FANTASIA OBSCURA: The ‘Westworld’ Sequel That May Make You Question Your Moral Judgment
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, though, all the assurance in the world will not guarantee that nothing can possibly go wrong…
Futureworld (1976)
(Dist.: American International; Dir.: Richard T. Heffron)
Before there were dinosaurs, there were androids.
By 1973, Michael Crichton had written 12 novels (including the classic The Andromeda Strain), directed a made-for TV film, Pursuit, and was ready for a bigger challenge: writing and directing a feature film. The folks at MGM indulged him, and he delivered a very impressive project the first time out, the classic film Westworld:
As detailed by John Hamilton’s look at the film here at REBEAT, Crichton’s tale of a place where the id could run free, as long as the complicated systems underlying such an environment could avoid falling victim to chaos theory, was a profound thought piece that managed to see the screen during one of MGM’s downward spirals.
Kirk Kerkorian was selling the backlot to property developers at the time, and Westworld was one of the last films to be shot on the sets before they were turned into housing in Culver City. Within a few years, Kerkorian told the world that MGM was mainly in the hotel business while its film-production pipeline slowed to a trickle.
During this time, the suits at MGM felt they could only do one big SF film for release in 1976. They had a choice between a follow-up to Crichton’s tale of terror or bringing the novel Logan’s Run to the screen. The androids lost to the Sandmen, and the loser went into turnaround, during which time American International picked up the production.
And from there, all guarantees that nothing could possibly go wrong were null and void.
The film has a cold open before the credits start where a contestant on the game show The Big Bundle, Ron Thurlow (Jim Antonio) wins $50,000 and a trip to Delos, the robot theme park that contains the section Future World as well as Roman World and Medieval World from the first film.
Amazingly, he’s excited to go, apparently not fazed by the tragedy a few years ago where 50 guests lost their lives during the Westworld malfunction; then again, he seems especially eager at the prospect of unlimited “mechanical interface,” ifyouknowwhatImean.
Also going there at the same time are newspaper reporter Chuck Browning (Peter Fonda) and TV reporting personality Tracy Ballard (Blythe Danner), invited by the company head Dr. Duffy (Arthur Hill) to show off the $1.5B in improvements made to the facility to convince people to come back. (Dr. Duffy probably felt that no money could ever erase bad associations with the worst aspects of the past, however, and so the West World section of the park stayed closed.)
Browning is especially interested in going, as just before the trip he has a meeting set up with a Delos employee who was offering a tip about the park but then dies just as he makes it to the meeting.
When they get there, the park is everything Delos promises and more. In addition to machines that are willing to die for you and sleep with you, they’re also working on machines that can read and records your dreams.
Which is too bad for Ballard, as apparently she has a thing for the gunslinger that shot up the park the last time (Yul Brynner, in his last screen appearance), which means everyone can get to share her embarrassing hots for the hardware.
We get to see only a little more of Ron, who we abandon just as he’s about to start a mechana a trois, before the film concentrates more on our insipid intrepid reporters, who thanks to a few clues from one of the last humans working the park, Harry (Stuart Margolin), and his android companion Clark (James Connor) (who, as written, seems to have a relationship that goes well beyond just hands of poker, ifyouknowwhatImean), lead them to discover that Delos has gone into other areas of development besides just robots that you can get intimate with:
Not wanting to confront their clones, the bargain-basement Woodward and Bernstein get ready to get, but not before the plan gets explained to them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywJW8-m8Lq8
So by the time the film rumbles towards the end, we find that the property has taken on a major transformation; it’s no longer a thought piece about man’s futility but is instead a Watergate-inspired conspiracy film with an evil plot that the people must be told about. The androids-take-over-the-world conceit so infuses the property that when MGM regains control of the underlying rights to the picture, their efforts to mount a TV series in 1981 based on the film, Beyond Westworld, becomes consumed by this drive for the run of the show — all three episodes CBS aired before it was cancelled.
Whatever higher ambitions underlying the original scenario gets lost here, forgotten until Crichton writes Jurassic Park and HBO does their version of Westworld. The conspiracy as portrayed gets all the focus, a dark secret that hangs over the park.
A secret that, if it became public knowledge… might not have been bad for business in the end.
After all, the film opens with Ron Thurow anxious to go to the park, even after the massacre a few years before, and as far as we know, his vacation turned out just fine. Would most folks be willing to engage their lusts without consequence if given the chance, little things like a few operational issues be damned?
And once you expand out your customer base well beyond the ASFR devotees, might such people really have that many quibbles about it? After we saw the Ashley Madison hack, and heard later that people are supposedly coming back to the site, maybe not?
If it turned out that the first commercial hit VR porn application, something with a Pokemon GO-level following, is revealed to be a Russian hacking collective data-gathering project that used credit card numbers to fund the re-conquest of the Baltic States, and people still downloaded it, then the reputation of Futureworld would get a serious upgrade in our time. This film would then have to be reconsidered, rewriting decades of common understanding of the piece.
And be proof positive than when it comes to humans getting intimate with androids, then nothing can possibly go wrong.
NEXT TIME: It’s time for the holidays, which means we do the party circuit! First stop, we gather with all the gang at Frank’s place…
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Elizabeth Shorten