Westworld

Title: Westworld

Director: Michael Crichton

Released: 1973

Starring: Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin, James Brolin, Norman Bartold, Alan Oppenheimer, Victoria Shaw, Dick Van Patten, Linda Scott, Michael Mikler

 

Plot: In the near future a high tech amusement park has been created in which guests can act out their fantasies in one of the three “worlds”. However when the park androids begin to malfunction they soon start to turn on the guests. 

 

 

Review: While Michael Crichton might be best known as a writer, having given us the likes of Congo, Jurassic Park and Disclosure he is should be equally recognised for his work as a director with this film not only marking his debut as a director but also the first film to use 2D computer imagery.

Opening with a reporter greeting returning Delos guests sharing their experiences of playing knights or cowboys, engaging in shoot outs and marrying princesses before we are shown the introductory video to the resort which outlines the three worlds they have created West World (Wild West), Medieval World and Roman World with each promising their own experiences within their lifelike settings. We also meet Peter (Benjamin) and his friend John (Brolin) who are both paying $1,000 per day to live out their cowboy fantasies despite Peter being sceptical about the whole experience. 

In many ways a test run for “Jurassic Park” as here we get another hi-tech park suffering a major malfunction, only this time instead of rampaging dinosaurs we get homicidal androids who’ve forgotten the fact that they aren't supposed to be killing the guests. The idea behind the parks though is fantastic with guests being free of any kind of moral quandary over the actions they make thanks to the park being staffed with android actors for the guests to engage with as well as seduce and kill. This of course is just what Peter and John want of course as they play out their gunslinger fantasies, while casually giving a thought to joining in a bank robbery while they hook up at the local brothel. 

 

The androids in the three worlds all play a variety of roles, while programmed to respond to the guests or provide cues to engage with them in shootouts or romantic dalliances, while going into a state where they just repeat themselves if a guest misses their cue, bringing back memories for myself of the restaurant scene in Cronenberg’s “Existenz”. Yul Brynner is unquestionably brilliant as the gunslinger as he essentially plays the android version of his character in “The Magnificent Seven” and perfectly projects a cold and emotionless exterior, only ever showing emotion when he’s running through one of his scripted lines and as a result gives us the perfect villain of sorts for the film and in many ways a forerunner for the unrelenting killing machine that James Cameron gives us in “The Terminator”.

 

Unlike “Jurassic Park” the issues with the park here aren't caused by sabotage but instead a technical breakdown that the technicians can’t resolve because they don’t fully understand how the technology actually works. The lead up till the collapse of the park though is subtly done as more of the androids start to malfunction as we build up to the final chase between Peter and the unnamed android gunslinger (Brynner) as he tries to escape through the other worlds. it’s during this build up we also get to see hints of the inner workings of the park as a team of engineers work through the night to reset scenes and clean up shoot out’s the guests seemingly none the wiser of the work they are carrying out to maintain their fantasies.

 

While Westworld might be the main focus, Crichton also gives us passing glances of the other worlds, mainly to show how the breakdowns are spreading across the park and possibly as an excuse to work a sword fight into what is essentially a sci-fi western with one of the guests engaging in a length battle with the medieval world villain who unsurprisingly is “The Black Knight” the same as Westworld’s black clad gunslinger. Sadly we never get to see who the villain of Roman world is.

While Peter and John might initially be setup as being the heroes of the film, here Crichton instead does something unexpected as he follows the pair on their cowboy fantasy only to in the finale suddenly have one of them suddenly and unexpectedly shot dead leaving the survivor to spend the final 15 mins running away from the Gunslinger. It’s an unexpected ending especially when it doesn’t see either of our supposed heroes stepping up and becoming the hero they are playing at being.

A strightforward story which throws out some intresting ideas and ones which Crichton obviously explored further with “Jurassic Park”, while a sequel “Futureworld” and a short lived series “Beyond Westworld” attempted to expand the world further with little success and while the forthcoming HBO series aims to take another crack at this world this remains a fun curiosity if ultimately too disposable to be considered high sci-fi.

Hobo With A Shotgun

Title: Hobo With A Shotgun

Director: Jason Eisener
Released: 2011
Starring: Rutger Hauer, Molly Dunsworth, Brian Downey, Gregory Smith, Nick Bateman, Pasha Ebrahimi, Jeremy Akerman, Peter Simas

Plot: A nameless Hobo (Hauer) arrives in Hope Town via a freight train box car with plans of buying a lawnmower and to start a new life for himself. However when he soon discovers that Hope Town has long since decended into lawless chaos, with the locals now referring to it as “Scum Town” while being ruled by the ruthless crime lord “The Drake” (Downey). Now arming himself with a pump action shotgun the Hobo sets out to dish out his own brand of vigilante justice.

