The futuristic story begins in the land of Clonus, a society that seems endlessly happy. That is, until you see the armed guards that surround them. They strive to be happy, so they can reach a certain status that grants them access to America, where the promise of an even happier, more fulfilling life awaits. These citizens are designated by tags on their ears, and when Richard (Tim Donnelly) and Lena (Paulette Breen) meet, they realize that their tags match. Despite the menacing looks they get from the guards, Richard and Lena become close and are soon in love.Richard, meanwhile, is starting to have doubts about his seemingly utopian world. In a nearby river, Richard finds an Old Milwaukee beer can, and when he asks about the strange object at "confessional" and an unseen voice dismisses the discovery, Richard begins openly questioning whether that the leaders of Clonus are telling them the truth about the outside world, eventually uncovering Clonus' dark secret and his own sinister destiny. Peter Graves and Dick Sargent round out the cast and take up most of the budget.Director Robert S. Fiveson brought a copyright infringement suit against the makers of The Island (2005). The lawsuit cited 89 points of similarity between "Clonus" and "The Island", and the court ruled that Fiveson made a prima facie case for infringement. Before the case could go to trial, Dreamworks settled with the plaintiffs for an undisclosed amount. It's been rumored that's a seven figure sum.Years before Michael Bay directed a film that ripped this off, it was featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (with the title Parts: The Clonus Horror—see Executive Meddling, below). The SOL crew had a field day with it.
Clonus has examples of:
B-Movie: The budget for this film was $270,000. Most of that went to pay Dick Sargent and Peter Graves.
Big Brother Is Watching: Once Richard starts suspecting things aren't as they seem he fakes a seizure or heart attack (or something) to find out if they're watching him (and implicitly the other clones) around the clock. They are.
The Cameo: Inadvertent. The guard Richard punches out when he escapes Clonus is the director Robert S. Fiveson himself. This wasn't planned, but they didn't have any other extras at the time. The knowledge that Richard knocked out the director almost makes this movie all worth it, though.
Can't Stop The Signal: Jake Noble is murdered, but gets a tape exposing the Clonus project to the media.
City in a Bottle: The Clonus facility, which looks more like a junior college (and indeed, the scenes set there were filmed in one).
Cloning Blues: To the movie's somewhat credit it was pretty ahead of the curve when it came to clone fiction.
Cold Opening: Consisting of frozen clones in body bags and Jeffrey Knight's president-elect speech.
Of course, this is assuming that Clonus doesn't have plans in place for just this contingency. Due to the rather abrupt coda, we never find out.
Executive Meddling: The title was originally to be "Clonus". The distributor wanted to change the title to "Parts" and then decided to combine the titles. The DVD of this movie calls this "Clonus" now.
Failed a Spot Check: A guard doesn't notice Richard hiding behind the glass-paned door he (the guard) just used.
Fridge Logic: Old!Richard is ostensibly murdered by his brother's goons at the end, so why'd they bother freezing Clone!Richard afterwards? His specific organ recipient isn't around anymore. That said, as a clone of his brother Richard's organs would likely be usable in the event that Senator Knight needed anything.
Considering how much money, time and effort it would take to raise of just one clone, would you just throw away a perfectly good source of potential organs to provide for a lesser client? It dosen't take any effort to freeze and store them.
And just how useful is this whole idea anyway? The vast majority of people will go through life never needing an organ transplant. Think of the hundreds of thousands of dollars and decades of time it takes to raise each of the clones to adulthood, keep them in peak physical condition, and then preserve them on the off chance that one of the important people they were cloned from needs a liver or something on down the line. With that amount of time and resources, surely more efficient (and humane) methods could be found to secure a compatable replacement part.
It's the Illuminati, they have resources to burn. Plus the other possible uses for clones had yet to explored, not just potential organ donors but also infilitrators, cloned armies, slave labor. Those scientists were't just content to let the clones grow up, they were also "monitoring their interaction," performing all kinds of experiments. Clonus is described as a "self-supporting center of research" after all.
Transplants might be more popular if there was no chance of rejection (clones being genetically identical to the progenitor, though I doubt it's that simple) and there was a larger supply of organs.
Godwin's Law: Old Richard compares Jeff and Clonus to the Nazis almost immediately after learning his brother's involvement.
I Never Said It Was Poison: The original Richard knows something's up when he talks to his brother about Clonus — and Jeff asks about a tape completely unprompted.
Smoking Hot Sex: Richard and Lena's post-coital cuddle takes place in front of a campfire, the smoke of which seems to be emanating from Richard's nether regions.
Mike: (as Richard) I should go a little easier next time!
Crow: Wow, I guess she really was on top of Ole Smokey.
Tom: Only you can prevent groin fires.
Reportedly, the filmmakers weren't too thrilled about "Parts" getting MSTed... until they saw this scene.
The Illuminati: You can just barely see the pyramid insignia on the eye-patched Boss's golden ring. If the The Illuminati are involved then it explains a lot about Clonus.
Too Dumb to Live: Most of the clones, but this is by design. Some clones are just unaltered, like Richard.
Shout Out: The Space Children use the same hand gestures to work their powers as the possessed children in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "And the Children Shall Lead".
When Pearl begs Mike to set up an impromptu TV show to entertain the children, he quotes Belloq's opening speech from Raiders of the Lost Ark word for word. It Makes Sense in Context. Sort of.
Soundtrack Dissonance: To try to put the Space Children down for a bit, Servo composes a beautiful lullaby...set to a bombastic march.
Squick: Discussed. Old!Richard's son getting out of the pool and walking his wet, speedoed batch right in front of the waist-high camera didn't do Mike and the Bots any favors. invoked
Mike:No... no, don-OH! We found it-thisis the horror!
Servo:Gah, stop it! What've we ever done to you??
The Talk: The Evil Space Children ask The Question, treating us to a montage of the villains' attempts to explain it. Brain Guy's response is a surprisingly poetic exploration of love, before he dismisses the emotion as unnecessary, Pearl begins a rambling, bitter story about her own failed relationships, and Bobo's advice is...questionable, given it deals with apeman mating rituals. "You're gonna get kicked in the face, that's always part of it... grab one leg and hold on tight!"
The Unfavorite: Mike and the Bots joke that Clone-Richard sees Original-Richard as his father and is this to him.
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