Arrow Video: Westworld (1973) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Arrow Video

Following the release of Robert Wise’s 1971 adaptation of the hit science-fiction novel The Andromeda Strain, Michael Crichton soon established himself not just in the literary world but in the filmmaking and videogame industries as well as a biotechnological fantasy visionary.  A Harvard Medical School graduate who chose writing over practicing medicine, the Chicago, Illinois native eventually made his first film as a television director with Pursuit based on one of his novels.  Somehow pitching to Metro Goldwyn Mayer a sci-fi futurist fable called Westworld, loosely inspired by the Disney theme park ride Pirates of the Caribbean with room for parody of The Magnificent Seven by way of THX:1138, against expectations Crichton unleashed in 1973 a miniature blockbuster grossing $10 million against a $1.2 million budget. 
 
Functioning as a precursor of sorts to Crichton’s own Jurassic Park which also saw a public amusement theme park spiraling out of the control of the managers and controllers, Westworld helped renew interest in Yul Brynner’s career and was the first film to feature digital image processing onscreen in a proto-Predator-like heat seeking image.  Previously released on Blu-ray by Warner Brothers in 2013 and featuring an original press kit and the TV pilot for the failed Beyond Westworld television series, that disc release included a 5.1 DTS-HD remix rather than the original 4-track stereo mix on 35mm prints.  

Fortunately however, Arrow Video have gone above and beyond the call of duty with their new impending 4K UHD edition coming out at the end of February.  Featuring extras ported over from the Warner disc, a newly filmed interview with Richard Benjamin and screenwriter Larry Karaszewski and collectible postcards, the disc for the first time features the original 4-track stereo surround mix alongside alternate 2.0, 1.0 mono and the Warner 5.1 remix, bringing viewers closer to Westworld as it originally appeared as any home video release has yet done.
 
Somewhere in the American Midwest in the then-future year of 1983 lies an expensive theme park exclusively for adults called Delos where many rich patrons go for an out of body experience to the tune of $1K per day.  Divided between three worlds, Western World, Medieval World and Roman World, the theme park is populated with lifelike androids of people and animals that are indistinct from living breathing human beings.  Attempting to realistically recreate a bygone period for the patron in a proto-Total Recall artificial vacation where you come equipped with weapons and can either get involved in having sex with the androids or just murdering them in cold blood, the resort proves attractive for newcomer Peter Martin (Richard Benjamin) and his friend John Blane (James Brolin) a regular customer at Westworld.  

However, a day into their trip having killed off a bot dubbed the Gunslinger (Yul Brynner), problems begin arising with technical failures and the bots themselves becoming more violent and eventually disobedient.  During an unrelated encounter in Medieval World with the Black Knight, a customer is killed and despite efforts behind closed doors in the control room to shut down the park, the robots operating on reserve power run amok killing everyone in its path, leaving Peter and John unaware of the technical failures within the park.  Soon however, they’re running for their lives pursued relentlessly by the cold metallic eyes of the Gunslinger android like The Terminator who will not cease his pursuit until you are dead. 

 
Shot in tight scope 2.35:1 by Gene Polito with an effectively unnerving ambient thriller score by Fred Karlin which occasionally veers in and out of Western action cliches, Westworld comes to the screen very much on the heels of the cinematographic linguistics of George Lucas’ feature film debut.  With emphasis on the behind-the-scenes inner workings of the park managers and controllers as well as surgery on downed machines including a striking poster image of Yul Brynner’s face coming off neatly with circuitry behind the mask, Westworld in some ways reminds of the creepy artifice of The Truman Show with its picture perfect rendering of a world that doesn’t exist and frequently cutting between those in Westworld and those rendering a show for their customers.  Though the film doesn’t really have any main characters outside of Richard Benjamin and James Brolin, boiling down to a one-man survival chase thriller, the situation with a chilly bloodless Yul Brynner in a cowboy costume ala The Magnificent Seven relentlessly pursuing our lone survivors is a lot creepier in motion than you’d think. 

 
Following the success of Crichton’s microbudget sci-fi thriller and prescient horror film about the dangers of artificial intelligence, a smaller sequel film Futureworld was made without the novelist’s involvement and played to considerably lesser returns despite bringing Yul Brynner’s character back for another round.  In the years since however, the legacy of Westworld has only grown particularly with the creation of the 2016 HBO series of the same name Westworld which was renewed for three more seasons until its cancellation in 2022.  

The kind of story which invariably paved the way for numerous other killer robot films including a sneaky inclusion into Alien and later both of James Cameron’s The Terminator films, Westworld is something of an all-timer in the pantheon of revered science-fiction classics of the 1970s and Arrow Video’s new 4K UHD restored from the original camera negative is a splendid upgrade for those who still had the 2013 Warner disc.  Arrow’s attention to preserving the original sound mixes as they were first heard are laudable as they have put together ostensibly the definitive home video release edition of this still chilling mixture of the American Hollywood Western and the creeping malaise of science-fiction terror and technology gone awry. 

--Andrew Kotwicki