Review: It’s true I might be alittle behind the bandwagon for this one, seeing how it was greeted with much excitement upon its release as it marked the start of the second wave of Neo-grindhouse movies being released in the wake of “Grindhouse”, a film I’ve already commented on numerous times previously due to its distribution being screwed up by the Weinstein’s figuring that British audiences (and pretty much everywhere outside of the states) were too dumb to get the format and split it into its individual films, rather than give us the true experience. Still it the legacy of the film and the Neo-Grindhouse genre it kick startednnot only gave us the trailer which spawned “Machette” aswell as “Machette Kills”, but also gave the world the first glimpse of this film as it appeared as one of the fake trailers on some prints of “Grindhouse”.

Right from the start director Eisener who makes his feature directorial debut here clearly likes to wear his influences on his sleeve, which in this case would seem to be largely gained from the OTT style of Troma Studios while mixing it up with the splatter and social satire style of Paul Verhoeven, all of which is clear from the opening scenes, which includes a barbwire decapitation and fountains of blood while the crime ridden streets of the streets of scum town seem to have been transplanted from Verhoeven’s classic “Robocop”. Still even the briefest of looks at the trailer alone highlights that like his inspirations, Eisener is not the sort of director who does anything subtly making the Neo-Grindhouse genre the perfect playground for his style, especially as its audience come expecting violence and splatter and here Eisener delivers both in spades.

Still there is thankfully a brain behind the splatter (if a delightfully sleazy one) as while he has certainly crafted one of the more splatter heavy films of recent years, Eisener still bothers to craft a half decent tale before getting distracted with unleashing carnage. On the downside his approaches to the material is with so excitable and frenzied, it can feel at times like you’re watching the product of a kid with ADD while on a sugar binge. At the same time he frequently stumbles when faced with the slower paced sequences as seen during the more tender moments between the hobo and aspiring school teacher turned prostitute Abby (Dunsworth) who despite seemingly having nothing in common, the Hobo recognises her innocence despite the world around them which continually threatens to corrupt her innocence.

Unsurprisingly the film is far from the deepest of viewing experiences with Eisener having a good eye for characterisation as he crafts some truly memorable characters, who are truly brought to life here with some great casting choices, with Hauer as the nameless hobo full of pure grit and snarl while Downey makes a perfect counter as the ruthless and sadistic Drake, whose love of showmanship and theatrics makes him the perfect centre piece in the collection of villainy and scum that Eisener has filled the streets of Scum town with. Oh and what a collection of scumbags it is, for like “The Toxic Crusader” these streets lined with the likes of the paedophile Santa and the director making bum fights style movies, all of which soon find themselves soon enough on the business end of the hobo’s shotgun as he sets about cleaning up the town and with such a black and white devide behind good and evil, there is no real moral questions raised regarding the hobos methods. Even more so when The Drake responds to the Hobo’s actions by carring out a mass hobo genocide in one of the films splatter centrepieces. Sadly he does miss a trick by underusing “The Plague” a pair of hired gun and full blown psycho’s hired by The Drake, who also dress like the medieval version of Daft Punk. However they are only introduced in the final quarter, leaving kind of disappointed that they are not used more, especially when they are such a unique and fun creation and generally hoping that Eisener finds some way of reusing them.

While most of the film is generally a care free exploitation throw back with Eisener generally flipping the bird to the censors and mainstream Hollywood, there are however a few moments were I felt the film perhaps overstepped the mark perhaps slightly too much and these were in the few scenes which saw children being openly threatened, while a school bus of kids being incinerated by a flame thrower to the strains of Disco Inferno just comes off as tasteless, even if it does makes a suitable setup for the death of one character whose soul we seeing being metaphorically dragged to hell in the same burning school bus.

As always the case with any film junkie who uses their expansive film knowledge in their film making the need to draw comparisons between them and Tarantino seems almost inevitable like Adam Green, but here Eisener seems only concerned with using the films which influenced this film as a reference point for his shooting style especially as he shoots the film in saturated and shifted colours rather than trying to reimagine scenes from the films he draws inspiration from. The soundtrack itself is also a throwback while also baffling including Lisa Lougheed’s “Run With Us” which let’s not forget was memorably also used on the 80’s childhood favourite “The Racoons” yet surprisingly it works rather well here.

A frequently grimy and hyperactive debut feature, but a noteworthy addition to the Neo-grindhouse genre, while were Eisener will go next is till unclear but providing he can dial back his over brimming enthusiasm slightly he could certainly be an interesting director to follow, especially if this debut is anything to go off.

Electra Glide In Blue

Title: Electra Glide In Blue
Director: James William Guerico
Released: 1973
Staring: Robert Blake, Billy Green Bush, Mitchell Ryan, Jeannine Riley, Elisha Cook Jr.

