6 “Original” Films You Didn’t Realise Were Actually Remakes

3. The Island

Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.

Here€™s a neat idea: in a desert facility, clones are grown as an €œinsurance policy€ for rich assholes who want to cheat death. Bearing a $5 million price tag, your clone can provide you with a carrier for your baby, fresh skin or a new set of organs, all genetically indistinguishable from your own.

Unfortunately, The Island€™s premise was so similar to Parts: The Clonus Horror (1978) that its creators filed a lawsuit, citing more than 90 points in common. Both pictures feature a character who starts questioning his surroundings and, after the discovery of an object from the outside world, decides to escape. The same character also witnesses a clone being given a lethal injection and after going on the run decides to visit the man he was cloned from.

Scratch the similarities and all that remains is an overblown action movie where the dialogue consists of cries of €œRUN!€ and €œJUMP!€ Every once in a while, the film stops dead so that former Commercial Director Of The Year Michael Bay can shoehorn in a product placement for Xbox or Calvin Klein.

Dreamworks subsequently settled the case out of court.

Contributor

Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'