"We aren't dealing with ordinary machines here. These are highly complicated pieces of equipment. Almost as complicated as living organisms. In some cases, they have been designed by other computers. We don't know exactly how they work." - Chief Supervisor
"What the hell, god dammit, that's not supposed to happen!" - John Blane
"Why don't you make arrangements to take our hovercraft to Medieval World, Roman World and Westworld. Contact us today, or see your travel agent. Boy, have we got a vacation for you." - Interviewer
A movie about a fantastic vacation resort in the future. Dick Van Patten, Yul Brynner, James Brolin, and Richard Benjamin weave a western and a sci fi in a damned good, often overlooked flick written and directed by Michael Crichton- I present to you WESTWORLD!!!
When this one begins, a reporter is doing a report on location from a resort by a company called the Delos Corporation. He's interviewing people who are just leaving this spot after paying $1000 a day to live for a week in one of three "worlds": West world, Roman world, or Medieval world. Each customer relays that it was the most marvelous experience they've ever had. Literally living out their vivid fantasies, the patrons are allowed to murder or have sex with the robots living in each "world".
We meet John and Peter flying by some sort of hi tech super fast hovercraft passenger transport to the remote desert location of the resort. Peter has never been to the resort and he's full of questions for John. They have chosen to live out their fantasies in West world. The initiation is sort of like every scene where a guy is going into the military a la STRIPES. The boys are fitted and handed their "cowboy" attire and then taken to their room in the old west town. Each "world" is made to look authentic down to every detail. The boys go to the saloon, bed down prostitutes, and get into bar fights. One robot in particular has a big problem with Peter after getting shot and killed by him and over the course of the flick becomes relentless in his pursuit of our young cowpoke.
Eventually the technicians running the show begin experiencing problems with the robots and this becomes more and more frequent as the flick goes on. At a certain point, John gets bit by a robot rattlesnake, a harlot in Medieval world rebukes this fat guest's request to pork her, and then that same dude really dies at the hands of the Black Knight robot. So the technicians try to shut the power down, but they accidentally lock themselves in the control room and are unable to keep the robots under control.
There is a huge bar fight the night before, and John and Peter wake up completely wasted, peel themselves off the floor and begin to walk back to their room. The one relentless robot cowboy stops them in their tracks and shoots John in the stomach killing him, and then goes for Peter. Peter freaks, rides a horse completely out of West world all the way past the border into Roman world. He finds a tunnel and tries to hide from the robot, who slowly but surely follows Peter step by step all the way to the main control room. Everyone is dead, the guests are slaughtered, the technicians have suffocated, but he finds a girl tied up in a dungeon. He releases her only to find out she's a robot too. Then he throws acid in that robots face and sets him on fire. Does that stop it? NO! He's STILL COMING! Then finally he knocks it down some stairs and sits down on the step- my guess is so he can do some soul searching. HA! Should you watch it? Well, this one is nice. I love old sci fi like this. Its a simple story, almost like a short story or a stretched out episode of TWILIGHT ZONE. If you dig that, then you'll dig this.
No comments:
Post a Comment