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Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review
Welcome to Delos, the high-tech Disneyland for adults that Michael Crichton created for Westworld, a nifty science fiction thriller from 1973 that also marked the popular novelist's feature-film directorial debut. The movie is so named because the vacationing buddies who travel to Delos (James Brolin, Richard Benjamin) choose Westworld as their destination (the other choices being Roman World and Medieval World), where they are free to indulge their movie-inspired fantasies of the Wild West). The place is populated by perfectly humanlike robots programmed and monitored to cater to every guest's fancy, from brothel beauties to black-hatted gunslingers (such as the villain played by Yul Brynner). But fun turns into abject horror when the robots--particularly Brynner's villain--begin to malfunction and Delos turns into an amusement park that's anything but amusing. Westworld has moments of camp and the look of a low-budget back-lot production, but two decades before Crichton revamped his idea to create Jurassic Park, this movie made the most of its interesting and exciting premise. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
One of those films that simply delivers
Review date: 2008-03-07 Rating: 10 out of 10
If you have somehow missed watching this early template for Jurassic Park, and you somehow managed to miss Jurassic Park as well, then you'll be in for a treat if you watch this movie. It's not complicated, it's not even very fancy looking, considering the idea and the setting, but it is pure filmic excellence, with the novellist taking the directoral helm here very effectively. He does exactly the right thing in letting the story just unfold, until it becomes a simple tale of one man versus one machine. It is pure cinema and a very filmic experience, as acting and dialogue take a back seat to narrative, conflict, and resolution. It is cinema stripped down to its real essentials and is absolutely smashing.
To this theme park comes Peter Martin (Richard Benjamin) for a little R&R. At first he is a little shy then he actually gets into things. Everyone is having a great time.
Unknown to the guests Delos is experiencing an anomaly with its system. It seems that in spite off all the fail safes a guest gets shot. Then everything snowballs out of control. The most out of controlest is a robot gun slinger that looks an awful lot like Yul Brynner.
You feel that you are there. So what can you do?