WESTWORLD (1973)

Trouble

Hunting

Heat

Title: Westworld
Year: 1973
Director: Michael Crichton
Format: Blu-ray
Label: Warner Bros.

Notes: Another revisited 1970s sci-fi classic. Although the futuristic robotic theme park Delos has three worlds, it's the titular western world that dominates the film and creates Yul Brynner's proto-Terminator villain. So in some ways this is a post-modern Western where the privileged and possibly inadequate heroes get to re-imagine the wild west until it all goes wrong and gets a bit too real.

The odd sense of unreality also strangely reminded me of something J G Ballard mentioned in his autobiography ('Miracles of Life') about the power and meaning of a dismantled stage set. In WESTWORLD we see the stage being repaired on a daily basis.

I don't have a lot more to say. The visuals and direction are OK but rarely astound. I suspect this film will always be most impressive when first watched without any expectations. It's lingered in the popular imagination though (I'll probably avoid the recent TV series) and must have been watched by the Red Dwarf writers before they came up with the virtual reality western comedy of 'Gunmen of the Apocalypse'.