ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - November 21st
"WESTWORLD" released in 1973
Don't miss out on future blogs, trailers, and clips IHdb has coming up
by Following IHdb's Facebook page above
by Following IHdb's Facebook page above
Sometime in the near future a high-tech, highly realistic adult amusement park called Delos features three themed "worlds" — West World (the American Old West), Medieval World (medieval Europe), and Roman World (the ancient Roman city of Pompeii). The resort's three "worlds" are populated with lifelike androids that are practically indistinguishable from human beings, each programmed in character for their assigned historical environment. For $1,000 per day, guests may indulge in any adventure with the android population of the park, including sexual encounters and even a fight to the death. Delos's tagline in its advertising promises, "Boy, have we got a vacation for you!"
Peter Martin (Richard Benjamin), a first-time Delos visitor, and his friend John Blane (James Brolin), on a repeat visit, go to West World. One of the attractions is the Gunslinger (Yul Brynner), a robot programmed to instigate gunfights. The firearms issued to the park guests have temperature sensors that prevent them from shooting humans or anything with a high body temperature but allow them to 'kill' the cold-blooded androids. The Gunslinger's programming allows guests to draw their guns and kill it, with the robot always returning the next day for another duel. Meanwhile, the technicians running Delos notice problems beginning to spread like an infection among the androids: the robots in Roman World and Medieval World begin experiencing an increasing number of breakdowns and systemic failures, which are said to have spread to West World. When one of the supervising computer scientists scoffs at the "analogy of an infectious disease," he is told by the Chief Supervisor (Alan Oppenheimer), "We aren't dealing with ordinary machines here. These are highly complicated pieces of equipment, almost as complicated as living organisms. In some cases, they've been designed by other computers. We don't know exactly how they work."
Peter Martin (Richard Benjamin), a first-time Delos visitor, and his friend John Blane (James Brolin), on a repeat visit, go to West World. One of the attractions is the Gunslinger (Yul Brynner), a robot programmed to instigate gunfights. The firearms issued to the park guests have temperature sensors that prevent them from shooting humans or anything with a high body temperature but allow them to 'kill' the cold-blooded androids. The Gunslinger's programming allows guests to draw their guns and kill it, with the robot always returning the next day for another duel. Meanwhile, the technicians running Delos notice problems beginning to spread like an infection among the androids: the robots in Roman World and Medieval World begin experiencing an increasing number of breakdowns and systemic failures, which are said to have spread to West World. When one of the supervising computer scientists scoffs at the "analogy of an infectious disease," he is told by the Chief Supervisor (Alan Oppenheimer), "We aren't dealing with ordinary machines here. These are highly complicated pieces of equipment, almost as complicated as living organisms. In some cases, they've been designed by other computers. We don't know exactly how they work."
Above: The relentless killer robot, the Gunslinger (Yul Brynner)
The malfunctions become more serious when a robotic rattlesnake bites Blane in West World, and, against its programming, an android refuses a guest's advances in Medieval World. The failures escalate until Medieval World's Black Knight robot kills a guest in a swordfight. The resort's supervisors try to regain control by shutting down power to the entire park. However, the shutdown traps them in Central Control when the doors automatically lock, unable to turn the power back on and escape. Meanwhile, the robots in all three worlds run amok, operating on reserve power.
Martin and Blane, passed out drunk after a bar-room brawl, wake up in West World's bordello, unaware of the park's massive breakdown. When the Gunslinger challenges the men to a showdown, Blane treats the confrontation as an amusement until the robot outdraws, shoots and mortally wounds him. Martin runs for his life and the robot implacably follows. Martin flees to the other areas of the park, but finds only dead guests, damaged robots, and a panicked technician attempting to escape Delos who is shortly thereafter shot by the Gunslinger. Martin climbs down through a manhole in Roman World into the underground control complex and discovers that the resort's computer technicians suffocated in the Control Room when the ventilation system shut down. The Gunslinger stalks him through the underground corridors so he runs away until he enters a robot-repair lab. When the Gunslinger comes into the room, Martin pretends to be a robot, throws acid into its face, and flees, returning to the surface inside the Medieval World castle. With the relentless Gunslinger still in pursuit, Martin makes one last desperate stand against the killer robot in a fleeting hope of surviving Westworld!
