Before I begin my comments, let me admit right from the start that this is one of my very favorite movies of all time. I fell in love with it when I first saw it in the theatre at age 12 and I've never gotten over it. Even though I'm much older today, I maintain beyond personal nostalgic bias that WESTWORLD is a tight, brisk, intense, thrilling, totally satisfying 88 minutes of good fun.
Somewhere in the near future, an enterprise called Delos has developed the ultimate vacation resort. For the cost of a mere $1,000 a day, adult guests may choose to live their fantasies out in one of three different environments: Romanworld, Medievalworld, or Westworld. These resorts are each populated by very human-like robots who are programmed to serve every whim of the customer. State of the art computer technology ensures that everything's safe and that nothing can possibly go wrong.
Richard Benjamin and James Brolin are two cowboy-wannabe friends who choose the 1880's Westworld for their unusual getaway. They make love to robot saloon women, participate in wild bar room brawls, and frequently get bullied around by a tough humanoid gunslinger dressed all in black (Yul Brynner, spoofing his look from THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN), who is automatically obliged to get riddled up with bullets, repaired by technicians overnight as the guests sleep, and then shot up all over again for the next day.
All is pure fun and games until something unidentifiable in the computer system begins to malfunction, and suddenly the world of Disney devolves into a place of horror. No longer taking orders to play dead, the robots are out to kill the guests, and the ominous gunslinger develops a frightening taste for the kill as he becomes an unstoppable walking menace, 10 years before Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator ever hit the screens.
Author Michael Crichton (THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN) wrote the screenplay and directed his first film with WESTWORLD, and it's an impressive debut in that he's able to keep the action moving along at a comfortable pace, using a small budget to its full advantage, and fashioning a real good-time movie experience that is at the same time both fun and foreboding. James Brolin and Richard Benjamin are completely likable in their parts, but it is Yul Brynner's multi-layered conception of the gunslinging robot who changes from willing court jester to deadly assassin that's the main draw.
Also a major asset is Fred Karlin's versatile music score. Changing from standard period western piano to a violins and whistles shindig, and finally to a weird techno-western mechanical hybrid when moods start to change for the worst, this is a very engaging soundtrack.
So why don't you make arrangements to take the Delos hovercraft to Medievalworld, Romanworld or Westworld? Contact them today or see your travel agent. Boy, have they got a vacation for you...!
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