Review of Westworld (1973) by Allan C — 06 Oct 2017

Michael Crichton wrote and directed this classic 1970s tale of a theme park gone awry about 20 years before he went back to that same well for "Jurassic Park." In this film an enormous theme park has been created the recreates an old west setting populated entirely by robots where visitors can realistically and safely play out their cowboy fantasies (there's also a Roman themed world and and a medieval themed world).

Richard Benjamin and James Brolin play two visitors to Westworld who are looking forward to strapping on sixguns, taking on robot gunslingers, and other old west cliches. Things begin to go wrong when some of the robots start to ignore their programming, which at first is damsels rebuffing the male guests and eventually becomes robot villains trying to kill the guests.

Benjamin is well cast as the dopey visitor playing cowboy like a 10-year old, who instead finds himself unexpectedly fighting for his life, but casting Yul Brynner as the central robotic gunslinger villain is brilliant.

Brynner donning a black hat nicely recalls his iconic role as Chris in "The Magnificent Seven." A main weaknesses of the film is the cutaway scenes to the Roman and medieval worlds, which are not all that interesting and seem only to exist to widen the theme park world, which wasn't really necessary, and to hint that something is going awry, which could easily have been done within the old west setting.

Another weakness of the film is that it's not all that suspenseful or exciting, which is surprising since Crichton got much better at suspense with "The Great Train Robbery" and "Runaway," although is nowhere in the same league compared to the suspense in Spielberg's film version of Crichton's "Jurassic Park" (the T-Rex scene when the power first goes out in the park is an under-appreciated modern masterpiece of suspense), though in all fairness, few directors compare to Spielberg when it comes to suspense.

Despite those deficiencies, Westworld's central premise of a massive interactive theme park is irresistible and that alone is enough to carry the film. When you top that off with casting Yul Brynner, there's no way you can't like this film.

Oh, and the film also features an awesome 1970s style full-body flame stunt, which I really wish TV and films would do more of today (along with more characters getting trapped in quicksand or getting locked in deadly hot saunas).