I am doing some research on ...
Ewan McGregor in The Island
Question: I am doing some research on films with a cloning theme but have, so far, only managed to come up with two: Four Sided Triangle (1952) a story built around a duplicator; and the very well-known The Fly (1958 and 1986) and its sequel(s). Can you suggest any others?
Answer:
Hate to be negative right off the bat, but neither the 1958 version of The Fly nor the 1986 David Cronenberg remake is actually about cloning: They're about transporting physical objects by breaking them down into their cellular particles and then reassembling them in another location — like the transporter in Star Trek. But Four Sided Triangle is a good call, both early and obscure, even if the story is pretty silly: Two men are in love with the same woman (the fabulously tarty Barbara Payton), so they clone her so that they can each have one. Unfortunately, both women fall for the same guy, hence the "four-sided triangle" of the title.
Aliens concoct a plot to clone world leaders so they can take over Earth (cue the evil laugh!) in The Human Duplicators (1964), while in The Clones (1973), merely duplicating the brains of geniuses is the key to world domination. The Boys from Brazil (1987) revolves around a Nazi project spearheaded by Dr. Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck) — who else? — to clone Der Fuhrer. In The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler (1971) a dying senator is spirited off to a top-secret facility where people are cloned to provide spare parts for the rich and powerful, the same premise that drives Parts: The Clonus Horror (1979), which was in turn shamefully ripped off by the makers of the big-budget The Island (2004). In the TV-movie The Clone Master (1978) — a pilot that never went to series — a biochemist (Art Hindle) involved in cloning research makes 13 copies of himself, hoping to save his endangered project. The Canadian movie Anna to the Infinite Power (1983), which seems to have played a lot on cable in the early '80s, revolves around an apparently ordinary suburban girl who learns that she's the product of an experiment to clone a dead scientist; the "Eve" episode of The X-Files is uncannily reminiscent of this all-but-forgotten picture. In Creator (1985), a scientist (Peter O'Toole) tries to resurrect the wife he lost to childbirth 30 years earlier. Although it's not the main event, cloning figures into the plots of Alien: Resurrection (1997) and Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002) — for my money, the revelation that all the imperial storm troopers are clones of Jango Fett is the cleverest conceit in the second trilogy.
The Jurassic Park movies (1993/1997/2001) are all predicated on cloning, though of dinosaurs rather than human beings (dinosaur DNA is found inside a mosquito preserved in amber), and it's being done just because a dinosaur theme park would be so cool (not to mention profitable)! Although the Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi/action extravaganza The 6th Day (2000) is mostly the same old kick-ass nonsense in which Schwarzenegger is pitted against a clone of himself, it contains a brilliant secondary element in the "RePet" franchise centers, where bereaved pet owners can clone their dead dogs and cats. Just a few years later, that's frighteningly close to the realm of possibility. And the Michael Keaton comedy Multiplicity (1996) plays cloning for laughs: It's the solution to not being able to be in two (or three, or four) places at the same time, but it naturally creates as many problems as it solves.