THE LUCIFER COMPLEX (1978) - This is a BAD movie!

[The Burgomaster]

This movie is included in the SUSPENSE CLASSICS 50 MOVIE PACK.

This is an extremely cheap, senseless, disjointed movie, but I'll do my best to explain it.

The movie begins with a guy walking around on a deserted island.  He goes into a cave and sits at a huge computer.  He starts watching footage of wars, rock concerts, and various historical events.  Meanwhile, his voiceover narration informs us that the computer is an archive of the entire history of the world!  He sits there for about 20 - 30 minutes watching historical events and his narration becomes very philosophical.  Finally, he mentions "the great war of 1986."  Next thing you know, he is watching Robert Vaughn as a U.S. agent sitting in a nightclub watching a belly dancer (how the HELL did the computer get loaded with THAT footage?)

Vaughn stumbles upon a Nazi plot to replace important world leaders with clones.  He finds a laboratory and bunch of clones in glass tubes.  He also comes face to face with Hitler.  There is a WAY TOO LONG scene of Vaughn and some female prisoners trying to escape from the Nazi camp.  (Vaughn steals a tank during the escape . . . but I won't go into that right now).  We see about 15 minutes of shooting, explosions, people on fire, etc.  And it is all very boring.  Throughout all of this, the movie periodically switches back to the guy in the cave.  He presses buttons and adjust dials on the computer and continues with his voiceover narration.

If you break down this movie (which is about 90 minutes long) by how much time is spent on various scenes, it works out something like this:

* 30 - 40 minutes of the guy sitting in the cave watching the computer monitor and making philosophical comments.

* 30 - 40 minutes where Robert Vaughn (the "star") actually appears on screen.

* About 15 minutes of miscellaneous other stuff

* 2 minutes of irritating scenes starring Keenan Wynn

This is a patchwork piece of crap with some of the worst acting I've seen in a long time.  Vaughn must have been in DESPERATE need of money when he agreed to appear in this disaster.

[Dr. Whom]

The question is probably futile, but does the Nazi clone story line have anything to do with either the war of 1986 of why the chap is sitting in the cave in the first place? I wonder about these things.

[The Burgomaster]

Alex:

**POSSIBLE SPOILERS** (as if anyone really cares . . . )

The guy in the cave mentions that the Nazi plot worked and, since the clones lacked human emotions or sensitivity or common sense or something, it led to war and the destruction of the human race.  The movie never shows this, the guy in the cave just mentions it in one of his voiceovers.  Supposedly, he is one of (or maybe the only) survivors of the war.

[Yaddo 42]

Could it be someone trying to salvage footage from a failed production that lost funding or fell apart? Or maybe one that started and stopped several times? Vaughn and the 70s makes me wonder if it was a failed TV pilot or TV movie re-edited to try to earn back it's cost.

It almost sounds like the kind of use of stock footage that Ed Wood used combined with the grafting new story elements (or footage from other films) onto existing footage that Al Adamson used to do to flesh out or revamp his own films. Or those cut and paste jobs that Roger Corman used to use with effects footage from foreign films or those notoriously stitched together ninja films from the 80s.

[The Burgomaster]

Yaddo:

According to THE PSYCHOTRONIC VIDEO GUIDE, some of the footage was from a movie that was apparently never finished (called THE WOMEN OF STALAG 13 or something - - I forget the actual title - - I don't have the book in front of me right now).  It does seem like the parts with the guy in the cave were filmed as a completely separate project from the Robert Vaughn scenes and that the whole movie was slapped together without much thought.