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Synopsis:
On a rainy night, Dr Paul Holliston (Rock Hudson) strikes a
pregnant dog with his car. He rushes the animal to the
laboratory/operating theatre in his house, and tries to save its life
with the help of his sister-in-law, Martha (Diane Ladd). It becomes
clear that the mother dog will not survive, but Paul decides to try
and save the puppies. He calls his son, Gordon (John Elerick), and
asks him to bring some urgent medical supplies, then prepares the
experimental life support system that he and his late wife, Nicole,
perfected as part of their research into foetal development. When
Gordon and his pregnant wife, Helen (Anne Schedeen), arrive with the
supplies, they find that Paul has delivered the pups by Caesarean and
put them on life support. Nevertheless, all but one die. As Gordon and
Helen leave, Gordon remarks that this is the first time since his
wife’s death that Paul has shown an interest in anything. Paul
realises that the mother dog, which is still providing the surviving
pup with a blood supply, will soon die. He decides to use an
experimental growth hormone on the pup, and thus speed its
development. The hormone, called “placental lactogen”, is
astonishingly effective: when the mother dog dies, the pup is
sufficiently advanced to survive on its own. Determining that the pup
shows no signs of cellular defects, Paul recommences the placental
lactogen treatment. In mere days, the pup achieves adult growth. It
also displays an amazing intelligence and ability to learn. Paul then
makes a fateful decision…. Visiting a colleague, Dr Jim Winston
(Jack Colvin), Paul makes a startling request: a foetus of 12 to 14
weeks’ development, whose mother cannot survive, and which itself
has no chance of survival outside the womb. Winston reluctantly
agrees, and some weeks later notifies Paul of an attempted suicide.
Before the girl dies, Winston has her unborn child transferred to a
portable life support system. Taking the baby to his laboratory, Paul
begins placental lactogen treatment. The baby, a girl, grows with
remarkable speed, each day approximating a month’s development. At
the appropriate time, the child is “born”, being removed from the
life support system to a humidicrib. Worn out by his experience, Paul
allows himself to sleep – then wakes to a frightening discovery:
even though the treatment has been stopped, the child has continued to
grow. She subsequently undergoes a year’s development during each
day that passes and then, achieving adult growth, begins rapid and
premature aging…. Keeping his subject sedated, Paul treats her with
various DNA blocking agents, and finally succeeds in arresting the
aging process. He then begins a process of “subconscious
learning”, playing educational tapes to the unconscious young woman.
Finally, exhausted, Paul collapses. He wakes some time later to find
his “incubator” empty, and himself confronted by the outcome of
his experiment….
Comments: You know, I’m used
to being deserted by friends and family, when I force my taste in film
upon them; that doesn’t bother me so much any more. But when I sat
down to watch Embryo the
other day, I suddenly found myself being deserted in a way that was
far more disturbing. My sense of proportion was the first to go, and
it took my capacity for constructive criticism with it. As you’d
expect, my desire to be fair did stick around for a while, but eventually it started making its
excuses too; while my suspension of disbelief not only walked out
without a word of apology, it took my last beer with it. And then the
next thing I knew, my sense of humour was standing in the doorway with
its bags packed, announcing that it thinks we’ve been spending far
too much time together lately….
My
bad temper, however, wasn’t going anywhere; and as I sit now in
front of my computer, suffering from both a headache induced by the
idiocies of its screenplay, and muscle pain from 100 minutes of
simultaneous eyebrow-lifting and eyeball-rolling, I find that I feel
less like reviewing Embryo
than I do like knocking it to the ground with a swift rabbit-killer,
jumping on its back, pummelling its kidney region, then twisting its
arm until it apologises for ever having been made. And then pummelling
it a bit more, just for good measure. In short – what follows is a
singularly humourless rant; and while I’m sorry for it, the bottom
line is that some films are just too provoking to be laughed off.
My
problem with Embryo isn’t
simply that it is one of those films in which the depiction of
“science” and “scientists” is wrong on almost every
conceivable level. There are lots of films that fall into that
category, after all, and a great many of them are enormously
entertaining. My specific objection here is rather that this distorted
representation is coupled with an attitude of unbelievable pomposity.
