Westworld (1973)

There are a lot of really good classic films out there, and I am working on catching up on sci-fi classics. I had already seen Tron, and Logan’s Run, The Day the Earth Stood Still and Planet of the Apes are on my agenda. The film to bridge the gap was Westworld, a film that could have only had birth in the later years of the b-movie age. The film, written and directed by popular novelist Michael Crichton, is insanely campy, silly, and very fun. The plot pertains to two guys (Richard Benjamin and James Brolin) who attend a theme park that recreates three different time periods, creating Westworld, Romanworld, and Midevalworld. The tourists go to Westworld, where they live life in a western recreation with robots that can be shot and used for one’s personal gain. And our two heroes keep running into a certain robot (Yul Brenner) that, when a virus goes out and starts to make the robots homicidal and stop following orders, becomes their arch-enemy and starts to follow them, attempting to finish them off. That is basically the plot of Westworld. The first half of the film is quite slow, and not really that powerful or imaginative. There seemed that there could be much more in that first half. The second half, however, was very action packed as soon as the virus started to kick in. It is a very well-executed science fiction western, pulse-pounding and fun all the way. It is the epitome of a 70s science fiction. It is fun, silly, and definitely a guilty pleasure. Quite fun.
8.5/10