The Human Duplicators

The Human Duplicators (1965) starring Richard Kiel, Dolores Faith

The Human Duplicators – a low budget, cheesy science fiction movie. It deals with aliens coming to Earth, making android duplicates of government officials to rule the world! Unless love can throw a monkey wrench into the plans, of course.

Review

Admittedly, The Human Duplicators is a low-budget, cheesy movie. But I enjoyed it anyway. Much of that is due to Richard Kiel. He plays the part of Dr. Kolos, the alien invader. He’s using the home of Professor Dornheimer, against his will, to make duplicates of various human beings. The end goal is to replace government officials with the duplicates. In order to make the alien invasion easier. But there’s a problem.

The problem is the professor’s lovely, blind, niece. She lives with him, and Kolos doesn’t want to alarm her. She’s not only physically attractive, but kind and compassionate. Things Kolos has never experienced. And she slowly begins to change his heart, and mind. It’s a sweet story. Low budget, yes. But fundamentally, a good story.

Cast of characters

• George Nader (Robot Monster) … Glenn Martin. Our protagonist, agent of the National Intelligence Agency. He poses as a reporter to get access to the Dornheimer home. He later sneaks in, witnesses the duplication process, and is captured. Then, he’s duplicated himself.
• Barbara Nichols (Pal Joey) … Gale Wilson. Glenn’s girlfriend and fellow agent. After Glenn’s duplicate replaces him, she becomes suspicious.
• George Macready (The Great Race) … Professor Vaughn Dornheimer
• Dolores Faith (The Phantom Planet) … Lisa Dornheimer. The beautiful young girl, who manages to reach Kolos.
• Hugh Beaumont (Leave It to Beaver, The Mole People) … Austin Welles
• Richard Arlen (Island of Lost Souls) … Lt. Shaw – National Intelligence
• Richard Kiel (Tangled, Eegah) … Dr. Kolos. The sympathetic alien invader. He rebels against his orders, and tries to prevent Lisa from being duplicated. And pays the ultimate price.
• John Indrisano … Thor. Professor Dornheimer’s servant. He’s duplicated multiple times, and used as “muscle”.
• Ted Durant … The Galaxy Being
• Lori Lyons … Miss Hart
• Margaret Teele … Blonde Lab Assistant
• Alean ‘Bambi’ Hamilton … Brunette Lab Assistant

Editorial review of The Human Duplicators courtesy of Amazon.com

An alien takes over a professor’s mansion-basement laboratory, and makes android clones to infiltrate the government.

Trivia

• Final film of Hugh Beaumont.
• Richard Kiel seems to have had mixed feelings about the film. He said in an interview with American film scholar Tom Weaver that the film “was a big hit in Chicago,” where it played “in like 27 theaters” simultaneously. Kiel made personal appearances at theaters that were showing the movie in Chicago. He said that they were so successful that he was asked to do the same in Toronto. But he told interviewer Maggie Howard in 2009 that “The way the director wanted me to act – kind of robotic – didn’t come off as well as I would have liked.” (source: IMDB)