westworld [1973]

i was saddened to read the obit of michael crichton a few days ago for he was a powerhouse of both novels and films. if crichton's books and movies all seemed to be so much pulp, and they are, his works are nevertheless entertaining on a human scale. what seemed to interest crichton was the play between knowledge, power and reason and how that triumvirate tends to avail in some serious fuck-ups because our species knows not when to stop.

still, crichton was not a moralist, i think, but a maker of science fiction pieces that summed up the human endeavour as powerful and short-sighted. it would seem, to my limited reading of sci-fi, that most of the genre is indeed about how our human being is so very smart in our creations but so seriously dumb in managing that power.

at any rate, i've always thought of crichton as youthful. it surprised me upon his death to be reminded that he was making books and movies for 40 years. and i was surprised even further to read that he both penned and directed one of my favorite sci-fi films of the 1970s westworld. i missed that for some reason. i've seen this film dozens of times thru these years. the first time i watched the movie was at the long-gone drive-in theater, mather auto movies. i thought i'd seen this movie at a later date but a quick glance at drive-ins.com tells me that mather closed in 1976 so i must've seen westworld upon first release.

man that was a long time ago! or so it seems; i was but a pup in 1973. well, the movie stars yul brynner as the gunslinger with a lack of affect, and richard benjamin and james brolin as two buddies touring the old west. now westworld is one of three resorts, the other two are romanworld and medievalworld, populated by very realistic-in-every-conceivable-manner androids built for the pleasures of the patrons of the various worlds. get into a gunfight with brynner not only will you win no matter how bad a shot you are, but if you broke a few tables as brynner tumbled out a closed window there's no reason to worry because it'll all be cleaned up like new and brynner will be back in the morning for more gunplay.

all sounds like great fun, and it is for a while. but then the circle cannot hold and things fall apart. the androids go an a rampage and kill their makers - who toil in clean rooms and behind huge computer banks complete with state of the art blinking lights unseen and underground - and then begin to kill off the guests. brolin is the first to go. then, crichton treats us to a bunny chase, benjamin as the bunny and brenner as the hunter.

the action is as taut as a finely tuned g string. brynner is wholly terrifying as the gunslinger methodically chasing benjamin. and when brynner loses his face revealing the circuits and diodes underneath as he still hunts for benjamin and well you could imagine how that played on such a young and impressionable mind. i won't spoil the ending for you but the movie is quite a nervy work of sci-fi that if you've not seen it or seen it in a while i implore you to seek the flick out.

now, man fucking with nature via technology which goes amok was one of crichton's pet themes. he later revisited it most notably in jurassic park, an entertaining mash of novel fx [one of the first movies to successfully utilize cgi that blurred the divisions between live action and animation] and cautionary tale. but if crichton was fixated only with the cautionary tale end of storytelling then his films and books would be the most boring of their type. rather, crichton was a gifted teller of long tales that could curl your toes and spin your head. westworld is a testament to that talent. he shall be missed.