User Reviews

It's also not one of the best acted films, but the acting is enthusiastic. Every level of campiness, eccentrism, pomposity and emotional excess is used, as well as the absence of any emotion as well. The film starts with an emotionless yet domineering Richard Kiel making his way into the laboratory of pompous scientist George Macready to manipulate him into the creation of androids. George Nader, Hugh Beaumont and Dolores Faith are the seemingly normal ones, and Barbara Nichols as Nader's girlfriend the most abnormal, a constantly chatty assistant whose intelligence remains in question and also just how she got her position and attracted Nader.

That being said, she's also the funniest, so over the top and brassy that you wonder how often she's polished. But that doesn't mean that she's right for the film, and the laughs she gets are definitely at her expense. Faith speaks, but she's so monotone and one dimensional, thus barely present. The scenes between Kiel and Macready are genuinely funny because both are extremely serious. Sets are colorful but fake looking, and the film looks rather cheap as a result. But the discussion of androids being necessary to create a master race is disturbing and timely, and even a bit before its time. Too bad that the script really stinks.

"Human Duplicators" has an imaginative premise, and some ideas that are ahead of their time (cyborgs / androids), but they receive a low-budget, earthbound treatment. The story is presented as a mystery for a while, even though a look at the title tells you what's going on, and Richard Kiel's line delivery explains why he only had one line to deliver in his two James Bond films (it's better when his towering frame does the talking for him). Still, this is by no means a 2.7/10 movie as it is currently rated on IMDb - it's more like a 5/10.

A tall alien comes to earth to prepare the planet for invasion by creating human duplicates (androids actually) of key scientific people. And a secret agent. The agent Glenn Martin is played by George Nader and he is rather boring. At one point his girlfriend Gale says to him, "Sometimes I wonder what I see in you" to which sentiment this viewer heartily concurred. The alien Kolos is played by Richard Kiel and I rather liked him. He has a kind of interesting presence. George Macready as Prof. Vaughn Dornheimer (and his duplicate) is watchable as definitely is the wispy Dolores Faith as his blind daughter Lisa, drifting about the mansion (which has the obligatory dungeon) in vividly coloured clothes. It's not a great film by any means but there is an indefinable charm about it.

When a film's best special effect is the casting of a 7 foot tall giant (with a thick, inexpressive voice) as the main villain, the film is in trouble. And when the film's best actor is Hugh Beaumont, and it wastes him in a small supporting role, it has no choice but a destiny for eternal "B" movie status.

Still "Human Duplicators" isn't really a "bad" movie. It's just kind of under-powered and under-budgeted. And compared to toxic wastes of film like "Pod People", "Beast Of Yucca Flats" or "Cave Dwellers", "Human Duplicators" is like spending an afternoon at the Louvre. It's typical of many of the movies that "Mystery Science Theater 3000" riffed on in Season 5 and 6 - mediocre, cheesy, 2nd rate, but presentable and at least mildly entertaining.

Give the film creators credit for trying to put a novel spin on the old "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers"/"Colossus" themes by incorporating Cold War paranoia with the concept of a 'fifth column' of android impersonators. They took Kiel's stiff, inexpressive persona and tried to work with it by framing him as an cold, impassive alien and having all the actors playing the "android replacements" act the same way. (It's high school level theater technique of course, but at least it's a deliberate choice). They set most of the proceedings in and on the grounds of an elaborate old mansion (complete with secret passage and a dungeon) and loaded the sets with all the elaborate bric-a-brac, flocked wallpaper and ornate furniture they could stuff in it to keep the settings visually interesting. They tried to work in some 007 style suaveness and romance with a smug,smarmy hero (who actually seems to have some brains) and his Girl Friday type. There's even a fairly hot "blind" brunette running around the mansion and she's pleasant to look at (once you get past her clown outfits).

The trouble is, of course, that none of this is enough. You can't pull off romantic scenes and witty war-between-the-sexes by-play when the Girl Friday has a nasal Jersey voice that hits the viewer like nails on a chalkboard. Kiel tries hard, but he doesn't have any charisma to back up his startling size and his lines sound like they've been wrung out of a wash cloth. The way the scenes are shot inside the mansion are dull and interesting - as Joel remarks in the MST coverage, "it's like a slow motion British bedroom farce" only without the humor, or the sex, or the comic timing. Most of the special effects are silly and unconvincing , especially in the "climactic" battle at the end of the movie where Kiel does battle with a bunch of android duplicates while the hero shines a "pulse lah-zer" on them to screw up their mechanical brains. The deus-ex-machina, er, sorry, "pulse lah-zer" looks like a Klieg light on wheels...you can tell that they just didn't have room in the budget or time in the schedule to make something credible looking or stage its use in a compelling way.

Still, it's more professional looking and less cheesy than anything from the Corman factory or from Ed Wood, Larry Buchanan or Herschel Gordon Lewis. You could put this on during a 'science fiction' themed evening of movie watching and get a nostalgic chuckle out of it before you went on to the "hard stuff" with Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney. In spite of my complaints, no one involved with "Human Duplicators" has anything to be overly ashamed of. (As far as I know!)

4 stars out of 10

Even though The Human Duplicators isn't a very good movie (it registers far too high on the boredom scale) there's something oddly entertaining about the whole thing that keep me from rating it a bomb as so many others. It's a crazy mix of 60s sci-fi and spy movies. The plot involves an alien named Kolos (Richard Kiel) who comes to earth to prepare the planet for a takeover. His plan involves kidnapping the Earth's most learned scientists and replacing them with duplicates under his control. Agent Glenn Martin (George Nader) is sent in to investigate the disappearance of the scientists and get to the bottom of things. Complicating matters is a blind girl (Dolores Faith) who Kolos finds himself strangely attracted to.