Rating: 3 / 5

Plot: John Wintergreen (Blake) is rookie Arizona motorcycle cop, whose big aspirations of getting promoted to Homicide frequently drive his fellow officers and superiors insane, only for him to be granted this wish following the mysterious murder of a hermit.

Review: This movie is the kind of film that you stumble across on some late night channel, usually after having staggered in drunk and knowing that to go bed, will only mean spending the next few hours holding onto the side of the bed, as it flies around the room. It’s also in this state that you usually feel that Kebabs are suddenly a good source of food, which really brings into question how good a movie this really is, especially as most of the people who seem to have enjoyed it, were usually in the fore mentioned state when they saw it.



“Electra Glide In Blue” can be best described as a modern western, something only enforced really by the barren environment in which the film is set and a belief certainly shared by Cinematographer Conrad Hall, who was keen to shoot the film in the same style as John Ford’s westerns, which lead to a clash with director Guerico, who finally agreed to let Hall shoot the exterior scenes in this style while Guerico got to shoot the Interior scenes any way he wanted, which means that occasionally, the film does suffer from extreme changes of style, with the sweeping panoramic exterior views and the more grimy interior shots, but it does make it easy to understand why Wintergreen feels so frustrated, with having to work in this environment especially when his fellow officers such as his best friend Zipper (Bush) prefer to spend their time slacking off and harassing hippies, with Zipper especially taking a particularly hard nosed attitude towards them, even planting evidence on one hippy whose van he has just searched, which makes me wonder what it is about desert cops and their frequent disregard for protocol, especially when Zipper spends most of the film reading Comics in the shade, rather than actually doing any work.
It is through the murder of a hermit that we are introduced to Detective Poole (Ryan) who from the outset seems a man of similar mindset to Wintergreen, but who he soon finds is none to dissimilar to the officers he had previously been working with, if not with a memorable scene involving Poole brutally interrogating a bunch of hippies, who had previously lied to Wintergreen about knowing a suspect and it’s these scenes which at times verge on almost shocking that we see Wintergreen beginning to indentify with the these hippies more than his fellow officers, even more so as the sheen of working in Homicide is slowly worn away. It’s also during these scenes that Ryan really shines, even more so when he discovers that his waitress girlfriend (Riley) has been secretly sleeping with Wintergreen, leading to a crazy contest between the Riley and Ryan’s characters which towards the end I kind of shocking and certainly felt reminisant of similar scenes in “Blue Velvet” (1986).



Despite being a desert western in style, it is certainly not the most action heavy of films, with the whole film, much like Tarantino’s “Death Proof” (2007) feeling like the build up to the fantastic motorcycle chase sequence towards the end of the film, in which every crash and fall is emphasised by the film being slowed down noticeable, allowing the viewer to full appreciate each bone crunching second of impact of this crash porn, even going to far as to suddenly cut out the music, when the film switches into one of these moments, before suddenly blasting it back in, when the film returns to the chase and it was this scene which almost made up for the rest of the movie, which I found to be dialogue heavy, which wouldn’t have been a problem, had it felt as if any of the characters had anything interesting to say, with at times scenes of dialogue feeling over stretched and un natural, which was certainly not helped by often unnatural pauses between characters or them painfully dragging out their words, which is none more noticeable than in the scenes between Wintergreen and Zipper.
Another aspect of the film I never understood, was why they make the Wintergreen’s height such a selling point on the film, when it is barely touched upon or mentioned in the film and certainly doesn’t prevent him from carrying out his duties and it’s not like he is a midget or something, which might have made this film slightly more enjoyable viewing for me than it was, however if it does have an ending which did leave me actually kind of shock, in the same way that the ending of “Easy Rider” (1969) did which it felt certainly the most similar to, especially seeing how it is so unexpected, even more so when director Guerico has already given the audience one shocking climax, which would certainly have been enough to wrap up the film, only to pull out a second and certainly more abrupt and shocking second ending, which some might argue feels a little unnecessary, but to myself it felt more as if Guerico was trying to point out in much the same way that Rob Zombie certainly enjoys doing with his films and who has also been quoted as being a fan of this film especially, that nothing in life is as black and white as it seems.

“Electra Glide In Blue” might be seen by many as over looked cult classic, while I personally found little to keep my attention and as good as the chase sequence is, there is little to keep the audience attention, which could also be said for Tarantino’s “Death Proof” a movie which I keep feeling the need to compare this film to, but unlike that film, the dialogue constantly fails to hold the attention of the audience, meaning that most will have probably have given up before the stand out chase sequence, which as I mentioned earlier it does feel that the film is one big build up for. Perhaps its my dislike for the western genre, which accounts for my lack of enjoyment with this film, but I would certainly not be in a hurry to watch this one again.