Embryo (1976)

... aka: Created to Kill

... aka: Create to Die

... aka: Die Brut des Bösen (The Evil Brood)

... aka: Ectogen

... aka: El embrión mortífero (The Deadly Embryo)

... aka: La criatura infernal (The Infernal Creature)

Directed by:

Ralph Nelson

After high school and a stint in the military, Roy Scherer Jr. moved to Los Angeles with the explicit goal of becoming a movie star. Despite little acting experience (supposedly he was rejected from at least one college acting program due to bad grades), Roy nonetheless immediately landed himself representation based on the power of his good looks alone. All it took was sending the agent a head shot. The only problem was his name. It was promptly changed to Rock Hudson. From there, he started out in small (and sometimes uncredited) roles before being taken under contract by Universal. Sensing huge potential in him, he was heavily promoted by the studio, who made sure his image was regularly seen by the public in newspapers and film magazines, and promoted him to leading roles in medium-budget western and adventure yarns. However, his popularity wouldn't skyrocket until he started appearing as the male lead in more romantic films, especially when paired with Doris Day. Starting in the late 50s well into the 1960s, Hudson would be regularly voted by both exhibitors and the public as the #1 movie star of the year and left a string of successful films in his wake. Women thought the strapping 6'4" star was charming and sexy, while male viewers took to his deep-voiced, broad-shouldered masculinity. He'd even occasionally get a bit of critical recognition, namely for his performance in Giant (1956), which garnered him his first and only Oscar nomination.

As is usually the case with movie stars whose careers are largely based on sex appeal, Hudson's popularity started to wane the more he aged. By the mid-60s, his films weren't bringing in the dough they had when he was in his physical prime. Even giving a career-best performance in Seconds (1966), a project Hudson had so much faith in he even partially financed, didn't seem to matter as the film was (undeservedly) a box office flop. Hudson eventually ended up turning to TV. Though he hated doing television, he had some success there on the long-running McMillan & Wife (1971-1977) and other projects. He also continued to pick up some film work, including the tasteless black comedy Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971), which has become a cult classic here in recent years, and this sci-fi horror flick, which has not.

As has been noted numerous times over the years, the big shocker about Hudson, his public persona, his political alignment with socially conservative moralists and the majority of his work in the entertainment industry was that it was later revealed that this icon of rugged heterosexual masculinity was privately homosexual. This all flew right in the face of stereotypical views of gay men as weak and effeminate and one the public at large couldn't quite process back in the mid 80s moral majority era, especially when Hudson then became the most famous casualty of AIDS in 1985. Adding another layer of uncomfortable irony was then-president Ronald Reagan, who was one of Hudson's personal friends yet lead an administration whose reaction to the AIDS crisis was unarguably appalling (you can get a good glimpse into that in the very telling 7-minute-long mini doc When AIDS Was Funny). While Hudson's reputation was tarnished for decades, enough time has now passed that the next generation of fans and critics have been able to reassess his work on its own merits, perhaps for the first time since the actor's passing.

It's a dark and stormy night when retired scientist Dr. Paul Holliston (Hudson) accidentally runs over a Doberman. He rushes home with the animal and immediately retreats to his sheet-covered lab, which he hasn't even been back in since the premature passing of his wife. Paul manages to extract two puppy fetuses from the critically-wounded animal, puts them in tanks and then goes about trying to save them. Though one of the fetuses and the mother dog die, Paul is able to save the first fetus with an intravenous injection of "placental lactrogen," an experimental rapid-growth hormone that he and his late wife were working on prior to her passing. The dog fetus almost immediately matures into a viable puppy and so quickly ages to adulthood that he has to tell everyone that it's actually the mother dog and not one of her babies.

Given the name "Number One," the dog proves to be super-intelligent and fast-learning to the point where it needs almost no training to follow commands. It can fetch its own food from the refrigerator, clean up after itself, open and close doors, carry groceries and even goes to bed whenever its told. However, it also has a mean streak that it's smart enough to keep hidden, and kills a smaller dog when no one's looking and then hides its body in the bushes. Thinking the dog has been a success, Paul goes to his hospital administrator buddy Jim Winston (Jack Colvin) for help. Though he finds it "morally questionable to experiment with a living being," Jim agrees to provide him with a 12 to 14 week old fetus that otherwise has no chance of surviving outside the womb. One unfortunate suicide later and Paul has his specimen.