The makers of Embryo seem to
have believed sincerely that they were creating A Cautionary Tale For
Our Times; too bad, then, that their desire to alert people to the
dangers of certain lines of scientific experimentation didn’t
encompass an equally fervent desire to tell them the truth. What we
have in Embryo is the
science fiction equivalent of warning children to get home before
dark, or they’ll be caught by the three-headed troll that lives
under the bridge. The bewildering thing is that director Ralph Nelson
and writers Anita Doohan and Jack Thomas seem actually to have
believed in their own troll: the solemnity and self-importance with
which the film’s central premise is treated renders the entire
project not merely ludicrous, but infuriating. The key-note for Embryo
is struck at the very beginning: the film opens with a testimonial
from one Dr Charles M. Brinkman III, who also acted as the project’s
technical adviser, assuring the audience that what they will see is
“not all science fiction”. (Ah, my friends! – beware of science
fiction films that deny that’s what they are!) Dr Brinkman goes on
to insist that the story is “based upon medical technology which
currently exists” – and that “it could
be a possibility – tomorrow – or today!”
(You know – considering that the behaviour of the medicos who appear
in this film is unethical in the extreme, you’d think real life
doctors would want to distance themselves from it rather than laud its
accuracy, wouldn’t you?) And if this isn’t enough to make the
viewer aware that Embryo is
a film with a major attitude problem, consider the moment during the
scene in which Dr Paul Holliston makes his fateful decision to
experiment upon a human foetus, when the camera suddenly pans to a
reproduction of Michelangelo’s “The Creation Of Adam”. That
single shot sums up almost everything that is wrong with this movie,
and demonstrates that if I am guilty of taking the silly thing way too
seriously (“if”!?), then I’m definitely not the only one.
The
perverse thing about movie science is that the more impossible a
particular “discovery”
is in real-world terms, whether it be an invention, or a treatment, or
last-minute piece of re-wiring, then the more likely it is that the
resident movie scientists will toss it together with a minimum of
fuss. It is when the central idea in a science fiction film is vaguely
feasible that everything seems to go horribly wrong – and the
scientists are usually responsible for that, too. Embryo is a
textbook example of this convention. In fact, the film is an amazing
conglomerate of just about everything that makes me clutch my hair and
howl with despair when watching science fiction. First up, have you
ever noticed how nearly all movie scientists – the “good” ones,
at any rate – become scientists in the first place, or go into a
particular line of research, because of a personal trauma? (So much
for being “unemotional”.) No-one ever seems to do it because they
like science, or they’re good at it, or they think it’s
worthwhile; there always has to be a “reason” – or in fact, an apology – for someone choosing that particular career. In this
case, we learn that Nicole Holliston had difficulty in carrying a baby
to term, and that she suffered several mid-pregnancy miscarriages
before giving birth to her only child. Hence, the Hollistons went into
foetal research; hence, too, Paul Holliston rationalises his unethical
experiments by claiming that the children that he and Nicole lost
“will live again”. These experiments are then facilitated by the
fact that Holliston belongs – as did Nicole, before her death – to
that strange sub-category most beloved of screenwriters, scientists
who work out of their own basements. As I’ve argued previously, the
rationale behind this custom seems to be both practical and evasive.
In the first instance, a basement laboratory restricts the need for
sets, props and extras, thus saving quite a lot of expense. However,
the most pressing motive for the frequent recurrence of this unlikely
scenario is certainly that self-employed scientists are freed from
such plot inconveniences as their legal obligations to their
employers, the demands of ethics committees, and the existence of
colleagues who might not just stand quietly by as illicit experiments
are being conducted. And Paul Holliston takes full advantage of the
freedoms granted him by his screenwriters, behaving in a manner that I
object to not only because of its unethical nature, but also because
it is thoroughly idiotic.
And
it is here that I part company with many of my fellow film-watchers
– or so, at least, I judge from the number of times I’ve made
similar complaints about a movie, and had my objections greeted with
an impatient, “Oh, who cares?”
Well, the short answer is, I
do; and I hope that I am not alone, since my condemnation of films
like Embryo is not so much
due to their slanderous depiction of scientists, as it is to their
dismal standard of writing. How can I convey to you just how
improbable Paul Holliston’s behaviour in this film is? The best
comparison that comes to mind is the spy-film supervillain, who
captures the hero, tells him what his plan is and how it can be
thwarted, straps him into a ridiculously complicated death-machine –
and then walks away without bothering to see if it works. And while
I’m aware that many films – action films in particular – have
impossible things and improbable behaviour occurring on a regular
basis (like my personal bugbear, the outrunning of explosions and
fireballs), those films don’t usually pretend to be realistic; and
nor do they have the gall to present their impossibilities in the form
of a dire warning to mankind.
