Embryo [Created to Kill] ** (1976, Rock Hudson, Diane Ladd, Barbara Carrera, Roddy McDowall) – Classic Movie Review 13,717

‘From embryo to woman in four and a half weeks.’ The 1976 American sci-fi horror film Embryo stars Rock Hudson, Barbara Carrera, and Diane Ladd in a shocker about a doctor growing a human embryo in an artificial uterus.

Director Ralph Nelson’s 1976 film Embryo [Created to Kill] is a yukky but just a little intriguing and scary horror piece about a woman called Victoria (Barbara Carrera), grown outside the womb in an artificial uterus, who ages suddenly, going from embryo to woman in four and a half weeks. The screenplay is by Anita Doohan and Jack W Thomas, based on a story by Jack W Thomas.

Rock Hudson stars as geneticist Dr Paul Holliston, the physician experimenting on growth hormones who  discovers a method to accelerate the fetus into a mature adult in just a few days, creates Victoria Spencer (Barbara Carrera) from a test-tube baby, and then teaches her through recordings to be a sex machine. However, Holliston’s creature turns into a homicidal maniac.

The Z-grade mad scientist sci-fi chiller material can’t rise above the junk level, and the four main actors (Rock Hudson, Diane Ladd, Barbara Carrera, Roddy McDowall) seem embarrassed, a bunch of stars fallen on hard times. Embryo is somewhere between unpleasant and repulsive, though perhaps it is intriguing and scary enough to be sneakily enjoyable as a guilty pleasure.

Cast: Rock Hudson, Diane Ladd, Barbara Carrera, Roddy McDowall, Anne Shedeen, John Elerick, Jack Colvin, Vincent Baggetta, Joyce Spitz, Dick Winslow, Dr Joyce Brothers.

Release date: May 21, 1976 (US).

Running time: 104 minutes.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,717

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