Welcome to a new review here at B-Movie Enema.

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I proudly call myself a MSTie. One of the great things about MST3K is the fact that it often exposed people to movies or shorts that they wouldn’t have known anything about. Granted, there are some more popular movies they covered on the Satellite of Love like a Gamera movie or a couple Godzilla films and even a couple of the late-stage Universal Classics like Revenge of the Creature and The Mole People. I’m even sure that there are a couple of the shorts they covered that I watched in school in the late 80s and early 90s.

But the real treasures tended to be the movies that were obscure but maybe even had a long-running stint on late-night TV or cable. That’s where this week’s featured movie that I’ll be reviewing likely lived most of its existence. I’m going to be taking a look at 1979’s Parts: The Clonus Horror.

The first time I saw Parts was when it ran on MST3K during its later years. I likely saw it randomly on Sci-Fi Channel when they would run some earlier reruns in between seasons or just after the end of the series. I don’t know why, but it always stuck out to me. Maybe it was when I saw it in my early 20s or who I saw it with, likely my girlfriend at the time who was just the bestest. I don’t know, but it was a movie that dug in deeply into my memory. I bring that up because the fact that this random episode of MST3K is so specifically memorable it would come back to the forefront of my memory several years after its original airdate.

This film was directed and produced by Robert S. Fiveson. Fiveson doesn’t really have a huge career, but he wrote and produced a few episodes of In Search of… That was a series hosted by Leonard Nimoy and is the type of stuff you would find on The Travel Channel or The History Channel these days. They are episodes that seek out information, evidence, and whatnot about the strange and unusual or possibly even kind of spooky. Some episodes were more science or curiosity based while others were fantastical. You’d get episodes about ghosts or aliens or bigfoot. Then you’d have episodes like the five that Fiveson worked on – Hypnosis, Tornadoes, Daredevils, the Fountain of Youth, and Laugh Therapy. All the while, we’d have the guy who played Mr. Spock pondering these things to keep us interested. In Search of… ran for 144 episodes across six seasons and was popular in syndication as I remember the show being on during the afternoons in the early to mid-80s.

The real standouts of Parts, though, were the actors that were brought in to anchor this movie. At the top of the list is Peter Graves. Graves worked in monster movies early in his career but transitioned to being a major star of a major multi-season action series. He played Jim Phelps on Mission: Impossible. In fact, he was asked to return for the 1996 film, but he declined when he discovered that, spoiler alert, Phelps was going to ultimately be the bad guy of the movie. The part then went to Jon Voight and Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt would soon take the place of Phelps as the main star and lead for the subsequent sequels. After this film, Graves would show up in the Airplane films as Captain Clarence Oveur. Then, later yet, he’d appear in the very popular The Winds of War and War and Remembrance miniseries. To a certain group of people, he would be just as well known for being the longest-running host of Biography when it was produced by A&E. He would trade off with Jack Perkins, but for 12 years, he was the most associated host for the series.

Co-starring in the film are also some recognizable faces. Tim Donnelly is, ostensibly, our lead, Richard. Donnelly is best known for his role on Emergency! as Chet. He appeared in 122 of the 131 episodes of the series. We have seen him in 1978’s The Toolbox Murders alongside Cameron Mitchell. As Dr. Jameson, we have Dick Sargent. Sargent was best known for replacing an ailing Dick York as Darrin on Bewitched. Sargent spent the final years of his life out of the closet and was a supporter of gay rights issues. He had lived with partners for over 30 years. One passed away in the late 70s and the other he lived with until he passed away from prostate cancer. Finally, you have Keenan Wynn. Wynn had nearly 300 credits on his filmography. By this period in his career, he was appearing in all sorts of interesting and kind of grizzled roles. He played a brain-addled Colonel in Laserblast, which was also quite memorably covered on MST3K. He appeared in Orca, Piranha, and The Dark. To many of a certain age, though, he would be recognized, yet uncredited, as Chester Copperpot in The Goonies.