After administering the hormone until the fetus has aged to 9 months, Paul stops giving it the drug. Unfortunately, the hormone continues to work despite his best effort to slow or stop the process using various techniques like DNA blocking agents and other drugs. The baby soon becomes a toddler and then a little girl and then an adult woman, (played by half-Nicaraguan former model Barbara Carrera), before he finally comes up with a drug cocktail that seems to work. All the while she was in her life support chamber, Paul was subjecting her to "subconscious teaching" by playing audio tapes about math, science, etc. Once she's finally out and about, he names her Victoria and continues teaching her the basics, like how to speak, brush her hair, dress, etc.

Emotionally, Victoria is rather childlike due to never being exposed to social and environmental restrictions before. However, she has an excellent memory and is like a sponge when it comes to absorbing new information. She speed reads through books and research papers and, after finishing the bible, concludes, "An interesting story, but not very logical." Paul takes Victoria on vacation so that she can see some of the outside world and learn how to act around other people. And, to help shield her identity, they concoct an entire backstory for her. She's Victoria Spencer, a recent graduate from the University of Colorado who will be living and working alongside Paul as his new research assistant. Now she's ready to meet the rest of the family, including Paul's sister-in-law Martha (Diane Ladd), his son Gordon (John Elerick) and Gordon's pregnant wife Helen (Anne Schedeen).

While Victoria manages to delight nearly all that she meets with her beauty, intelligence and charming personality, she does manage to ruffle a few feathers, namely those belonging to Ladd, whose catty character is secretly in love with Paul and thus jealous of the competition, and Roddy McDowall, in a one scene cameo as a cocky chess master who gets shown up at a party by Victoria. But our test tube temptress soon has even bigger problems to contend with. Paranoia starts setting in and she becomes convinced Paul is going to hand her over to a scientific lab to use as a guinea pig if her drugs stop working. As a result, she starts injecting herself with the drug behind Paul's back. She then suffers from terrible cramps and eventually resorts to murder in order to save herself, which requires fluid from the pituitary gland of an unborn fetus!

While this certainly owes a debt of gratitude to countless earlier mad doctor films, it's also firmly in another sub-category I've seen a number of times before which I don't believe even has a name. This category plays up heavily on the common "master" fantasy where the middle-aged male lead has a young, beautiful, innocent, impressionable and unsullied adult female virgin to sculpt into whatever form he desires, only to have it all backfire in some horrific way. Sometimes, like here, the male lead creates the woman using science. Sometimes, the male lead runs across a beautiful alien or demon or some other supernatural being unfamiliar with the modern world who is in need of the older male's mentorship and guidance until things turn sour. In nearly all of these, there's a sexual element present, which is also the case here as doctor and creation eventually become lovers. As Paul states in one of his recordings, "It's not such an unpleasant task to teach such a willing pupil!" I don't know. Daddy Complex Chillers kind of has a nice ring to it.

Reception for this one has mostly been lukewarm or on the negative side, but I was seldom bored. Sure, if one wants to pick apart the scientific aspects they certainly can, this trots out the stale old "Don't play God" moral at the end and most of what occurs in the first hour probably could have been reduced down to about fifteen minutes without much being lost in the process. That said, this is professionally made and well-acted, with Hudson (somewhat surprisingly) fitting the whole sci-fi / horror milieu just fine and Carrera making a strong impression in an early role. The well-trained canine co-star also provides some genuine amusement during many scenes. Ladd, on the other hand, is wasted on a bizarrely underwritten part. The cast also includes Vincent Baggetta as a womanizing computer expert and Dr. Joyce Brothers, who appears as herself during the party scene.

This was one of the final films for Nelson, who at one time was making Emmy and Oscar winning films like Lillies of the Field (1963) and Charly (1969). Immediately after this, producer Sandy Howard decided to back an big budget adaptation of H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977), which again starred Carrera and featured make-up effects from John Chambers, Ed Butterworth and Dan Striepeke. One may suspect the poster featuring a nude Carrera in a fetal position was a classic bait-and-switch technique to get asses into theater seats, but she does actually appear nude several times in this PG-rated film. Hard to imagine that a film with T&A and plenty of shots of bloody aborted fetuses would receive the same rating nowadays!

Embryo fell into the public domain about a decade ago, so it's been extremely easy to find on many budget labels over the years. The initial VHS release from Ace Video used the new title Created to Kill, while later DVDs reverted back to the original title.

★★1/2