THE DARKER SIDE OF TERROR
US, 1979, 91 minutes, Colour.
Robert Forster, Adrienne Barbeau, Ray Milland.
Directed by Gus Trikonis.
The Darker Side Of Terror is quite a good telemovie - it might even have been better. It has a good cast - Ray Milland looking his most worried as a scientist who can clone people, Robert Forster as the bewildered hero - and his clone, Adrienne Barbeau as the puzzled wife. While the film has a scientific background and exercises imagination on cloning and its disastrous effects, it is really an updated version of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story. The ordinary scientist is Dr. Jekyll - the clone is Mr. Hyde who is evil and wants to take possession of and destroy the original. With the scientific background, the university atmosphere and its rivalries, scientific experimentation, the film is an interesting example of how the traditional horror genres can be incorporated into contemporary settings.
1. An entertaining thriller? Horror movie?
2. How well did the film use the horror conventions? The scientist and the variation on the mad scientist with eerie laboratory sequences? The variation on the creation of a monster in the Frankenstein vein? The importance of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde tradition with the evil character emerging from the good? A contemporary blend of these conventions? Persuasively handled and communicated? For how television viewing?
3. The atmosphere of an American university, the American home? The ordinariness? The contrast with the laboratory, experiments, the impersonal nature of laboratory technology? The abandoned laboratory and its eeriness? The special effects - especially for the making of the clone? The presence of the two men and their confronting each other? Musical score for atmosphere?
4. The basic plausibility of the plot: scientific experimentation, general information about cloning, its possibilities? For what purpose? Playing God with nature and the hellish consequences? The background of university, home, rivalry, scientific experimentation? Ambition? The plausibility of the sequences with the two men and the clone on the loose? The transition to police drama and murder thriller? The build-up to the final confrontation?
5. The hero: the scientist with his future before him, his not being named to the Chair of Science, the rival stealing his material? The elder scientist urging him on? Taking risks? The obsession with success? The background of the happy marriage and the conventional home scenes? The making of the clone? The education of the clone? The similarities of the two men? The differing gestures - especially the laugh? The clone having a life of its own, breaking free, sexual drives, the murder of the girl? The clone taking the husband's place and the relationship with the wife? The build-up to the confrontation and the necessity of the killing of the clone? The inherent violence - the killing of the rival, the killing of the older doctor? Clones being controlled - but breaking out of control? The impossibility of man playing God?
6. The older doctor: his ambitions, obsession, success with cloning, regrets, poetic justice in his death?
7. The wife: her support of her husband, sharing his disappointment, the alienation because of his experiments, the encounter with the clone and the healing of the marriage? The irony of the clone taking the place of the husband and a husband?
8. The ambitious scientist: his lack of scruple, his death?
9. The girl and her encounter with the clone, the violence of her death? The regrets of the clone? His shrewdness in breaking out, returning? Pretending that he had not been out? His taking the husband's place?
10. The detective and his interviewing the husband? The crisis of identity and the dilemma of the hero having to kill alter-ego?
11. How well did the film work on the popular level of entertainment, horror, thriller? How well did it indicate, at a popular home level, themes of scientific progress in conjunction with human values and dignity?
