EDITOR’S NOTE: The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, August 21, 1976 at 11:30 p.m., Saturday, November 26, 1977 at 11:30 p.m. and Saturday, September 23, 1978 at 11:30 p.m.
Released in late 1971 by Gold Key Enterprises, The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler holds a peculiar badge of honor: it’s widely considered the very first American movie to deal with human cloning for organ harvesting as well as the first narrative movie shot on videotape (200 Motels was before this, but has no story). Long before The Island, Never Let Me Go or even Michael Crichton got into the clone-harvesting game, director Bob Wynn (The Day of the Wolves) and writer Jay Simms (The Giant Gila Monster, The Killer Shrews) were already serving up cloned body doubles to keep corrupt politicians alive.
Reporter Harry Walsh (played by a pre-hair-dye Leslie Nielsen, long before he became a Frank Drebin) witnesses a brutal car crash. He rushes to help and identifies one victim as high-ranking US Senator Clayton Zachary Wheeler (Bradford Dillman, Piranha, Bug). Walsh files the story, but when he checks in with the hospital, the staff acts like Senator Wheeler was never there. In fact, they claim he doesn’t exist. Walsh gets fired for pushing the fake story, but being a classic 70s investigative hero, he refuses to drop it. He follows a trail of clues down to New Mexico.
Meanwhile, Senator Wheeler wakes up in a top-secret medical facility run by Dr. Redding (James Daly, Planet of the Apes) and Dr. Layle Johnson (Angie Dickinson, Police Woman, Dressed to Kill). Wheeler was basically dead, but he’s miraculously alive thanks to a radical, top-secret organ transplant. Where did the organs come from? Enter the Somas—genetically engineered, brain-dead body clones grown from Wheeler’s own DNA specifically to be chopped up for spare parts! (The term soma comes from the Greek word for body, but sci-fi fans will recognize the reference to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.)
The catch? The Committee running the clinic expects Senator Wheeler to pay for his new heart by becoming their puppet in Washington. It’s medical blackmail, baby! Can reporter Harry Walsh uncover the facility, rescue a clone and team up with Wheeler to blow the whole sinister conspiracy wide open?
Let’s talk about the crew behind this. The original story idea came from Tom Rolf, a legendary Hollywood film editor who went on to cut absolute masterpieces like Taxi Driver, The Right Stuff and Heat. Rolf read an article about organ transplants in Esquire while working as a production coordinator on TV’s The Big Valley, teamed up with writer Jay Simms, and hammered out the script in three weeks.
You can watch this on Tubi.