Many
films flub the design of their scientists’ labs, but Embryo goes one step further, and provides the wrong sort of lab
altogether. Paul and Nicole Holliston are supposed to have discovered
their miraculous “growth hormone” in their basement lab, yet that
lab is essentially an operating theatre, and has no facilities at all
for conducting basic research. (Heck – there aren’t even any
Conical Flasks Filled With Mysterious Coloured Fluids!) As the camera
pans around, we see that all of the drugs and chemicals are sitting
out at room temperature – including the placental lactogen, which
presumably has been untouched since Nicole Holliston’s death. Upon
reflection, the remarkable thing about Paul Holliston’s experiment
is not that it goes wrong, but that it works at all! (Such
biologically active substances should, if possible, be stored
lyophilised, and either refrigerated or frozen. Working stocks should
also be kept below 0oC, although they can
be stored refrigerated, but generally not for longer than a week; nor
should they ever be made up to such a large volume as we see here.) No
information is provided about the placental lactogen, beyond some very
basic chemistry (it’s got “disulphide bridges” – ooh, gosh!).
We never learn, for instance, what species it is derived from, nor how
it was derived: whether it is native, extracted from tissues, or
recombinant, produced artificially using molecular techniques. In
terms of two people working out of their own basement, both of these
options are about equally unlikely. (Genentech, the first American
company to employ recombinant DNA technology, was founded in 1976, the
year Embryo was released;
however, there is no indication in the screenplay that the writers
were aware of the fact, or even that such technology existed.) When
Paul Holliston carries the fatally injured dog into his laboratory in
the opening sequence, we learn that he has the facilities for
operating on the animal close to hand – a store of canine plasma,
for example – which implies that the Hollistons were experimenting
upon dogs (not a very likely choice of subject, by the way). Yet
Paul’s decision to “try something new”, that is, treat the pup
with placental lactogen, would suggest that they had not
previously tested the factor on an animal at all, which makes his
subsequent resolution to proceed directly to human testing even more
brain-numbingly stupid than it appears at first glance – and
that’s saying something. And if the Hollistons weren’t
doing animal experiments, why, oh why
is their lab set up for doing precisely that!? Questions,
questions….
Animal
experimentation is one of those ugly facts of life that films tend to
shy away from – unless they want to use it as proof of how ee-vil a
particular scientist is. (“Good” scientists, on the other hand,
tend only to experiment on animals for the “right” reasons – as
Paul Holliston does here. A still sillier example may be found in K-9000,
in which the scientist-heroine conducts an incredibly expensive
experiment – using government funds – in order to save the life of
a terminally ill dog.) Indeed, Embryo’s
screenplay suggests that Holliston had no intention of testing his
experimental drug upon an animal at all until his hand was forced.
This is ludicrous. No matter how one feels about the use of animals
for scientific research (and I can tell you this – no-one likes
it one little bit), the bottom line is, it is a legal requirement that
any drug intended for human use must first undergo a full barrage of
strictly defined in vivo experiments, to determine such things as possible
side-effects, and the suitable dosage to employ. The data obtained
from this work is then submitted for examination by an appropriate
authority (the FDA, for example), which will decide whether or not
there is reason to believe that the experimental drug could be of
benefit to patients. A Phase I trial is then conducted, generally
involving only a small number of subjects, in which the same questions
are asked regarding dosage, route of administration, and side-effects.
If successful, a broader Phase II trial will follow, which generally
involves more patients and is geared towards investigating how well
the experimental drug works in and of itself. If this, too, is
successful, a further application must be made to the governing body,
requesting that a Phase III trial be undertaken. This is usually a
wide-ranging study intended to determine not just whether a drug
works, but if it works better than those already available. It may
also determine the effects of the new drug in combination with other
treatments. Such trials are generally “randomised controlled”,
that is, neither the patients nor the administering doctors are aware
of which treatment regime an individual is undergoing until the
conclusion of the trial, in order to prevent any experimental bias
from creeping in. It is only when a new drug has passed all this
stringent testing that it may be approved for production and medical
application.
