The Clonus Horror wasn't as pretty in cinematography, and had some ham fisted acting and a terrible budget, but the issues were exactly the same. and since even the book this movie is based on was written well after 1979 I got to think it was heavily influenced by Clonus.
sharescasigfrd1018^
**Some Mini-Spoilers Ahead**
I was thinking of 'Parts-The Clonus Horror', too, when I watched this film!
Did you pick up on when a character in 'Never Let Me Go' says something about 'going to America'?
That is a chilling statement (literally LOL) when remembering what it meant in 'Clonus', and inserting it into this film felt like it might have been a 'wink wink' from the moviemaker.
And, as similar as some important aspects in NLMG are to those in 'Clonus', there were also some major differences:
In 'Clonus', at least concerns about 'escape' were explored.
Most of the clones in 'Clonus' were not the brightest, cognitively speaking.
And, the cloning/parting out of people in ‘Clonus’ was a well-guarded secret , while in NLMG it seemed to be a societally-approved response to disease and aging.
In any event, it is good to see a posting from another person who has actually seen 'Clonus'. After many years of searching, I finally found a DVD of it -- a guilty pleasure of a movie that, although it wasn't big budget, I remember how scary it was the first time I watched it when I was a kid.
Cheers!
"I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than..a rude remark or a vulgar action" Blanche DuBois
At the moment I'm reading a book by Robert Silverberg called Shadrach In the Furnace. It was first published in 1976 (and set in the year 2012 ). The story has nothing to do with cloning, it concerns a world dictator who prolongs his life with organs harvested from unwilling donors. The donors are kept in "organ farms", which the protagonist describes:
Long quiet room, like a hospital ward, but very quiet. Except for the burble of the life-support machinery. Double row of open tanks, wide aisle between them. One body in each tank, floating in warm blue-green fluid, a nutrient bath. Intravenous tubes all over the floor, like pink spaghetti. Dialysis machines between each pair of tanks. Before they put a body in its tank, they kill the brain - spike through the foramen magnum, zap - but the rest stays alive ... Vegetable in animal form. God knows what it perceives, but it lives, it needs to be fed, it digests and excretes, the hair grows, the fingernails, the nurses shave and groom the bodies every few weeks, and there they lie, arranged neatly by blood type and tissue type, available, gradually being stripped of limbs and organs, a kidney this week, a lung the next, sliced down to torsos in easy stages, the eyes, the fingers, the genitalia, eventually the heart, the liver-It's a bit more horrific than how the clones in Never Let Me Go are treated. But when it comes to ideas, there really is nothing new under the sun. Or as the late Malcolm McLaren put it - "Originality is the art of concealing your sources." share
greg-233^
That was one horrific passage!
Shiver....
"I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than..a rude remark or a vulgar action" Blanche DuBois
"That was one horrific passage!"
Maybe it's what happens in the "battery farms" Tommy mentioned after Hailsham closed?
greg-233^
Ruth's fear about being kept alive after having formally 'completed' and until they 'switch you off', and Tommy's remark about 'battery farms' I found both chilling indeed.
"I'm here because I believe in a free Narnia."
I remember 'The Clonus Horror' vividly. It was not a very good movie, but sickening enough.
Why anyone would go near an A-list movie on the same theme is beyond me. An absolutely absurd premise, in terms of contemporary morality (there is no faction of either Right or Left that would support such a scheme), and quite nauseating.