Futureworld (1976)

'West World' is one of my all time favorite movies from the 70s. It takes place at an amusement park that allows tourists to pay to take part in a totally immersive cosplay type of vacation. You can go to 'Western World', Medieval World' and 'Roman World'. There you can be whomever you wish to be and enjoy all the sex and violent you like with realistic human robots who assume character identities in their imaginary play worlds.



Of course, as will always happen, the robots go nuts one day and start killing the guests instead of fulfilling their fantasies. Yur Brynner is terrific as a a robot gunslinger who relentless pursues guest Richard Benjamin. In effect this is 'The Terminator' a decade before the James Cameron movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger came out.


A few years later, the sequel, 'Futureworld' was released

Only a stinkin' Corporation like 'Delos' could make a comeback with their robot theme parks after their previous amusement park androids went loopy and killed over fifty tourists and workers. Basically every robot amusement park's worst nightmare come true.


You would think that they would have mothballed the whole place but this is America and a good idea is still a good idea. Despite the change of violent death hanging over them, some goober will still pay good money to screw a robot dressed as a medieval serving wench.

Delos has even added a new theme park - 'Future World' - that promise to give guests the experience of living in an interactive space environment. As part of a new massive PR campaign, reporters Peter Fonda and Blyth Danner are invited to go into the facilities to check them out and report their findings to the world.


It wouldn't be a conspiracy movie without some evil goings on and its follows true to form that Delos has other more sinister plans for their robots involving world leaders and society's highest rollers. Soon Fonda and Danner have the truth and are on the run for their lives with our evil robot friend, Yul Brynner's Gunslinger, in hot pursuit.


While not as effective or tense as the first movie, 'West World' this film does take away the element of 'freak accident' from the story and makes the corporation the deliberate enemy this time. They put a face on the evil that is being done. Maybe the danger man centered and not 'computer glitch' centered seems less random and and thus less scary.

Giving the power to the corporation who are essentially in control of pushing all the buttons turns this into a 'David vs Goliath' tale where, in reality, Goliath should have had Fonda and Danner for lunch early on. The audience is asked to take some big leaps in logic to believe the story and the ending is a true 'fuck you' to the eternal struggle between the common everyman and the mean and evil corporation. Again, however, in real life the corporation wouldn't just stop pursuing the two whistle blowers just because the film ended. They would have 'Blan B' remedies that would see our two intrepid news people either dead or discredited in less than a week.


The special effects are uniformly excellent with many examples of the features available in these imaginary themeparks. Except for the massive deaths that occur, they certainly make it appealing to a casual traveller. I could see myself going on a massive killing spree in Medieval world with a side adventure is plundering the walled towns. Then a few days drinking and storytelling in the wench filled pubs. Good times.

7/10