I’ve
spelled out these scientific facts of life purely in order to
underscore just how idiotic Paul Holliston’s behaviour in this film
truly is – or perhaps it would be fairer to say, just how idiotic
what the screenwriters ask the viewer to swallow is – and also to
give you some indication of just how much trouble he is going to be
in, once the news of his little “experiment” hits the fan.
Holliston does indeed reflect briefly upon the “legal problems” he
will ultimately have to face, but decides to go ahead anyway – even
though the script gives us no real reason why he would, and one very
good one why he wouldn’t!
Along with Holliston’s remark about “something new”, the fact
that he dubs the surviving puppy “Number One” (yep, you heard me
– “Number One”!) indicates that this was indeed the first animal
experiment conducted with placental lactogen. Yet despite that, and
without bothering to determine whether his drug has any long-term side
effects, Holliston immediately decides to experiment on a human
foetus. Now, putting aside ethical considerations for the moment,
certain questions still have to be asked. How does Holliston know that
placental lactogen will even work on a human foetus? Some growth
factors are indeed highly conserved, and work across species, granted,
but others are very species-specific. And how did he know – how
could he even guess – what
dose of the drug to give the puppy in the first place? – and how
could he possibly extrapolate the dosage from that given to a
five-week-developed pup, to that appropriate for a
fourteen-week-developed human? And if we accept all of this, what
about the ease with which Holliston obtains the foetus!? This takes
nothing more than one brief argument with a medical colleague (who is
an administrator, mind you, not even a surgeon!), who effortlessly
maintains the film’s credibility levels when he responds to
Holliston’s startling request by saying, in essence, “That would
be really, really wrong – but yeah, okay.”
Now,
it may not sound like it here, but I do
understand the “fiction” part of “science fiction”.
Nevertheless, when I am presented with a scenario so divorced from
reality and then asked to take it seriously, I have to draw the line.
What maddens me about all of this is that the writers could still have
had their film, without resorting to having their scientist behave so
unbelievably. For instance--- Let’s
suppose that Paul and Nicole Holliston did discover this remarkable
hormone. They then conducted a broad range of animal experiments that
confirmed that the factor was effective across species, and also
determined the most appropriate doses to be administered with regard
to body weight, stage of development, etc. Then, just as the
Hollistons were about to publish their work and present their
discovery for clinical trial in humans, Nicole died. Shattered, Paul
temporarily gave up his work, and did not go ahead with the publishing
of their results. Then, one night, a car accident occurred outside the
Hollistons’ house, and a pregnant woman was fatally injured.
Realising that he could not save the woman, but could give her baby a
chance, Paul performed an emergency Caesarean and placed the foetus in
his experimental life support system, treating it with a dose of
placental lactogen calculated from his previous studies. He planned to
contact the appropriate medical authorities as soon as the baby was in
a condition to be moved, but then everything went wrong…. Out of
fear of the consequences – and fascination with his accidental
achievement – Paul decided to keep quiet about what he had done.
The sad thing is, it
took me less than five minutes to come up with this alternative
scenario which, if not exactly plausible, would have been at least more
plausible, since it does away with Paul Holliston’s carefully taken
decision to do something incredibly stupid. But then – I’m
not a professional Hollywood screenwriter, am I?
Anyway--- Paul Holliston
gets his foetus, and Paul Holliston conducts his experiment. It goes
wrong, of course, and the baby continues to grow despite the
withdrawal of the placental lactogen treatment, finally achieving full
adult development. (There is not the slightest indication here that
the writers have any grasp of the enormous input of energy that would
be required for this process to occur, nor of how infinitely complex
are the cellular interactions that make “growth” possible.) Then
she begins to age…. Holliston arrests this process by treating the
(now) woman with methotrexate, while at the same time worrying aloud
(in a way that lets us know we’ll be returning to this point anon)
about the drug’s “addictive properties”. (Methotrexate is
referred to here as “a DNA blocking agent”; more specifically, it
works as an anti-metabolite by blocking the action of dihydrofolate
reductase, the enzyme required for producing the active form of
folate, a B-group vitamin. Methotrexate is used in the treatment of a
number of diseases, including cancer; and like most cancer drugs, it
is dangerous because it affects normal cells as well as malignant
ones. However, as far as I’m aware, it’s not addictive.) Shortly
afterwards, Holliston finds that the “incubator” in which he has
been keeping his subject (and where he got that from, we’re not privileged to know) is empty, and the next
moment is confronted by a fully grown, surprisingly mobile, and
completely naked young woman. At this point, Embryo
takes an abrupt left turn, mutating from Frankenstein
into Pygmalian as Holliston
undertakes the education of his experimental subject. This version of
the story ultimately goes rather further than George Bernard Shaw
intended, however, when the young woman – dubbed “Victoria” –
swans up to Holliston one night in a see-through negligee, announcing
breathily that “I want to learn”. (The notion of sex is put into
Victoria’s head when she is taken out in public for the first time,
and a new acquaintance suggests that the two of them enjoy “a
resoundingly good hump”. Don’t you miss
the seventies?) At this point, Victoria is beautiful, brilliant and
charming – so naturally, it is only a matter of time before disaster
strikes.