Martin and Blane, passed out drunk after a bar-room brawl, wake up in West World's bordello, unaware of the park's massive breakdown. When the Gunslinger challenges the men to a showdown, Blane treats the confrontation as an amusement until the robot outdraws, shoots and mortally wounds him. Martin runs for his life and the robot implacably follows. Martin flees to the other areas of the park, but finds only dead guests, damaged robots, and a panicked technician attempting to escape Delos who is shortly thereafter shot by the Gunslinger. Martin climbs down through a manhole in Roman World into the underground control complex and discovers that the resort's computer technicians suffocated in the Control Room when the ventilation system shut down. The Gunslinger stalks him through the underground corridors so he runs away until he enters a robot-repair lab. When the Gunslinger comes into the room, Martin pretends to be a robot, throws acid into its face, and flees, returning to the surface inside the Medieval World castle. With the relentless Gunslinger still in pursuit, Martin makes one last desperate stand against the killer robot in a fleeting hope of surviving Westworld!
[opening lines]
Interviewer of Delos Guests: [hosting a commercial] Hi. Ed Renfrew for Delos again. If there's anyone who doesn't know what Delos is, well, as we've always said: Delos is the vacation of the future, today. At Delos, you get your choice of the vacation you want. There's Medieval World, Roman World and, of course, Westworld. Let's talk to some of the people who've been there.
Top and Above: Friends John Blane (James Brolin) and Peter Martin (Richard Benjamin) visit Delos' resorts Westworld for a vacation
Author Michael Crichton became inspired to write Westworld after a trip to Disneyland, where he saw the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and was impressed by the animatronic characters. With the script completed in August 1972, it was offered to all of the major studios, who all turned it down the project except for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, then under head of production Dan Melnick. Crichton later said, "MGM had a bad reputation among filmmakers; in recent years, directors as diverse as Robert Altman, Blake Edwards, Stanley Kubrick, Fred Zinneman and Sam Peckinpah had complained bitterly about their treatment there. There were too many stories of unreasonable pressure, arbitrary script changes, inadequate post production, and cavalier recutting of the final film. Nobody who had a choice made a picture at Metro, but then we didn't have a choice. Dan Melnick... assured [us]... that we would not be subjected to the usual MGM treatment. In large part, he made good on that promise".
Although not wishing to make his directorial debut with science fiction, Crichton nevertheless persevered under MGM and began the long, difficult pre-production period, with MGM originally wanting make the film for under a million dollars (although the studio later increased the budget by another $250,000). MGM demanded script changes up to the first day of shooting and even the leads were not signed until 48 hours before principal photography began (which Crichton, the director eventually found out, had little to no control over the casting).
Actors Richard Benjamin and James Brolin were eventually cast as the leads Peter Martin and John Blane, with Dick Van Patten and Norman Bartold co-starring as fellow Delos Resort tourists the Banker and the Medieval Knight, and Alan Oppenheimer, as the Westworld's Chief Supervisor, who predicts that the robots may become unstable. Joining the cast as Delos' futuristic robots were Victoria Shaw (as the Medieval Queen), Terry Wilson (as the Sheriff), Majel Barrett (as Miss Carrie, madam of the Westworld bordello), and Michael Mikler, as the murderous Black Knight. And in perhaps one of his most iconic roles, Russian-born Swiss-American film and stage actor Yul Brynner accepted the role as the relentless The Gunslinger. Crichton in particular wanted to model The Gunslinger's appearance on Brynner's character from The Magnificent Seven, up to and including the identical costumes the two characters wear.
Although not wishing to make his directorial debut with science fiction, Crichton nevertheless persevered under MGM and began the long, difficult pre-production period, with MGM originally wanting make the film for under a million dollars (although the studio later increased the budget by another $250,000). MGM demanded script changes up to the first day of shooting and even the leads were not signed until 48 hours before principal photography began (which Crichton, the director eventually found out, had little to no control over the casting).
Actors Richard Benjamin and James Brolin were eventually cast as the leads Peter Martin and John Blane, with Dick Van Patten and Norman Bartold co-starring as fellow Delos Resort tourists the Banker and the Medieval Knight, and Alan Oppenheimer, as the Westworld's Chief Supervisor, who predicts that the robots may become unstable. Joining the cast as Delos' futuristic robots were Victoria Shaw (as the Medieval Queen), Terry Wilson (as the Sheriff), Majel Barrett (as Miss Carrie, madam of the Westworld bordello), and Michael Mikler, as the murderous Black Knight. And in perhaps one of his most iconic roles, Russian-born Swiss-American film and stage actor Yul Brynner accepted the role as the relentless The Gunslinger. Crichton in particular wanted to model The Gunslinger's appearance on Brynner's character from The Magnificent Seven, up to and including the identical costumes the two characters wear.