Before we get into the movie, though, I want to go back to that story I have about how this movie became surprisingly memorable to me despite not really having any right to be. I worked at a movie theater from the late spring of 2000 until Thanksgiving of 2005. I was a projectionist when the Michael Bay-directed summer blockbuster The Island was released starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson. I remember looking in on the movie through that little window and turning up the sound in the booth and listening to the plot and dialog play out from that little window onto the screen and auditorium. Something about it felt super, and instantly, familiar. That’s when, suddenly, memories of that oddball little movie about clones that I saw that one time on MST3K struck me like a baseball bat to the back of the head. “Parts! The Clonus Horror!” I said, out loud, to myself.

Yeah, somehow, this random episode of MST3K, something I had only limited access to episodes of at that time, was at the forefront of my memory as if I had just seen the episode the weekend before. Apparently, I was not the only person who thought that way. Yeah, it didn’t take long before the makers of Parts filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Dreamworks and the makers of The Island. Dreamworks tried to get the case dismissed but a judge heard the case and about a year later, Dreamworks settled for an undisclosed (but likely hefty) amount.

However, the story of similarities between The Island and other similar stories doesn’t end there. You see, there was a 1996 novel called Spares that was also optioned by the studio, but NOT the source of The Island, or at least no one copped to it being so. There seemed to be an awful lot of similarities between Spares and The Island, but the writer of that novel, Michael Marshall Smith, opted to not pursue legal action. Honestly, it might have been advised against because that might have got the attention of the makers of Parts and they might have also gone after Marshall Smith. But don’t take that as gospel. The key fact of the story that I’m telling is that The Island seemed to be far more inspired by pre-existing things than it credits.

The movie begins in a high-tech room with things that go blip and bleep and with squiggly lines on monitors. It also has a couple dead bodies just hanging there. The images of the dead frozen bodies in bags and a monitor looking at a compound are intercut with a political rally going on in California. We meet Peter Graves playing presidential candidate Jeff Knight. He’s got a lot of raucous fans in the crowd cheering him on as he talks about going all the way to the White House in these last two weeks of this campaign.

Speaking of that compound, one of the monitors in that room with all the bleeps and blips and squiggly lines also looks at a lot of buildings to prove that is more than just a single building comprising of this compound. It’s an entire campus. There are lots of young people who jog and study. They all wear their Adidas workout gear as they interact. They are constantly monitored by security people. A pair of security people are apparently telling each other jokes. They laugh about something… Maybe they have a new take on “The Aristocrats” joke. Anyway, a girl looks up at them kind of puzzled, and asks, “Am I supposed to laugh too?” She’s maybe even more confused when one of the guards says that nah, it was just a joke.

The guards also come to a group of young people on bikes who are about to go for a ride. They talk about bets they won or lost based on various things and another girl asks what a bet is. After telling them to get a move on, the guards chuckle over her question and her ignorance about what a bet is. The guards are constantly monitoring these subjects. They gauge what the people’s health statuses are, what their interests are, how things play out with various activities, and more. After watching a couple guys wrestle, it’s decided that one, George, has qualified to leave for America.

Richard celebrates his friend George getting his chance to go to America. It’s a big deal. To the people on this campus, the entire goal is to be good enough to go to this wonderful place called America. There isn’t much to the life of the people at this compound/campus. Like I said, it’s all about qualifying for this opportunity. But everyone here has a very stunted perception of the world. They speak almost like children. They grapple with complex human emotions and concepts.

For example, George has a girlfriend. They obviously like each other because they sneak off before he is collected to leave for America to make out. However, instead of understanding that she loves or even likes him, his girlfriend can only tell him how she’s grown accustomed to him touching her. Without an understanding of how a larger world works, there’s no sadness that this might be the last time they see each other as it could be impossible to know how to find each other. They just think going to America will be similar to the life they have on this campus. There’s only hope that they will fulfill their purposes and qualify for America. If they do, and they should because we’re told America is where good friends are together, then it will all work out and there will be no more worries once they get to America.