Paul Holliston keeps the
surviving, adult-sized puppy that he saves with the placental
lactogen, passing it off to his family as the mother dog. The only
side effect that he observes is the animal’s remarkable intelligence
and capacity for learning – something conveyed via a series of
not-exactly-impressive doggie tricks. The audience, however, is
swiftly made aware that the “artificial” nature of the dog’s
developmental has indeed had an undesirable side effect; that the
animal is, in fact – ee-vil!
This revelation comes when, having been ordered by Holliston to stay
in the car, “Number One” gets out anyway (bad
doggie!), attacks and kills an irritating yappy terrier (which was
probably making fun of its name) – and then hides its victim’s
body in the bushes, before getting back into the car. (Since this
sequence plays like a cross between the “canine assassin” scene in
A Fish Called Wanda, and the
“Muffy, meet Adolph” scene in Ruthless
People, it doesn’t exactly achieve its aim of striking terror in
the heart of the viewer.) After this, we wait for a similar revelation
with respect to Victoria, and sure enough, it comes – and the film
takes yet another left-turn, finally playing out like an updated
version of the German story of Alraune, in which a similarly
“artificial” women is revealed to be a soulless monster dedicated
to evil (which, since she is
a woman, manifests itself almost entirely in sexual terms). As Paul
Holliston teaches Victoria, he finds her to be “incredibly
perceptive”, with “a mind like a sponge” and the ability to use
“almost 100%” of her brain capacity. As the audience’s alarm
bells begin to ring, a puzzled Victoria dismisses the Bible as
“illogical”, an accusation which Holliston counters by making a
claim for its “moral values”. “Moral values?” repeats Victoria
blankly. Oh, dear, groans the audience. And yes, unfortunately it is so: Embryo
is yet another of the endless stream of science fiction films that
finds intelligence and morals to be mutually exclusive; Victoria is
far too clever to be good as well.
Today, twenty-five years
after the birth of the first IVF baby, it is rather too easy to
overlook the fact that Embryo
was probably inspired by genuine social concerns about the rapid
developments that were taking place in the field of reproductive
biology. Still, even allowing for these fears (which I rather doubt
actually included the creation of “soulless monsters”), as a
“dire warning” film Embryo
is almost a complete failure, since it doesn’t even follow through
on its own premise. Having completed the education of his protégé
(or should that be progeny?), Holliston takes his personal Eliza out
in public, introducing her around as his new “research assistant”.
At first, Victoria is a smash-hit (there is one genuinely entertaining
sequence in which she mops up the floor with a chauvinistic,
egotistical chess-obsessive, played by a cameoing Roddy McDowall),
except with one person: Paul Holliston’s sister-in-law, Martha.
Martha is one of the film’s gaping plotholes. The screenplay is
fatally uncertain whether she is hostile towards Paul because of her
sister’s death (in a car accident, when he was driving), or whether
she has designs on him herself; her attitude shifts from scene to
scene. In either case, no adequate explanation is ever provided for
why Martha should be living in the Holliston house – except that the
story requires a third party to be present, just so we can all see how
ee-vil Victoria really is.
Having taken an instant dislike to Victoria, Martha proceeds to
investigate her, quickly discovering that she is not who she and
Holliston pretend. Furiously, Martha throws her knowledge in
Holliston’s face – and Victoria, overhearing, resolves that Martha
will not tell anyone else….