[explaining the possibility of a "computer virus"]
Chief Supervisor: We aren't dealing with ordinary machines here. These are highly complicated pieces of equipment. Almost as complicated as living organisms. In some cases, they have been designed by other computers. We don't know exactly how they work.
Top: Delos Chief Supervisor (Alan Oppenheimer) starts to notice strange things about the robots;
Above: The Gunslinger, badly damaged, faces off against Martin!
With a schedule of a little over thirty-days, Crichton focused on shooting the bare essentials for the scenes - Crichton later wrote that since "most of the situations in the film are cliches; they are incidents out of hundreds of old movies" that the scenes "should be shot as cliches. This dictated a conventional treatment in the choice of lenses and the staging.". Westworld was filmed in several locations, including the Mojave Desert, the gardens of the Harold Lloyd Estate, several MGM sound stages and on the MGM backlot, one of the final films to be shot there.
Unfortunately, there were several minor injures during filming. During a shootout scene a piece of wadding from a blank cartridge struck Yul Brynner in the eye, scratching his cornea and leaving him unable to wear his light reflecting contacts without his injured eye turning red and tearing up, so shooting had to be maneuvered to allow time for his eye to heal. And during the scene where James Brolin's character was bitten by a rattlesnake, while the milked rattler was attached to Brolin's arm, he was bitten by the teeth on the snakes lower jaw, despite wearing padding on his arm made of leather and cotton.
Despite these setbacks and mishaps, Westworld did include some truly groundbreaking effects to portray Delos' robot denizens. For instance, the first use of computer digitized images as part of a feature film (not merely monitor graphics) was the Gunslinger's point of view in Westworld. Crichton had originally gone to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, but after learning that the two minutes of animation would take nine months and cost $200,000, he contacted John Whitney Sr., who in turn recommended his son John Whitney Jr. The latter went to Information International, Inc., where they could work at night and complete the animation both faster and much cheaper. John Whitney, Jr. digitally processed motion picture photography at Information International, Inc. to appear pixelized in order to portray the Gunslinger android's point of view. The approximately 2 minutes and 31 seconds worth of cinegraphic block portraiture was accomplished by color-separating (three basic color separations plus black mask) each frame of source 70 mm film images, scanning each of these elements to convert into rectangular blocks, then adding basic color according to the tone values developed. The resulting coarse pixel matrix was output back to film. After the process was finally developed enough to produce satisfactory results, it took a mere eight hours to produce each ten seconds of Gunslinger's pixellated POV. A much simpler solution was employed for the scene where the Gunslinger robot is splashed in the face with acid - Yul Brynner's face was coated with an oil-based makeup mixed with ground Alka-Seltzer, with a splash of water then produced the fizzing effect.
Unfortunately, there were several minor injures during filming. During a shootout scene a piece of wadding from a blank cartridge struck Yul Brynner in the eye, scratching his cornea and leaving him unable to wear his light reflecting contacts without his injured eye turning red and tearing up, so shooting had to be maneuvered to allow time for his eye to heal. And during the scene where James Brolin's character was bitten by a rattlesnake, while the milked rattler was attached to Brolin's arm, he was bitten by the teeth on the snakes lower jaw, despite wearing padding on his arm made of leather and cotton.
Despite these setbacks and mishaps, Westworld did include some truly groundbreaking effects to portray Delos' robot denizens. For instance, the first use of computer digitized images as part of a feature film (not merely monitor graphics) was the Gunslinger's point of view in Westworld. Crichton had originally gone to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, but after learning that the two minutes of animation would take nine months and cost $200,000, he contacted John Whitney Sr., who in turn recommended his son John Whitney Jr. The latter went to Information International, Inc., where they could work at night and complete the animation both faster and much cheaper. John Whitney, Jr. digitally processed motion picture photography at Information International, Inc. to appear pixelized in order to portray the Gunslinger android's point of view. The approximately 2 minutes and 31 seconds worth of cinegraphic block portraiture was accomplished by color-separating (three basic color separations plus black mask) each frame of source 70 mm film images, scanning each of these elements to convert into rectangular blocks, then adding basic color according to the tone values developed. The resulting coarse pixel matrix was output back to film. After the process was finally developed enough to produce satisfactory results, it took a mere eight hours to produce each ten seconds of Gunslinger's pixellated POV. A much simpler solution was employed for the scene where the Gunslinger robot is splashed in the face with acid - Yul Brynner's face was coated with an oil-based makeup mixed with ground Alka-Seltzer, with a splash of water then produced the fizzing effect.