It’s an interesting concept because this campus is a world of idiots. We’ll find out a lot more as to why all they do is have extremely basic schooling and a near toddler-like understanding of the world around them. The premise is a good one for this movie. You almost kind of feel sorry for the people who are at the Clonus compound.

George is taken to see Dr. Jameson (Dick Sargent) who will prepare him for his journey to America. They give him a cup of something that looks like orange juice. Jameson tells him to count backward from 100. Obviously, that orange juice was drugged. He passes out and the doctors prepare George for a process called “standard transference”. They shoot him up with some stuff in needles, give him an I.V., and put a tag on his forehead. They drain him of blood and fill him with green goo. Then they bag him and freeze him to transport him to America. Before he freezes, George, despite being pumped full of green goo, suddenly wakes up and screams in horror.

Richard meets the girl who didn’t know what a bet was. Her name is Lena. Lena notices that they both have silver tags on their ears. Every person here has a tag on their ear like you would tag wildlife. Silver tags are apparently for control clones. Control clones are to never meet one another. In this case, Lena accidentally hit a large rock with her bike and fell down a ravine where Richard was reading a book by a creek. Typically, if control clones meet, they are separated immediately and often go through some sort of deprogramming so they forget they met. In this instance, Jameson decides to not go the normal route. He wants to see what these two clones will do with the information that they have similar tags that they’ve never seen on anyone else at Clonus.

Richard, it turns out, is not as naive or as stupid as it would seem. He has begun to notice some things. For one, the security guards and handlers are always talking about things that the clones are not to pay any attention to. One day, he saw a guard driving toward him in a cart but then went out of his way to drive as far around him as possible as if to hide what he had on the cart. Richard asks some of the other clones if they find that weird too. The other clones don’t ask questions and won’t entertain his curiosity.

Because of his more rebellious nature and his high curiosity, he spends a lot more time alone. He spends this time reading and pondering. It’s likely he goes places he isn’t supposed to go on the campus. That might explain why he was able to meet Lena when it would seem that these control clones should always be kept as far away from each other as possible. His curiosity is only heightened by the discovery of something shimmering in the creekbed. He investigates and discovers an Old Milwaukee beer can.

Now… Guys. I have to wonder. Was it specifically written in the script that it as going to be an Old Milwaukee beer can that he finds in the creek? I want to get my hands on a copy of the Parts screenplay to find out. My guess is that it just said it was a can that was found in the water. But then, how did they decide to make it an Old Milwaukee can? Was it just something they had on hand from the prop department? Was it something they kind of forgot about until that day of shooting and they had to get one of the teamsters to get into his cooler, pull out a refreshingly ice-cold Old Milwaukee, pound that motherfucker, and then give the production the can?

It’s the last one. I am betting on that teamster being the source of the Old Milwaukee can.

Richard takes the can to Dr. Jameson. Richard says he thinks it was something from America. Jameson looks at it and says that this item came from the river. He says he will keep it. Richard doesn’t like the idea of someone bogarting his Old Milwaukee and says it’s his. Jameson says it belongs to everyone. He then asks a guard to find out how that got into the river and how it was missed by someone on the cleanup crew. Richard asks a telephone booth, also known as the confessional, what the words meant and if what Jameson said was true about its origin. The confessional tells him to basically stop asking questions… in so many words.

Richard drops a message into Lena’s bike basket to meet him that night. We find out that Lena is a little different from Richard. For one, she has a job. She works in the orange grove. We also learn that she writes. Richard is a little surprised to hear this. She even says where they are meeting used to be her favorite place to write. She has a greater understanding of things than Richard too.

She talks about having once had a boyfriend. She even says they were in love with each other. When he was chosen to go to America, they asked if the guy could stay instead. They said no. Lena asked if she could go with him. They said no. Eventually, she said, they said the guy didn’t have to go at all. However, he disappeared shortly after and no one knows what happened to him.

After they contemplate the common refrain at Clonus of “what must be, must be” and how they get frustrated about how it’s expected of them to believe that and not to ask questions. Lena tells Richard she likes him a whole lot. I guess so because they fuuuuuck. While they do so, they are watched by Jameson.

He explains to a senator how the common clones are basically made with a virus that slows their cognitive reasoning and reactions. However, the control clones are not given the virus. They are basically normal people. Granted they don’t have normal education, but they are naturally curious. They react to their emotions more normally and they are usually kept separated as much as possible because their heightened intelligence and curiosity can potentially cause headaches for the officials at Clonus. However, Jameson says that Richard and Lena were allowed to interact. That’s because Richard is scheduled to go to America in two weeks.

The next morning, Richard tells Lena about the Old Milwaukee can he found. He tells her that the confessional told him some bunk about it being a plant from the river. Lena says that she once saw one of the older members of the campus on a cart and he was lying very still. When she asked about it they just told her that person was sleeping because sleep was important. She knows better though. Richard says something is going on and he wants to find out what. She’s scared, but he tells her they have to figure out the answers to their questions.

Later, while doing a sprint during a workout, he decided to slow down at the end of the race. One of the guards asks him if he’s got something wrong. He says no. He just felt like slowing down. The guard says in a race, he has to go as fast as possible to win. He says he didn’t feel like winning. The guard says he has to report this behavior. He asks who he has to report it to, but that only gets the standard reply of it being reported. That night, Richard seemingly fakes a panic attack. He’s told by Jameson that he’s leaving for America in two days.

The next day, Richard meets with Lena to tell her they are being watched. He tells her about pretending to be sick in his room with no one around and people came right away to collect him and take him to the clinic. He tells her that he’s planning on trying to sneak into the building on the hill that people are taken when they qualify for America. He plans to go to America and get the answers he’s looking for about everything and then come back to get her.

That night, they check in on Richard while he sleeps, but he fakes sleeping and sneaks out. He gets to the America building and slips in as someone is coming out. Inside, he goes through some files in an office, but the most interesting thing is he finds a map of the United States. Of course, on that map, he sees the word Milwaukee. He also finds a map of security checkpoints. He also sees the file about Richard Knight, the man he was cloned from in 1948. He watches a video about the Clonus process. This video talks about how cloning works and how Clonus was set up. Not only that, he learns about the lobotomy processes that suppress free will and make the clones docile. Soon, Richard’s shenanigans are discovered. Guards know Richard is gone and he took the all-important tape explaining everything they do.

Richard is pretty clever in finding places to hide from security. However, he discovers the room where all the bodies are kept. This also means he finds his friend, George. He’s nearly captured by a guard but he punches the guy out. He uses the security map to find a tunnel that takes him outside. As he runs away, a guard wings him a couple times but he doesn’t stop. He eventually gets over the fence and out into the real world. He climbs to the top of a cliff and looks out over a town. Back at Clonus, a couple guards take Lena from her bed. More on Lena’s fate momentarily.

Walking around Los Angeles, it’s not long before a Clonus agent on the outside is called to chase after Richard. The agent nearly shoots Richard, but he’s able to steal a kid’s bike and get away. No kidding, he steals a little kid’s bike to make his escape and that’s pretty hilarious. He runs into a pile of garbage and crashes. Richard is completely spent as an old man comes out of his house and offers to help.

The old man’s wife tends to Richard’s wounds while he babbles on about “they are after me!” The old man is Jake Noble (Keenan Wynn). Richard asks for help to find his other part. When asked what he means by that, he pulls out the file about Richard Knight. He says he was cloned from him. Jake is a reporter so he has some investigative skills. Jake agrees to take Richard to Knight.

Meanwhile, back at Clonus, Lena is interrogated by the doctors about Richard. They tell her they think he’s gone to America, and it would be too early for him to do so. You see, if you’re not fully prepared to go to America, you could get hurt. They try to convince her to tell them what happened to Richard by saying that if she tells them what she knows, it will help him and prevent him from getting hurt.

Jake arrives at Richard Knight’s home. He tells Richard Knight and his son Rick that he brought him his “other” son. When Richard is brought in, Richard Knight thinks this is some sort of joke. Richard says he’s the elder man’s clone. Richard shows the trio of guys the video about Clonus. To convince himself, Richard Knight shows his birthmark on his torso. Richard, the clone, also has the same birthmark.

Richard Knight decides to call his brother Jeff to find out what’s going on and what the hell this Clonus is. Rick tries to comfort Richard the clone. Richard says he’s sad because he’s so alone in this world that isn’t his. At Clonus, Jameson and his assistant start roughing up Lena to get information about Richard from her. They pull out a machine to help “jog her memory” which she seems rather scared about.

The Knight brothers meet. Jeff asks Richard where the clone is. Richard says he’s at his place. Jeff then asks about where the tape is. Richard says he didn’t say anything about the tape, so, obviously, Jeff knows about Clonus and that one of the clones has escaped. Jeff cops to the fact that the project is a real thing and it is not something that Richard was supposed to know about. Jeff says Clonus is about organ transplant. Richard is pissed at the thought that these clones are not about everyone having opportunities for access to the transplants – it’s only for those the government deems worthy. On top of that, Richard is trying to impress upon Jeff that the clones are lacking human rights and what goes on there only leads to their deaths. The clones have no say in that.

Jeff says clones are not people, they’re things.

Jeff says he had to pull a lot of strings to get Richard cloned. The cell to make the clone came from a 30-year-old physical he had. Jeff said that the heart surgery he had a couple years ago came from a clone from Clonus. It’s just like his old heart just younger and stronger. He’s got a second clone that is currently a baby. He tells Richard that he did all this so they can remain brothers for a long time. Richard just doesn’t know what to think about all this information. Jeff says that Richard needs to keep all this information quiet because even a presidential candidate is expendable.

Richard Knight returns home while Richard is asleep. He kind of poorly tells Rick that Jeff’s going to look into it. Rick wants to directly help Richard the clone because he misses his girlfriend. Rick says that the clone is just like they are. Richard Knight says that he’s nothing like them and that he’s a freak of nature. Rick isn’t buying any of this. He thinks Jeff knows about Clonus and all this stinks.

Eventually, Richard Knight tells the truth. Rick doesn’t like any of this. He figures out that Clonus is an organ farm. Richard Knight says Richard the clone is not a human. It seems as though the idealistic Richard Knight has come around to the way of thinking that Jeff had. Rick says he’s going to take Richard the clone back to Clonus while Richard Knight calls the newspaper to report what Clonus is.

On the orders of the head honcho of Clonus, George Walker, Jameson’s assistant, Nelson, follows Rick and Richard. Walker says he’ll take care of Richard Knight. He calls in a favor from Jeff. Rick drops Richard off near where he originally escaped the Clonus campus. That night, Jeff arrives at his brother’s house to talk. When Richard doesn’t give him the information he wants, Jeff orders Richard to be given truth serum. Just then, Rick comes home. Rick gets roughed up by Jeff’s goons. This leads Richard and Jeff to fight while Rick is drowned. The struggle ends with Jeff being run through with a poker. The goons toss Richard into the pool and tosses a radio into the pool to electrocute him.

George Walker says that what happened is acceptable. They also know that Jake Noble has the tape. So, to make sure the tape doesn’t get into the hands of the press and public, well, they come up with an explosive plan. They kill the Nobles by having their house explode.

And, yes, I laughed very hard when their house suddenly exploded.

Anyway, that night, Richard returns to Clonus to find Lena. As he runs across the campus, he’s being watched by guards. He looks into a window and sees Lena looking out, seemingly smiling at the return of her boyfriend. When he gets inside the dorm, he is jumped by guards. Lena turns around and reveals she’s been lobotomized.

He laments the fate of Lena. Jameson appears and welcomes Richard home. He asks if he enjoyed his time in America.

Meanwhile, at a press conference, George Walker, someone who wears an eyepatch and doesn’t at all look villainous, introduces Jeff Knight, the next President of the United States, to answer some questions. As he answers a question about human rights, we see some of the dead, frozen clones on the hook at Clonus. We see Richard’s friend, George, who was George Walker’s clone, missing an eye. We then see that’s why the evil Clonus man is wearing an evil-looking eyepatch. We hear a heart beating during the press conference. That heartbeat becomes strained when another member of the press enters and asks a question about Clonus. That’s when we see Richard’s clone hanging in one of the frozen body bags with an incision on his chest indicating that’s where Jeff’s new heart that was stabbed by his brother came from.

I have to say I do like this movie. It’s not without its problems, which I will talk about in just a moment, but I like what is good in this movie. I think there is enough sci-fi stuff in this movie to consider it to be, at the very least, a decent attempt at trying something different. There’s the concept of human rights told not from a perspective of different races or genders or what have you, but from people who are EXACTLY like other people being considered inhuman or not fully human just because they can’t exist without a template to copy.

That does bring up a good question about what to consider a clone of anything. If we were to talk about human clones, and they are perfect human clones at that, you do have a situation where you almost fall into a recursive line of questions to try to answer. Clearly, a clone can’t exist without the original to be cloned from. However, once a clone is created, conceivably, you can clone another clone from that clone. If it’s a perfect clone, you don’t run into a Multiplicity situation. However, it does beg the question of the rights and humanity of that clone. It’s not the original, but it’s a perfect copy. That should mean that it is, on a molecular level, a human. It should have the same rights as the original. Of course, there is the consideration of having two exact people who share at least looks if not full identity. What does that mean in terms of society?

There was a movie a couple years ago called Dual. I very much liked the movie. It’s about a world where you can have yourself cloned if you are going to die as part of a terminal diagnosis. That way, a version of you will continue on to take your place in life to spare your loved ones the pain of losing you. However, if you don’t end up dying, and the terminal diagnosis turns out to not be terminal after all, you cannot exist in the world alongside your clone. The clone, who already has started to live your life, has earned its right to continue in your life. The only way to resolve this is a fight to the death. Sometimes the original wins. Sometimes the clone wins.

Obviously, that has a whole different way of thinking than Parts does in terms of plot. But this movie does think about the basics well enough. Obviously, it’s not a good thing to grow whole other humans only to keep them around for their spare parts. Richard Knight is right when he says that you are growing whole ass humans only for them to do nothing but be killed. It’s murder. Worse, this is something for only the elite. This is a world that would ultimately decide that it is for the betterment of humanity that Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and, I dunno… probably fuckin’ Tucker Carlson should live longer than a woman who might die in childbirth in Texas because she had to carry a catastrophic pregnancy full term. That’s a world that would be pretty fuckin’ bad to exist in. It’s dystopian without necessarily having a post-apocalyptic wasteland and an Immortan Joe around hogging the petrol and water.

Okay, I’ll get off my bullshit now.

The movie’s primary fault is its structure. It’s about 90 minutes on the nose and Clone Richard doesn’t arrive in real America until 60 or so minutes in. So that first two-thirds is entirely spent in Clonus. If the movie was maybe 15 minutes longer, you could have put that in the real-world element and discussed more of the implications of cloning people for the expressed intent of harvesting their organs and sending them to their deaths. That creates a slightly lopsided movie. Having everything take place within Clonus would have been one way to fix that by having the clues reveal themselves to Richard and Lena through their clever natures instead of having one escape and torturing the other.

Either which way, for a movie on a bit of a budget, I think Parts is just fine.

Next week, we got a wild one from the late 80s from a guy who is one of the biggest movers and shakers in Hollywood history. Join me as I take a look at the Muppets-on-crack black comedy Meet The Feebles. I’ll also discuss a little bit about the guy whose crazy brain this came from, Peter Jackson. Be here for that in seven days, and, in the meantime, I’m going to check in with the closet full of clones that I keep on hand for each and every heart attack I suffer from pounding Double Quarter Pounders from McDonalds.