.
Cast:
Rock Hudson (Dr Paul Holliston), Barbara Carrera (Victoria), Diane Ladd (Martha Douglas), Anne Schedeen (Helen Holliston), John Elerick (Gordon Holliston), Roddy McDowall (Frank Riley), Vincent Bagetta (Collier)
Plot: Dr Paul Holliston is successful in saving the embryo from a pregnant dog that he accidentally runs down one night in the rain. He accelerates its growth with an injection of an experimental drug, placental lactogen, until it is full grown within a matter of days. He next experiments on a female embryo taken from a pregnant teen suicide. He raises the embryo to a full grown woman within a matter of days and names her Victoria. Victoria learns at a remarkable rate and develops great intelligence. She and Paul become lovers. But Victoria is also wholly amoral and when the drug begins having side-effects, she starts to kill to preserve herself.
One of the most popular stories of the classic German Expressionist era was Alraune, which received at least five film adaptations (twice in 1918, in 1928, 1930 and 1952). It told the story of a woman birthed from the seed of a hanged murderer who, through being born artificially, had no soul and became an amoral killer, seducing and luring men to their doom. It was an interesting prefigural of Germany’s ruthless fascination with eugenics in the following decade. By the 1970s the whole debate over soul vs science had completely died out and the cliche of the mad scientist had been relegated to the realm of Z-budget exploitation. Which really makes Embryo, which rehashes the entire story of Alraune without any credit, a dinosaur.
The film makes an elevated – and quite ponderous – attempt to claim scientific authenticity for itself. The opening scenes are agonizingly po-faced in their seriousness: “The film you are about to see is not all science-fiction. It is based on medical technology which currently exists for fetal growth outside the womb. It could be a possibility tomorrow ... or today.” There is a laughable sense of self-importance to the whole exercise – the experiment for example is inter-edited with cuts away to Michelangelo’s David. And while the medical scenes appear authentic – there is a medical advisor credited and there don’t appear to be any obviously howling gaffes – the film is woefully ill-informed when it comes to things like computers, assuming the computer to be a super-brain which can spit out answers to any given question.
The film is really a product of its contemporary thematic cross-currents – one the post-2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), post-The Andromeda Strain (1971) school of clinically dehumanizing technology, the other a product of the post-Rosemary’s Baby (1968), post-Exorcist (1973) horror film school of malignant pregnancies and evil children. The film steers a wholly melodramatic path to the nearest cliches of both cycles. One can see some of the twists coming miles away – we know exactly where Carrera is going to turn when it is mentioned she needs the extract of an unborn fetus. Also interesting is the film’s equation of hyper-intelligence and (in a prefigural of the abortion debate) artificial birthing with complete consciencelessness. With the exception of the move from a Gothic to a modern medical laboratory, not a great deal has really changed since Alraune. Which is all rather sad as director Ralph Nelson had previously made Charly (1968) which was also sceptical about science but told a worthwhile tale of an idiot becoming a genius. The end fadeout where the impossibly old Carrera suddenly gives birth to a baby is just horridly melodramatic.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2012
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