10 Obscure Films You Must See

6. The Clonus Horror (dir. Robert S. Fiveson, 1979)

Remember Michael Bay€™s The Island? The film which made headlines for its obnoxious levels of product placement? Well this is the film that it was blatantly ripping off, so much so that the director Robert S. Fiveson sued Bay back in August 2005. Also known as Parts, the film takes place in the not-too-distant future, where a group of people live in a compound where they train to €œgo to America€. In reality, they€™re clones who are being harvested to allow world leaders to replenish their organs and live forever.

While Michael Bay has a reputation for style over substance (if what he does could be called €˜style€™), The Clonus Horror is the epitome of substance over style. It€™s not a brilliantly directed film, with plot contrivances, cheap aesthetics and some rather dodgy camerawork. But it€™s worth seeing for the ideas that it raises about cloning and political conspiracies, as well as an unusually creepy performance by Peter Graves, a.k.a. the original Jim Phelps in the Mission: Impossible TV series, or Captain Oveur in Airplane!. Three Men on a Blog review - The Movie Hour podcast: #21