Like I said, The Human Duplicators is not a good movie. It's actually quite bad. In all reality, the 2.3 IMDb rating is probably much more accurate than the 4/10 I've rated it. But I was entertained despite the movie's many problems. It might have been a case of "so bad it's good" (God, do I hate that expression). A secret agent with a blond floozy of an assistant, a giant alien in love with a petite blind girl, human replicants that shatter like terra cotta, a Medieval looking dungeon in Southern California, a roadside motel that doubles for a secret military establishment – it's all so bizarre!

Man, the Woolner Brothers put out some wild movies.

Directed by Hugo Grimaldi - and writer Arthur C. Pierce - this has the Intergalactic Council send Dr. Kolos (Richard Kiel) on a mission for their galaxy domination program to replace humans with androids just like him. If his mission happens, the world will be taken over. If not, he dies.

He quickly enslaves Prof. Vaughan Dornheimer (George Macready) and starts making the androids and takes over the top scientists of the world - like Dr. Munson (Walter Abel) - and uses them to steal the things they need to keep making more copies of humans.

The professor's daughter Lisa (Dolores Faith) and Glenn Martin (George Nader) are on the case, but soon, Glenn is duplicated. His girlfriend Gale Wilson (Barbara Nichols) figures it out and the cops open fire on the fake Glenn, who rips his arm off to escape. As for the real Glenn, he's found the professor just as the android professor takes over, ties up Dr. Kolos and uses several copies of the evil Thor (John Indrisano) to steal Lisa and start making a duplicate of her.

She's saved at the last minute by Dr. Kolos, who has a change of heart, knowing that he is an android and will soon die. However, he was able to see the human race and the beauty of mankind.

Filmed at the same time as the movie it played double features with - Mutiny In Space - this was re-released on VHS as Jaws of the Alien after Kiel became a star for playing the James Bond henchman.

Richard Kiel, best known as iron-toothed tall 'jaws' from James Bond 007, has a star turn as Dr. Kolos, an alien sent to earth to replace human beings with robots, the first targets scientists and military leaders that will be used to commit sabotage for the aliens to take control of the planet. It's fun to watch a transporter at work five years before Star Trek was ever filmed and to see Kiel romance his weakness (Dolores Faith) who persuades him to abandon his mission. George Nader (Not Ralph, like one reviewer said) plays the top agent assigned to investigate Kolo's diabolical scheme. Hugh Beaumont plays his boss in a rather humorous Leave it to Beaver style, and a character actress plays his whiny blonde gal friend, the voice familiar in dozens of films. But they don't subtract from the excitement generated by Kiel at the scientist's mansion.

I watched this film on the Mystery Science Theater 3000 format. It was quite funny. Well this is the plot. An emotionless alien comes down to Earth to do...I really don't know. It doesn't explain. Any way it is in a human robotic Terminator like form. Well it can make other forms of other people and when ever you shoot them they shatter like clay. Well there's this cop guy who investigates the whole thing while meeting with this professor and his blind daughter. While that is going on we see that the professor has been kidnapped, in his own home apparently and there is a clay terminator copy of him who is now running the show. Well there is eventually a giant fight to the death like there is in every other movie of this genre, and humanity wins. Well I haven't really been all that specific on this movie because there's nothing to be specific about. Well that and I saw it MST3K style. You don't get the plot of the original film on MST3K. You get humor. Therefore I suggest that you only watch the MST3K of this film. But if you are really curious than watch the original footage.

Man, Richard Kiel sure did have a couple of stinkers under his belt before becoming Jaws in the James Bond films. Eegah, Phantom Planet, and this one are some pretty good examples. In this film, Kiel actually speaks, and he sounds like a drunken and drugged up Kermit the Frog. Anyway, this film is about an alien (Kiel) who comes to Earth and tries to replace people with robotic duplicates so he can take over. The duplicates themselves seem real until pushed or hit hard, then they turn into terra cotta for some unknown reason. Silly plotline and some pretty bad acting shoot this one down. In the scene where Kiel frees himself from the wall, look in the upper right corner of the screen, under the arches. You'll see a cameraman and camera come into view briefly.

*Spoiler/plot- The Human Duplicators, 1965. An all-knowing outer space alien is dispatched from another galaxy to take over the Earth by "duplicating" humans. He wants to create a race of zombie people that really resemble animated pottery. The new formative "duplicates" are cooked up in the lab in individual coffins and things that look like Star Trek transporter pads. The alien master's heart is softened by the persevering kindness of a beautiful blind woman he meets. This deeply conflicts with his motives as the film plods to its "climactic" confrontation between the humans and their counterfeit duplicates.

*Special Stars- Richard Kiel, Barbara Nichols, George Macready, Hugh Beaumnont.

*Theme- Replacing the human race is impossible.

*Trivia/location/goofs- Color. Film was shot in 14 days. Final film of Hugh Beaumont.

*Emotion- A fun film to watch for it's cheesiness. Enjoy the opening and closing shots of the alien spacecraft resembling a Christmas tree ornament traveling through space. All of the faces of the "duplicated" humans shatter like 'a cheap vase when thrown to the floor'. The semi-robotic plot makes this film worth your time, if you like robots.

*Based on- Outer space alien landing on Earth fears.