The problem with this
scenario – and if someone as limited as myself could see it, then
someone as intelligent as Victoria certainly should have – is that
it doesn’t matter one iota what Martha knows. So what
if Victoria’s a fraud? Who is Martha going to tell? And what harm
could it do if she did? It isn’t as if Victoria had obtained
employment with falsified qualifications, after all. To any outside
observer, I imagine that the mostly likely interpretation of events
would be that the recently-widowed Paul Holliston had found a gorgeous
young woman to shack up with, and not yet being willing to go public
with his relationship, decided to pass her off as something else. I
say again, so what? But
instead of reasoning this way, the super-smart Victoria immediately
panics, and doesn’t just commit murder, but does so in a way that
makes it screamingly obvious that she is the guilty party. As is so
often the case, this film is predicated upon the assumption that there
is nothing in the world dumber than a really intelligent person.
And it gets worse.
Shortly after – indeed, immediately after – Holliston and Victoria
become lovers, the girl discovers that she has begun again to undergo
accelerated aging. Holliston has concealed nothing about her
background, and so Victoria begins secretly to dose herself with
methotrexate, quickly becoming, as she puts it, “a junkie”. (Told
ya!) This treatment, however, is only temporarily successful; and soon
the desperate, frightened woman is searching for an
alternative….which she finds, thanks to one of those magic movie
computers that know everything, whether they’ve been programmed to
know it or not. (Product of its time, the computer also fills an
entire room, and is noisier than heavy earth-moving equipment.) The
antidote for Victoria’s condition is revealed to be an extract from
the pituitary gland of “an unborn foetus, 5 to 6 months developed”
– leading to scenes that, while not explicit, many viewers may well
find quite distressing. (Personally, I was more upset by the dog
scenes that open the film, but you know, that’s just me.)
Again, the problem with all of this is that it does not necessarily
reflect Victoria’s inherent ee-vil-ness,
but rather the girl’s understandable terror at confronting her own
imminent death. Still more strangely, the screenplay makes quite it
clear that Victoria does
know that what she is doing is wrong – and also, given her
subsequent choice of a victim, that while she may not grasp what
“moral values” are, she is certainly capable of making moral judgements….
In attitude, Embryo
resembles nothing so much as the Monogram and PRC “Mad Scientist”
cheapies of the thirties and forties – although those films never
had the barefaced nerve to demand, as Embryo
certainly does, that anyone take them seriously. Under the
circumstances, there isn’t much that the cast could do with the
screenplay. Since he narrates as well as stars, the film is carried by
Rock Hudson, who attacks the material with admirable gravity. He
can’t make it believable, of course, but he does succeed in
communicating Paul Holliston’s grief and loneliness – and guilt
– following the death of his wife (the script does not give nearly
enough weight to the backstory of the Hollistons’ marriage), and
also his incredulous delight in the seeming miracle he has
inadvertently wrought. As Victoria, Barbara Carrera tries hard, but
I’m afraid she is rather more convincing as a tabula
rasa than when attempting to convey “genius”. Her role also
demanded of her a fair amount of nudity, but this is all so coy in
nature – hair covering her breasts, hands conveniently clasped
before her groin, and so on – that it ultimately becomes annoying.
(It is also very noticeable that while educating Victoria, Holliston
found no reason to introduce the girl to the concept of “the
bra”.) Of the rest of the cast, only Diane Ladd as Martha gets any
substantial screentime, and her character is so confused that
ultimately, her contribution does the film no favours. Embryo
may start out as science fiction, but towards the end it veers
squarely into the realm of horror. It also sheds whatever little logic
and credibility it possessed, becoming at last nothing more than a
second-rate fright-film – and a thoroughly ridiculous one at that,
piling melodramatic scene on top of melodramatic scene until---
Well, whaddya know? There’s my sense of humour, safely home again! And just in time,
too, because the final scenes of Embryo
are truly some of the silliest ever committed to celluloid, involving
(in rapid succession) kidnapping, surgery by-the-book, multiple
murder, a car chase, an attempted drowning, and an hysterical cry of,
“Die! Die, damn you!!” – a line I bet you’ll find yourself quoting
at the strangest times, after watching this film. And there’s
something else, too, an absolutely unforgettable – and incalculably
absurd – last-second surprise, which I wouldn’t spoil for
worlds….
Footnote:
By the way – did you notice how right through this review, I
kept saying foetus instead
of embryo? That’s because
the term embryo generally
isn’t used past the seventh week of human gestation. That’s right:
these experts gave their film the
wrong title. |
Director: