THE RESURRECTION OF ZACHARY WHEELER (1971)
Disclaimer: I came very close to shutting this thing off halfway through. I'm glad that I didn't, as it did manage to buoy itself and bounce back from the precipice of dud-dom. So what am I talking about? This is a small-scale sci-fi cheapie that is noteworthy for a couple of reasons. It was the first American feature to be shot on video and transferred to film. In addition, it was one of the first genre titles to trifle with the subject of cloning. But you wouldn't know that from the first thirty minutes. The set-up is so needlessly confusing, I was reaching for...well, anything that would help. A calculator, an abacus, a translator, an analgesic, anything. An already gray Leslie Nielsen (I think he popped out of the womb with an AARP membership) stars as Harry Walsh, a TV reporter with auspicious access to a breaking news item. U.S. Senator Zachary Wheeler was involved in an auto collision, but when Harry tries to follow up at the hospital, the patient is nowhere to be found.
Political intrigue is the name of the game, which aside from being a bit dry, takes an unfashionably long time to unravel itself. I'm not going to drill too deeply into the mechanics of the plot, but this is almost a zombie romp. Here, the droning automatons are neither live nor dead. They merely exist to harvest organs for a list of people that the government deems as important. They are called "somas." A soma is injected with DNA, so they could be considered clones. And that's interesting, I guess. I don't know. I would be on board if Wheeler ended with a bang, as opposed to a whimper. On the bright side, the cast takes the material seriously, and as I mentioned earlier, the inert pacing does pick up. Check it out? Question mark? The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler feels like the kind of movie that Nielsen's character in Creepshow would own on Blu-ray. I have no idea if that's a compliment or not.
Director Bob Wynn served as producer on Cellar Dweller. This is your friendly reminder that Cellar Dweller is freakin' awesome. That is all.
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