Westworld (1973); critiques & such

[Jeffbert]

I watched this film about a month ago, & noted a few inconsistencies, one of which I clearly remember.

The Black clad gunfighter Yul Brynner, had just been upgraded with infrared vision. He easily followed the thermal trail that the hapless protagonist had left. Passing through the other two worlds, the last being ancient Rome, and into the underground robot maintenance facility. Yet, when protagonist Peter Martin (R. Benjamin (Quark)) hid among the room temperature robots lying on tables, YB's character walked right up to him without so much as a 2nd glance! He was completely off-guard when Martin splashed acid in his face!

The TCM guy stated that MC had also written the screenplay; which to me, indicated he was responsible for the inconsistency.

Another thing I noticed, though in no way a critique, was Alan Oppenheimer as the chief scientist responsible for creating & maintaining the robots. Immediately, I recognized his voice, & was sure he also portrayed Rudy Wells, in essentially the same role, but in the TV show The $6,000,000 Man. Undoubtedly, more than a few had long ago realized the same thing!

 

[Danny McG]

I remember me and some mates going to see it in the cinema way back in the seventies.
Undreamed of high tech stuff at the time - what? Robots that attack people?
You could practically hear gasps around the whole place when Yul actually gunned down a human, then looked unemotionally at his protesting friend and said "draw".

Edit: There's a thread about this already in Chronicles..
Westworld (1973)

 

[Jeffbert]

That reminded me of the other inconsistency! Thanks, dannymcg.

When the two guys had just arrived in town, & were in their hotel room, Richard Benjamin's character wonders how their safety can be assured, given that they are using real guns. The other guy, says to point his gun at him, and pull the trigger. Well, who would do that? so Benjamin's character does, & the gun does not fire. The other guy says that it has some type of heat detecting device that allows the gun to shoot at cold (room temperature) objects such as robots, but not at warm ones. I assume that YB's gun should have had the same safety device on it, but he has no trouble shooting living humans.

edit: thanks for the link to the earlier thread, but I did a text search for "westworld' before creating this topic, just to be sure someone else had not already covered the same thing. I was a mod on anther forum for several years, & was often doing the same thing, telling newbies, just bursting with enthusiasm that somebody already covered the same topic.

 

[dask]

I've always liked this movie a lot. Loved it when it first came out and enjoy watching it again every couple of years.

 

[BAYLOR]

I bought in dvd for 6 bucks , great film.

The sequel Future World is even better.