Arrow Video: Futureworld (1976) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Arrow Video

Three years after writer-director Michael Crichton’s 1973 dystopian science fiction fable Westworld which served as something of a precursor to Jurassic Park involving a vacation resort where robots programmed to interact with human tourists turn on their clients with violence, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was ready for round two with the 1976 sequel film Futureworld.  Though moving forward without Michael Crichton, the studio settled on recurring television director Richard T. Heffron of The Rockford Files with Phase IV screenwriter Mayo Simon and future Fantasy Island writer-producer George Schenck helming the screenplay.  While a modest box office success the film didn’t fare nearly as well with critics as the first and beyond being the final film of Yul Brynner as the Gunslinger from Westworld, it was sort of forgotten to time. 
 
But that’s not to say the film is without its many surprising virtues, being a post-Watergate dystopian paranoiac that boasted in 1976 the very first use of computer-generated-imagery in a motion picture.  Set in the year 1985 two years following the infamous Westworld incident and subsequent scandal and total shutdown, the Delos Corporation helmed by Dr. Duffy (Arthur Hill fresh off of The Andromeda Strain) announces a grand reopening with a $1.5 million investment in improving safety measures.  Renamed Futureworld, the Delos Corporation keen on rekindling public relations invites two news reporters, Chuck Browning (Peter Fonda) and Tracy Ballard (Blythe Danner) to cover the reopening.  Intent on digging up dirt on the company, Chuck receives a mysterious envelope from a mole within the company before the informant is sneakily shot dead.
 
Divided into four subsections: Spaworld, Medievalworld, Romanworld and the titular Futureworld which involves space travel and intergalactic space bars, the reporters are propositioned by sex robots in between using them as Rock Em Sock Em robots.  Guided by Dr. Duffy who takes the twosome through Futureworld designed to look like a space station, it comes about the resort’s human employees and control center have been replaced with more docile obedient cloned robots, thereby eliminating the possibility for human error.  In between fending off samurai clones in a proposed Eastworld park, the reporters soon discover clones of themselves are being manufactured and a kind of Invasion of the Body Snatchers plot to replace the human populace (starting with world leaders) with clones soon surfaces. 

 
Made alongside Logan’s Run which it shared redressed set pieces with that same year against MGM’s proposal to only do one sci-fi film per year and American International Pictures stepping in to push the project out of turnaround, Futureworld while featuring digital compositing effects as well as fully rendered computer generated effects unfortunately feels like a somewhat overproduced television movie that got bumped up to theatrical release.  Closer to a James Bond film by way of Invasion of the Body Snatchers than a Jurassic Park science gone awry and run amok thriller, the film was also the victim of the studio AIP putting more attention on their classier effort A Matter of Time.  Gene Polito from the first film returns as cinematographer co-opted by Howard Schwartz and though beautifully rendered on Arrow Video’s 4K UHD many of the compositions are rudimentary if not utilitarian at best.  Composer Fred Karlin also returns though the score is serviceable but nothing particular to write home about.

 
Where it does work in between notable set pieces such as the Johnson Space Center and the Houston tunnel system is the sassy sexy bond between the two reporters played by Peter Fonda and Blythe Danner who initially can’t stand each other but soon end up in bed together.  Arthur Hill is more or less in The Andromeda Strain mode as a mercurial figurehead of a corporation while Yul Brynner’s final bit in a nightmare involving a tango between Danner and Brynner is memorable but a glorified cameo.  Stuart Margolin from The Rockford Files makes an excellent sidekick as a lowly employee who plays cards with a faceless robot friend who decides to defect and join forces with the reporters while legendary The Right Stuff and Runaway Train actor John Ryan plays one of the doctors in charge of the robots later revealed to be managing the cloning process as well.

 
Turning a meager profit nowhere near the ample amounts earned at the box office by its predecessor, Futureworld was met with a generally negative critical response calling the film a boring and unimaginative caper flick.  Others, particularly in Europe, were far kinder including going as far as to call it one of the best science fiction films of the 1970s that even, dare say it, improved upon the original.  Three years later however, the film achieved bigger monumental success by becoming in 1979 the first American film sold to China for theatrical release, starring a decades-long working relationship with the company including some drawbacks of their own such as adherence to the expectations of the Chinese movie marketplace.  Then lastly (for awhile) in 1980 came the television series Beyond Westworld which continued in the themes of the Delos Corporation robots vying for global domination and they didn’t come back until 2016 via HBO’s Westworld series while also drawing heavily from Futureworld.

 
Given the recent release of Westworld by Arrow Video on 4K UHD featuring restored audio and 3.0 channel theatrical audio, it was only natural the boutique label would follow it up with a 4K UHD disc release of Futureworld.  Though I was underwhelmed and a bit bored by the film, Arrow Video’s disc looks wonderful with clean lossless 2.0 mono audio.  There’s a new audio commentary by Daniel Kremer, a recently filmed interview with the producer Paul N. Lazarus III, an archival 1976 behind-the-scenes video of filming at the Johnson Space Center digitally restored in high definition for the first time, reversible sleeve art, a collectible slipcover and a collector’s booklet featuring new essay writings by David Michael Brown, Barry Forshaw and James Rose.  While as a narrative film it winds up being closer to, say, the mid-1970s Planet of the Apes sequels, fans of 70s science fiction will love the redressed sets, prototypical CGI and the Body Snatchers spin on cloning.  Pretty much a B-movie sequel but Arrow’s disc is comprehensive and fun and completists are inclined to replace their Blu-rays with this new limited-edition set.

--Andrew Kotwicki