The Cloning of Clifford Swimmer (1 Nov. 1974)

Clifford Swimmer is an angry and abusive man, unhappy in his marriage and cruel to his wife and son, and he wants out. He finds a unique solution: he will have himself cloned and will ... See full summary »

Director:

Lela Swift

Writer:

George Lefferts

Stars:

Peter Haskell, Sheree North, Lance Kerwin

Cast

Episode credited cast:
Peter Haskell	...	Clifford Swimmer
Sheree North	...	Mrs. Janet Swimmer
Lance Kerwin	...	Todd, Swimmer's son
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
William Bassett	...	The Collector
Keene Curtis	...	Dr. Uri Laszlo
Sharon Farrell	...	Madeline Rivera
John Karlen	...	The Detective

Storyline

Clifford Swimmer is an angry and abusive man, unhappy in his marriage and cruel to his wife and son, and he wants out. He finds a unique solution: he will have himself cloned and will replace himself while he goes about the world "a free man." With the help of a scientist doing cloning research, the replacement of Swimmer is created. The clone takes over as head of the family, while the real Swimmer travels the world. Meanwhile, the clone has turned out to be the opposite of the original -- a gentle and sensitive husband and father -- and the wife and son come to love him. Then the real Swimmer comes back, finds his family happy with the clone, and becomes angry and jealous. And things take a deadly turn.

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Plot Keywords:

cloning | character name in title

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Genres:

Drama | Horror | Mystery | Sci-Fi

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Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

1 November 1974 (USA)

Company Credits

Technical Specs

Runtime:

74 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

This TV-movie appeared on the ABC network in the USA under the umbrella series titled "ABC Wide World of Mystery", which featured new TV-movies each week.

User Reviews

Decent Story Needed More Work

The Cloning of Clifford Swimmer (1974)

** (out of 4)

Fair entry in "The Wide World of Mystery" series has an abusive Clifford Swimmer (Peter Haskell) agreeing to be cloned so that he can escape the wife (Sheree North) and stepson (Lance Kerwin) that he hates. Once out on his own the clone takes his place back at the house and he begins to start fresh with the wife and stepchild but soon the real man grows jealous and gets into some major trouble. THE CLONING OF CLIFFORD SWIMMER is the first film I've seen from this series so I can't comment on the series as a whole. This film here had several interesting ideas but I think they needed to be developed a lot more because it seems the 66-minute running time really hurt because there are just so many things that happen so fast that they see forced. One such example is how the wife and stepson change to this "new" person who enters their life. I think it would have been much more believable had there been one or two more scenes where they really question what's going on. I also thought it would have played better had we believed the real man's need to get back with his family. There are several twist and turns along the way but most of them you will see coming from a mile away. Another problem is that the low-budget really didn't help and especially early on during the futuristic laboratory, which looks worst than some of the ones seen in those bad 50's sci-fi movies. With that said, I thought the performances were rather good and this is especially true for Haskell. I thought he was very believable as the bad guy and the nice guy clone. Still, there were just a few too many problems to make this story fully work on me but I think it would make for an interesting remake with a bigger budget.