Above: Martin becomes the sole survivor of Westworld
With filming complete, Crichton later re-edited the first cut of the movie because he was depressed by how long and boring it was. Scenes that were deleted from the rough cut include the bank robbery and sales room sequences, and the hovercraft with passengers flying above the desert in the beginning. Additional, and longer, dialogue scenes were also cut, as well as scenes with robots going crazy and killing guests (including a scene where one guest is tied down to a rack and is killed when his arms are pulled out!). There was also originally a longer chase scene with Gunslinger chasing Peter and Gunslinger cleaning his face with water after Peter throws acid on him. In Crichton's assembly cut there was also a different ending which included a fight between Gunslinger and Peter (which was deleted because it seemed like it was staged and foolish) and an alternate death scene of Gunslinger where he is killed with the same rack that was used by one of the other robots to kill one of the guests in previously mentioned deleted scene.
Westworld first held a week-long roadshow opening before premiering in Los Angeles in a limited run, and widely released on November 21st, 1973 in New York. Westworld became the critical and box office hit of the year, with Variety magazine described the film as excellent, saying that it "combines solid entertainment, chilling topicality, and superbly intelligent serio-comic story values".
Westworld first held a week-long roadshow opening before premiering in Los Angeles in a limited run, and widely released on November 21st, 1973 in New York. Westworld became the critical and box office hit of the year, with Variety magazine described the film as excellent, saying that it "combines solid entertainment, chilling topicality, and superbly intelligent serio-comic story values".
TRIVIA: The western set for Westworld was used in Blazing Saddles (1974).
Top: Writer/director John Crichton on set of Westworld;
Above: Crichton with star Richard Benjamin
After making Westworld, Crichton was initially exhausted by the process and took a year off (and ultimately no directing another film for another five years). For Crichton, the picture marked the end of "about five years of science fiction/monster pictures for me", and took a break from the genre to write The Great Train Robbery. Crichton himself would later adapt and direct the screen version of the novel in the same year as directing the suspense film Coma (starring Geneviève Bujold and Michael Douglas); both in 1978.
A sequel, Futureworld, was filmed in 1976, and released by American International Pictures (rather than MGM), with only Brynner returning from the original cast to reprise his Gunslinger character. Four years later, in 1980, the CBS television network aired a short-lived television series, Beyond Westworld, which expanded on the concepts and plot of the second film with new characters, but its poor ratings caused it to be canceled after only three of the five episodes aired. Beginning in 2002, trade publications began reporting that a Westworld remake, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, was in production, and would be written by Terminator 3 screenwriters Michael Ferris and John Bracanto, with Tarsem Singh slated to direct. Although nothing came of these plans, Warner Bros still announced on January 19, 2011 that plans for Westworld remake were still active.
In August 2013, it was announced that HBO had ordered a pilot for a Westworld TV series to be produced by J.J. Abrams, Jonathan Nolan, and Jerry Weintraub. Nolan and his wife Lisa Joy were set to write and executive produce the series, with Nolan directing the pilot episode. The new series, which is set to air ten episodes, stars Anthony Hopkins, Evan Rachel Wood, Thandie Newton, James Marsden, Jeffrey Wright, Rodrigo Santoro, Clifton Collins Jr., and Ed Harris, with the season premiering on October 2, 2016 on HBO.
A sequel, Futureworld, was filmed in 1976, and released by American International Pictures (rather than MGM), with only Brynner returning from the original cast to reprise his Gunslinger character. Four years later, in 1980, the CBS television network aired a short-lived television series, Beyond Westworld, which expanded on the concepts and plot of the second film with new characters, but its poor ratings caused it to be canceled after only three of the five episodes aired. Beginning in 2002, trade publications began reporting that a Westworld remake, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, was in production, and would be written by Terminator 3 screenwriters Michael Ferris and John Bracanto, with Tarsem Singh slated to direct. Although nothing came of these plans, Warner Bros still announced on January 19, 2011 that plans for Westworld remake were still active.
In August 2013, it was announced that HBO had ordered a pilot for a Westworld TV series to be produced by J.J. Abrams, Jonathan Nolan, and Jerry Weintraub. Nolan and his wife Lisa Joy were set to write and executive produce the series, with Nolan directing the pilot episode. The new series, which is set to air ten episodes, stars Anthony Hopkins, Evan Rachel Wood, Thandie Newton, James Marsden, Jeffrey Wright, Rodrigo Santoro, Clifton Collins Jr., and Ed Harris, with the season premiering on October 2, 2016 on HBO.
ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 86%
_____________________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment