There are bad science fiction movies. Then there are bad science fiction movies starring Rock Hudson as a geneticist who decides the best way to deal with loneliness is to literally cook up a girlfriend in his basement lab. This is Embryo (1976), a film that desperately wants to be profound but instead plays like a PSA against letting soap opera writers near a Petri dish.
The premise alone feels like it was pitched in a hospital cafeteria at 3 a.m.: Dr. Paul Holliston (Rock Hudson, whose screen presence here suggests a man who accidentally walked into the wrong soundstage and decided to ride it out) discovers a way to accelerate human growth. Instead of using this for, say, curing cancer, fixing the food crisis, or inventing a better hangover cure, he grows himself a woman. Because apparently if you’re a lonely widowed scientist with access to questionable lab equipment, the most ethical use of your time is bioengineering a date.
But his date is the sexy Victoria Spencer (Barbara Carrera). She grows from a fetus to a full-grown Victoria Secrets model in a matter of weeks. Forget emotional development, early childhood bonding, or potty training—Carrera emerges from the lab perfectly coiffed, articulate, and ready to star in a James Bond film. She’s “alive,” sure, but about as believable as a department store mannequin with a vocabulary chip.
Hudson plays this whole thing straight. Watching him romance a lab-grown woman is like watching your old English teacher read bad poetry. It’s earnest, but you can’t shake the feeling you should call someone to put him out of his misery. The movie leans on Hudson’s leading-man charm, but by the late ’70s he was already phoning in performances. Had he been straight he would certainly be glowing at the prospect of making out with the two-decade younger Carrera.
And then there’s Roddy McDowall, who shows up looking as if someone told him this was a guest spot on Columbo. He plays a colleague who mostly exists to pop in, frown suspiciously, and make the audience wonder if he lost a bet to his agent. Diane Ladd also floats around as Martha Douglas, clearly wondering if she can trade this gig for literally any other paycheck.
But nothing—and I mean nothing—tops the surreal cameo of Dr. Joyce Brothers, who shows up playing herself. Yes, the same Dr. Joyce Brothers who was once America’s go-to TV psychologist. Here, she’s supposed to add “scientific credibility” by lending her name to the proceedings. Instead, it feels like the cinematic equivalent of finding your guidance counselor working part-time at a carnival dunk tank.
The film staggers through its runtime with all the pacing of a tranquilized giraffe. We get montages of Carrera learning how to play chess (because intellectual development apparently works like downloading a language pack on a laptop), long stretches of Rock Hudson staring pensively at lab equipment, and “dramatic” scenes so stiff you expect someone to check the cast for rigor mortis.
The horror element creeps in when Victoria begins to realize her lifespan is limited. Her accelerated growth comes with an accelerated expiration date, which means her body is breaking down faster than Hudson’s career after Ice Station Zebra. The movie wants this to be tragic—“look how cruel science is!”—but it plays more like a Lifetime movie about a trophy wife realizing her Botox wore off.
To give Embryo credit, it does attempt some moral questions. Is it ethical to fall in love with your science project? Should you propose marriage to something you cooked up in a Petri dish?These are weighty questions. Unfortunately, they’re delivered with the subtlety of a sledgehammer dipped in glitter. The script thinks it’s Frankenstein for the polyester generation, but it’s really more Frankenhooker without the self-awareness.
Special effects? Don’t expect 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film’s idea of “science” is lots of bubbling beakers, some close-ups of syringes, and the occasional shot of a fetus on a slide projector. This is bargain-bin mad science—closer to high school biology class than cutting-edge genetics. When Carrera’s breakdown kicks in, the “horror makeup” looks like someone spilled Elmer’s glue on her cheek and called it a day.
And yet, in its incompetence, Embryo becomes fascinating. It’s a window into that strange ’70s era when Hollywood thought you could slap together pseudo-science, a few TV stars, and a “controversial” premise and call it cinema. It’s exploitation dressed up in a lab coat, trying to pass itself off as respectable while its zipper is showing.
By the final act, things devolve into a limp chase sequence, Victoria’s health deteriorates, and the movie attempts a tragic ending. But it’s hard to feel moved when the whole story feels like the setup to a particularly bleak Twilight Zone parody.
The ultimate irony? For a film called Embryo, it never develops. The characters are half-baked, the plot is undercooked, and the themes are still in the first trimester. If the movie had been terminated earlier, cinema might have been spared this Frankenstein baby of sci-fi, soap opera, and bad ethics lectures.
