420-The Human Duplicators

Film Year:  1965
Genre:  Science Fiction
Director:  Hugo Grimaldi
Starring:  Richard Kiel, Hugh Beaumont, George Nader, Delores Faith, George Macready, Barbara Nichols, Richard Arlen
MST Season:  4

The Movie

Eegah star Richard Kiel, Lost Continent star Hugh Beaumont, and Robot Monster star George Nader unite in this story of an alien (played by Kiel) sent down to Earth with a scheme to replace humans with identical androids.  It's very much a Body Snatchers style story, but done with far less flair.  For the most part the movie is not unwatchable.  It's cheap, shoddy, and features very stiff acting, but there's a genuine attempt to make the film a thriller with intrigue, if nothing else

What can be frustrating about the film is that you can tell that the people making it at the very least are trying to do something interesting.  The storyline can be complex and there is an emphasis on suspense over action.  It's just not done very well.  Kiel has played aliens to great effect before (see the Twilight Zone episode To Serve Man for an example), but he seems a bit miscast here.  Maybe it's a good thing he's trying to beat the typecast by playing a more intelligent character with a lot of dialogue, but in many ways his role feels like it demands to be played by an actor with a less intimidating stature.  That said, Kiel does okay in the role, so I don't really desire to take it from him.

Most of where the seams show is the production, which isn't fairly strong.  I'll give them kudos for having ambition but there are moments in the film you can tell they just don't have the resources to pull off what they're trying to do.  There is an action scene late in the film in which an android's arm gets pulled off, but it's very clear that the actor has just shoved his arm inside the jacket with little to pull our attention away from his side-bulge.

That being said, shortcomings aside, I kinda dug the film.  It sometimes comes off as a cheap TV show episode that somehow wound up a movie, but I can't really name anything about it that I hated.  Just flaws that are visible to the eye, but for a certain type of viewer like myself they can be endearing.

The Episode

The challenge with The Human Duplicators is that the movie is very dialogue heavy, which can be cumbersome.  If Joel and the Bots are intimidated by that, they don't show it.  They quip away fairly steadily without signs of tiring.  The material and the movie don't quite mesh the way one would hope, but there is an effort here.  But my amusement hit a rocky road where I found some riffs to be cute and others to just get a "meh" reaction from me.  At other points I zoned away from the Mystery Science Theater presentation and started paying attention to the movie because I was finding it more interesting.  The theater segments are okay, but there are no home runs hit during this time at bat.

The host segments however are all pretty good, including a beginning to the run gag where there seems to be not one but many Tom Servos aboard the Satellite of Love.  Servo duplicates himself for the hell of it, hoping they might do his bidding.  The segment is fairly open ended, and the many Servos would make sporadic appearances right up until the final classic episode, Diabolik.  We also have a spaceship model contest and another visit from a very cranky Hugh Beaumont (played by Mike Nelson).  The Invention Exchange is a scream, as Joel fails to impress the Bots with his motorized propeller hat ("I just thought you'd go through the roof, is all.") and the Mads get a massive giggle fit with their extremely useless William Conrad Refrigerator Alarm.

"GET ME!  I'M WILLIAM CONRAD!"

The Human Duplicators is a watchable episode.  It has solid momentum, a non-painful movie, and has a decent amount of amusement.  There are no big laughs here though.  That might be a dealbreaker for some, but even if I don't think very highly of it it's one that I'm engaged in while watching.

Average

The DVD

The Human Duplicators duplicated itself onto disc format in Shout Factory's Volume XXXVII collection.  It currently has the honor of being the final Joel era episode released to home video, seing how it was the sole Joel episode on the set and the following volumes only contained Mike episodes.  Audio and video were both quality, while the only bonus features were wraps from the MST Hour.  This bonus feature is a bit soured since the wraps are incomplete, as the first segment of the second set is omitted entirely!  Oops.