Clonus
By Chris Hyde
March 15, 2005
It’s clone-meets-world in a hamfisted political allegory of a movie!
For their line of domestic releases thus far in North America, Mondo Macabro has tended to mine territory far from the continental borders. Be it Pakistan, Argentina, Indonesia or some other farflung locale, their catalog has focused on the globally exotic in cinema - truly living up to their slogan to present us with the wildside of world cinema. Their latest effort, however, now turns their always maniacal eye towards the United States with a DVD of a post-Watergate bit of technological paranoia by a Canadian-born director.
Given the film’s name, it should come as little surprise that the story centers on a secret government campus where human clones are created and raised. Brought up to be perfect physical specimens by a black ops team of some unspecified government department, for the most part these clones are lobotomized sheep who take no interest in their fate - preferring instead to believe their overlords’ fairy tales about the mythical land of America where they will eventually be sent to live. But though in the main the clones are pretty slow and have been virally de-intellectualized, there do exist “control clones” who are allowed to keep their intelligence and who just may be the fatal flaw in the government’s conspiratorial scheme.
Our hero is a clone named Richard (Tim Donnelly) whose above average smarts lead him to question all the pat answers provided by his keepers. He’s not one to blindly accept the propaganda purveyed by the head of the center (played by Bewitched’s Dick Sargent), and when one day he wanders off by himself and finds a piece of the outside world in the form of an Old Milwaukee beer can, his questions become manifestly dangerous. But the government is pretty confident in their little panopticon and so they allow Richard a bit of freedom to operate, preferring to study his moves from afar. They even let him engage in some hot clone-on-clone love with a full figured resident named Lena (Paulette Breen) who is no dummy herself.
But as with most government operations, the bureaucratic control here is far less efficient than it ought to be and Richard manages to uncover some of the secrets behind the center before escaping into the outside world to try to find the person whose cells were used to create him. Along the way he meets up with a grizzled retired reporter named Jake Noble (veteran actor Keenan Wynn) who takes an interest both in Richard and the revealing videotape that he now has in his possession. They eventually meet up with the clone’s progenitor, Professor Richard Knight (David Hooks), who turns out to be the brother of a hotshot presidential candidate (Mission Impossible’s Peter Graves) previously introduced in the narrative. The outcome of the story then ultimately hinges on whether our heroic clone and his friends can survive the many challenges presented by a shadowy and vindictive government and if his story will be told to the world or kept hidden forever inside the classified clone campus.
There’s little doubt that Clonus is very definitely a product of its time, as the rampant paranoia of its theme reflects a common post-Nixon viewpoint of government and corporate endeavor. Unfortunately some of the tale comes off a little stiffly, and the inexperience of one-time feature film director Robert S. Fiveson makes a fair amount of the storytelling slightly stodgy. Subtlety is not exactly his strong point, either, as the messages involved are pretty well telegraphed and are unlikely to need much deciphering for the average viewer. Still, there’s also plenty here that’s worth watching — the production value is high for a shoot that only lasted 18 days, the filmmaker does prove to be meticulous in his use of detail and the project’s political angle is quite well taken even if its delivery is a mite too overt. This one also happily clocks in at a genre-perfect 90 minutes short, thereby keeping its dragginess to a minimum and wrapping things up in a time period that only allows for a modicum of boredom to creep in.
If you’ve heretofore grown accustomed to the standard excellent bonus material that accompanies nearly every Mondo Macabro release, the extras here will come as no letdown. There’s a pretty great half hour plus interview with filmmaker Fiveson, wherein he gives much biographical detail on his life as well as speaking specifically about the making of Clonus. The director proves to be both personable and insightful, and these qualities also surface in the high quality feature length commentary that he engages in with MM’s Pete Tombs. Also contained on this disk are the by now expected inclusions that come with every release from this company: the movie’s original trailer, a stills and promo materials gallery and a batch of previews that includes both older catalog stuff and a look at two very promising looking future DVD’s (Satanico Pandemonium and Panic Beats).
Though personally I wouldn’t rank this one near the top of my favorite items to have come to market from this valuable cult film outlet, Clonus does show off a forgotten piece of American sci-fi in fine fashion. It’s a period piece that truly could only have come out of the '70s, and the movie actually shows a fair amount of prescience in its treatment of the idea of cloning in general. While its sometimes heavy-handed narrative occasionally bogs down and founders on the shores of some tepid acting, the presence of a handful of film and television veterans bolsters the cast enough to paper over most of this dramatic inefficiency. But there’s enough entertainment value to Clonus that it’s another worthy addition to the Mondo Macabro product line, and it’s also nice to see the company expand its purview to include North America under its big crazy ass tent. Here’s hoping that there are even more releases of a domestic nature that follow in the months to come.
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