“The Creator” was released in 1985, and I remember seeing it around 1987 or so. I loved it, even though I was a little kid and most of the jokes were over my head. I didn’t see it again for years because I didn’t remember the title, and finally found it again during an afternoon matinee on t.v. I then came to appreciate it even more, because I understood it.
At the time the movie was made computers were up and coming, and we, as a society, were on the edge of a major technology boom. It is now 2002, and we are able to transplant just about anything into someone’s body in the name of medicine, computers are virtually running the world, special effects star in the movies themselves and Dolly the sheep is no longer the only successfully cloned animal. In 1985, none of these developments had yet happened, and yet the screenplay could have been written yesterday. “The Creator,” is not a big budget, special effects, sci-fi movie. It is a subtle, quiet, funny, and heartfelt look at technology, the dependance on it, and the effects of its failure.
Peter O’Toole plays Harry Womper, an elderly professor who has decided to clone his wife that passed away 10 years ago. The reference to Frankenstein is obvious, but the movie itself has so much more of its own to offer. In order to do this, he needs an egg. Along comes Meli, Mariel Hemingway, who is about 19 years old, and an incredible nymphomaniac who offers up one of her eggs for the sake of science. Helping the professor is his hard working assistant, Boris, played by Vincent Spano. While you might make the assumption that Vincent and Mariel might hit it off, you would be wrong, because Virginia Madsen plays Vincent’s love interest.
Throughout the movie Harry is obsessed with the creation, or rather the re-creation of his wife. His lab is elaborate, and Mariel’s character even stays on at his house in order to help out, and I suppose donate whenever her egg is needed. Harry’s character is so consumed with the love and the loss of his wife, he rejects what it is that is right in front of him, and it happens to be Meli,
