StunnaKrypto Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

ofumalow Ralph Nelson made some good movies particularly in the 1960s, mostly middle-of-the-road dramas addressing pressing social issues. But he didn't appear to have a fantastical bone in his body, and was clearly the wrong choice to direct this sci-fi variation on the Frankenstein story. Rock Hudson plays a scientist whose personal guilt over his wife's death drives him to experiments in his private lab that attempt to save the lives of fetuses trapped in the bodies of dying females. He succeeds in saving one such being from a suicidal young woman. His methods lead the fetus to develop rapidly into an adult (Barbara Carrera) who is beautiful and brilliant but, because she has skipped past all the standard character-forming years of human growth, lacks any sense of morality--when she eventually feels threatened, she doesn't hesitate at resorting to homicide. But that doesn't happen until the last 15 minutes or so in a movie without any prior "action" (a little partial nudity aside), and Nelson doesn't even seem interested in the violence when it does arrive, keeping it mostly off-screen. Hudson gives an earnest performance--he's not just walking through it, as he sometimes did with mediocre material--and Carrera, one of those actresses who seldom got to stretch much because she was typecast as cheesecake, is as good as the film allows. The supporting cast is strong enough, excepting Roddy McDowell, who throws off the straightfacedf tone somewhat with an overly hammy "guest star" turn as a snippy chess master infuriated when Carrera's "Victoria" beats him. But the script isn't quite intelligent or credible to be taken seriously. Nor is Nelson's direction stylish, suspenseful, or lurid enough to make "Embryo" any kind of guilty pleasure--it's watchable enough, but once you realize there really won't be much payoff, the entire experience becomes somewhat deflating. While the 70s was full of variable big-studio sci-fi films that in one way or another emphasized their futurism, "Embryo" has no sci-fi trappings at all beyond a premise whose ideas aren't very boldly worked out. It wasn't a success at the time, and one has to admit there isn't much reason to pronounce it under-rated now. It's a competently crafted misfire.

Cristi_Ciopron By its essential blandness, 'Embryo' has a soap opera style and take, and it evoked me, besides a French romance read when I was a kid, 'Algernon', a similarly clumsy, though far less despicable, story; Hudson looked a bit skeptical, and there's a general feeling that what we see are people reading their lines, which brings us back to the aforementioned blandness, the critical lack of gusto and zest. Yet, the soap opera feel is sometimes soothing, the stupid tale, the unpopulated sets, the creepy colors, the sheer indifference to any verisimilitude and plausibility, the uninvolved and perhaps embarrassed actors, yet many have gone through such (R. Burton, G. Peck, etc.), the 1st moment of suspense comes after 50 minutes, then Barbara Carrera takes over the movie, she's interesting to watch even dressed, the others embody '70s sloth and triteness. Her character is a heartless genius, scared by rapid aging, and turned into a cereal killer.'Algernon' was quite badly written, for a genre novel; and 'Embryo' is very badly written for a dire C movie, and all looks somewhat intentionally bland, the soap opera feel was meant.Hudson plays a creepy, recluse embryologist who has a son, a pregnant daughter-in-law, a jealous sister-in-law, and a research assistant.The movie ends with a car chase, and Rock Hudson's unfunny grimace.

gridoon2018 Yet another cautionary "scientists-shouldn't-try-to-play-God" sci-fi thriller; the first half strives for scientific accuracy, of sorts, and is a little too claustrophobic, but when Barbara Carrera (in a great breakout performance - I feel compelled to mention that she has a memorable nude scene as well!) enters the picture, it "opens up" and builds to a good shock ending. It moves slowly, but you don't really know where it's taking you; it's an advantage that there are no clear-cut "villains" in this story. Rock Hudson gives a committed performance in a genre unusual for him, and even that dog is an amazing actor. Be warned: the Mill Creek DVD print I watched is pretty awful. **1/2 out of 4.

MartinHafer Okay, I'll admit it--you need to suspend disbelief on this one--A LOT of disbelief! But, you have to do this all the time in movies so stretching this just a bit further might enable you to enjoy this film. I know that I went in with very low expectations after reading the IMDb reviews, but it turned out to be a decent little movie about yet another doctor who wanted to play God.The film begins with a doctor (Rock Hudson) hitting a dog. He takes the pooch home and tries to save it, but he's unsuccessful. But here's the weird part--using some special serum he'd been working on, he injects the dog's surviving puppies to try to save it. That's because the puppy is WAY too young to survive. Speeding up its growth at an astronomical rate enabled the puppy to grow many weeks in a matter of hours and it survives.A short time later, the doctor decides to play God with a human. Taking a recently dead pregnant woman, he's able to remove the small fetus and grow it in his lab at an even faster rate. The problem is that for some time he cannot stop its fast growth and the fetus ends up becoming a full-grown woman by the time he's arrested the fast growth. At first, things seem great as the woman is a sort of super-woman--with amazing learning skills and intelligence and the ability to be well-coiffed despite being raised in a lab. Plus, and here's the best part, it turns out to be an amazingly HOT young lady (Barbara Carrera). What's next? Well, I'd say more but don't want to spoil the plot. Suffice to say that the lady's moral reasoning abilities are at times VERY suspect...yet hot! Despite the prologue that makes it sound as if this technology is possible, it certainly is not! But, it did make for an interesting film with a few nice surprises (such as at the very end). A word of note--you WILL see a lot of Miss Carrera in this one, so perhaps it's best not shown to your small children or mother!