WESTWORLD. 1973. WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY MICHAEL CRICHTON. PRODUCED BY PAUL LAZARUS III. MUSIC BY FRED KARLIN.
STARRING YUL BRYNNER, RICHARD
BENJAMIN, JAMES BROLIN, DICK VAN PATTEN, LINDA SCOTT AND ANNE
RANDALL.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
I absolutely love, love, love this
science fiction western-thriller with a bit of sex thrown in. It was
the brainchild of Michael Crichton, one of those writers you wish you
were because of all the great stuff they've penned. In Michael
Crichton's case, he can include the following little crackers in his
awe-inspiring back catalogue:
THE
ANDROMEDA STRAIN- 1969.
CONGO-
1980.
JURASSIC
PARK- 1990.
DISCLOSURE-
1994.
THE LOST
WORLD- 1995.
See what I mean about being jealous of him...? All of the above books were made into unforgettable films and that's
only the half of what he's done. Yeah, this guy was
seriously big-time, haha.
Anyway,
WESTWORLD is
one of my favourite films of all time. It was one of those films
which I grew up watching and never forgot, films like PSYCHO,
DUEL, PEEPING TOM, FRENZY, VERTIGO, ROPE, REAR WINDOW, THE STEPFORD
WIVES, DON'T LOOK NOW and
ROSEMARY'S BABY, to name a few. Yes,
I was a grim and gruesome young 'un, haha.
Some
of these films, PSYCHO
in
particular, scared me so much that I couldn't watch them again for
twenty years. WESTWORLD
isn't
frightening in the same way that, say, NIGHT
OF THE LIVING DEAD would
be but, if you've ever had visions of a nightmarish futuristic type
of world where robots run amok and kill people, then you'll probably
find this film deeply
disturbing...
Good mates Peter Martin and John Blane
are off on their holliers, as we say here in Ireland. They're off to
Delos, a magical resort where you can go back in time to medieval
days, Ancient Rome or the Wild West of the 1880s. It costs a whopping
thousand buckaroonies a day, but it's totally worth it, as we'll find
out in due course. You get to live out all your wildest dreams here. Who wouldn't pay a thousand bucks a day for that?
Peter, brilliantly played by Richard
Benjamin, is as excited as hell about it because it's his first time,
John outwardly less so because he's been there before. But you can
bet your sweet butt he's still pretty darned excited.
John is played
by the incredibly handsome and sexy James Brolin, who's probably best
known for his role as the real-life husband of singer/actress Barbra Streisand
and the father of actor Josh Brolin. He's sooooo sexy
and altogether too-cool-for-school as a hot cowboy.
The resort allows guests to live out
their wildest dreams and longest-held fantasies as cowboys, knights of old or Ancient Romans.
Their every wish and whim is indulged by highly-sophisticated robots
whom they can kill or have sex with or do whatever the hell they want
to with, and all without consequence or fear of retribution.
Each
night, the robots are simply hauled back to the repair centre,
patched up and sent back out to work again the next day. Bob's your
Uncle, so to speak.
The two lads have chosen Westworld as
their destination of choice. The scenes where they're getting
costumed up in full cowboy gear and being taken to their olde-timey
hotel rooms in a hotel on a real Western street with saloons and feed-stores on
it always make me grin like an idiot, much like the two lads are
doing on-screen. They're having the time of their flippin' lives...!
What man wouldn't want to be a cowboy
for a bit, shooting Injuns, robbing the bank, breaking out of jail to
avoid the hangman, starting bar brawls and bedding hookers who have nice
firm bosoms spilling out over the tops of their low-cut, tightly-corseted dresses?
It's every guy's dream, I would have
thought, along with being an astronaut or a lion-tamer. Me, I
wouldn't mind being a cowboy's girlfriend. I've always been deeply,
deeply attracted to stubbly,
unwashed guys in chaps and ponchos who ride into town chewing on a
toothpick before shootin' up the town, giving the bad guys their
come-uppance and getting justice for the good guys. Oh, wait a
minute. That's Clint Eastwood...! Yes, I've always been deeply,
deeply attracted to Clint Eastwood in his cowboy movies, haha.
For a while, anyway, Peter and John have
a high old time downing whiskey, bedding robot hookers, brawling in
the local saloon- with robot cowboys- and living just like cowboys
did back in the good old days. Then things start to go tits-up, as
they say in... Well, I don't know where that particular phrase
originates from, but it means that things turn bad. Real bad,
real quick.
The
robots all have some kind of freaky robot-disease, see? They start
acting all weird and out of character. Over in Medieval World, a
sex-robot (a beautiful girl called Daphne, played by Anne
Randall who'd have made a great Hammer Horror beauty!)
refuses a guest's sexual advances and then the same guest is stabbed
to death by the Black Knight, also a robot. But it's over in
Westworld that the real fun
is happening...
Peter and John are aggressively pursued
by a handsome, super-cool gunslinger dressed all in black and magnificently played
by Yul (THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN) Brynner.
See what I did there...? Oh, never mind.
Anyway, having 'killed' the same gunslinger twice already since they first arrived in Westworld, Peter
and John are not too happy to have him turn up gunning for them on a
morning when they've woken up cold and hungover on the floor of the
saloon. Typical naughty cowboys, eh...?
John
takes on the gunslinger, who shoots him dead. For realsies. The
robots have taken over Westworld, or the lunatics the asylum, if you prefer. Peter is shocked, to say the least.
He spends the rest of the film being hunted down by the gunslinger,
who never gives up no matter what Peter does to him.
Having acid
thrown in his face and being set on fire by a desperate Peter seems
to slow him down only momentarily. He just keeps coming. He's like
some sort of non-giving-up school-guy, if
you know your Simpsons quotes.
Does Peter
manage to get the better of the cold-blooded, ruthless robot that is
the gunslinger? Let's just say that he's certainly pushed to his
limits by the disintegration of Westworld, the dream holiday
destination that's a mere snip at a thousand bucks a night. A
thousand bucks a night? Crikey. Peter needs to get on to his holiday
rep ASA-feckin'- P, if you ask me.
This
cracking little sci-fi/horror film, with an absolutely fantastic
score by Fred Karlin, always reminds me of THE STEPFORD
WIVES and HALLOWEEN 3,
the only film in the HALLOWEEN
franchise not to feature the
white-masked legend that is Michael Myers. Both films feature robots
that mostly pass for humans but when they get a glitch in them, well,
you'd better watch out!
Dick
Van Patten is a perfect fit as the banker-turned- Sheriff of
Westworld who's probably waited his whole life to feel like such a
big man and considers it cheap at the price. And Linda Scott, who plays Arlette the 'French' prostitute
in Miss Carrie's bordello, is just drop-dead gorgeous. She's another lady who
would have made a wonderful Hammer Horror beauty.
My one regret is that at no time do we get to
feast our peepers upon the truly delicious James Brolin's naked butt.
That would surely have been sweet. He's really quite, quite fit
in this film. He certainly fills out those chaps nicely. And he's got
such a handsome face too. He's so photogenic. Lucky, lucky Barbra
Streisand...! Still, what was I saying about how you can't win 'em
all...? It's a great film. Watch it. Several times. Then
watch it again. That is all...
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA
HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
No comments:
Post a Comment