Westworld (1973)

The science fiction thriller WESTWORLD (1973) has a lot of interesting things going for it.  First, it's directed by one of the most popular fiction authors of the 20th Century, Michael Crichton.  Crichton  had written two novels already - THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN and THE TERMINAL MAN and both were made into films.  Whereas most novelists would move on to their next book, Crichton chose to write and direct what is in essence a hybrid sci-fi western B film.  I would put WESTWORLD on my list of guilty pleasures to view.  It's such a simple idea. A theme park for adults that offers three choices: Medieval World, Roman World, and Westworld. Visitors pay a thousand dollars a day to live out their fantasies whether it be robbing a bank in the 1880's or jousting with the Black Knight or living it up in decadent Rome with human like robots playing most of the roles for the guests to interact with.

I first saw WESTWORLD on television probably in the 1980's.  I don't recall seeing the whole film but I remember Richard Benjamin sleeping with the girl robot and the robots turning on the guests, killing them.  And I remember Yul Brynner as the unstoppable Gunslinger but more about him in a moment.

In the film WESTWORLD, the company that runs this adult amusement park is called Delos.  Their slogan is THE VACATION OF THE FUTURE - TODAY.  Peter Martin (Richard Benjamin), a recently divorced Chicago lawyer, is going to Westworld for the first time with his buddy John Blane (James Brolin), a repeat visitor. Blane's hope is to get Martin some fun and adventure after Martin's bitter divorce.  Westworld is the answer.  If a guest wants a gunfight, they have a gunfight.  If the guest wants to be in a barroom brawl, a barroom brawl it is.  There are even robot western prostitutes to entertain the guests.  Besides Blane and Martin, the film also follows the exploits of a meek banker (Dick Van Patten) who wants to be Westworld's next sheriff and another guest (Norman Bartold) who's fantasy is to woo a medieval queen.

Behind the scenes at  Delos, technicians and programmers in white coats run the park, direct and coordinate the events, and fix the robots each night after their daily gunfights, bank robberies, and jousts.  But the theme park is not running as smoothly as it seems. Delos's Chief Technician (Alan Oppenheimer) is noticing more and more malfunctions from the robots.  He notes that it began in Roman World and like a virus or disease, has worked its way over to the other theme parks.

Crichton builds the suspense nicely, never rushing it. He shows the tourists interacting with the robots and the danger that is possible. Subtle little incidents hint that all is not well in Delos. A robot rattlesnake bites Blane. A medieval wench slaps a guest when she should accept his advances. It's only a matter of time before the black shirted Gunslinger that Peter keeps shooting will have his revenge. When it does happen, the payoff is perfect.  When the technicians try to cut off the robots power and disarm them, that action fails and their control room loses power and oxygen, bringing about their doom as well.

As the robots revolt, all hell breaks loose. As Peter flees the Gunslinger and crosses over from Westworld to Roman World, there's a great shot of a faux Roman bust of some emperor lying in a river bed. Just as Rome fell for its excesses, so too will Delos's theme parks as the robots rebel against their creators.

WESTWORLD touches on a theme that Crichton will explore again and again.  Science gone astray.  In THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN (1971), a military satellite bring back a deadly virus. In JURASSIC PARK (1993), dinosaurs cloned from DNA wreak havoc on an island that was planned to be a theme park.  And in WESTWORLD, it's robots that turn on the tourists they are meant to entertain.

Even though WESTWORLD is a  B movie, the directing, editing, photography, and acting is all first rate.  Benjamin and Brolin are likable and Brolin especially has fun playing an Eastwood/Leone like cowboy on his vacation.  I never understood why Brolin never quite made it big in films.  He had the looks and the charisma.  The casting of Yul Brynner as the Gunslinger is probably what makes WESTWORLD so memorable.  Brynner pays homage to his cowboy character in THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960) and with his perfectly bald dome and clean shaven face, Brynner looks like he could be a robot.

The Gunslinger is an early incarnation of the unstoppable machine that director James Cameron will create in THE TERMINATOR films.  The machine that just keeps coming and coming even after having acid and fire thrown at it. And the theme park Westworld Crichton will revisit later in his novel and the subsequent film JURASSIC PARK which is to be a theme park until the dinosaurs destroy the place.

The story moves briskly, maybe too much so.  We never get to see what happens to the Dick Van Patten sheriff character and Roman World is hardly shown at all which could have been a budgetary limitation.  But Crichton has a lot of fun with WESTWORLD as well.  In a sublime piece of irony, as Peter flees the pursuing Gunslinger, he comes across a white coated technician repairing his golf car out in the desert.  The technician brags about the robot model and how he's unstoppable.  Peter rides on and the technician is shot and killed by his creation - the Gunslinger.

Michael Crichton would direct only a few more films after WESTWORLD including THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (1979), COMA (1978), and LOOKER (1981) and he would go on to write many more best-selling novels that mostly involved some kind of science fiction theme.  But I do think one of his best stories he ever told was not a novel but a film and screen play called WESTWORLD.

Batman (1989)

I grew up on the campy BATMAN TV series of the 60's with Adam West as Batman , Burt Ward as Robin the Boy Wonder and a host of over the hill movie stars and comedians as the Arch Villains i.e. Cesar Romero (the Joker), Frank Gorshin (the Riddler), or Burgess Meredith (the Penguin). When I lived in Los Angeles, I even visited the entrance to the Bat Cave somewhere in Griffith Park. But once you grow older, campy isn't quite as interesting. I was excited when it was announced that a new darker, more mature Batman movie was going to be made and to helm this franchise was the perfect director - Tim Burton.

Burton's BATMAN (1989) jump started the whole super hero film franchises that had vanished after Christopher Reeve's SUPERMAN films in the mid-1970's. BATMAN was the event of 1989 as I recall and producers Peter Guber and Jon Peters did a great job of hyping their film, so much so that viewing it recently, it's a bit painful to watch compared to the bigger, badder, even darker THE DARK KNIGHT (2008). The Prince songs now seem very Warner Brothers cross-promotional and Gotham City is just a big, sterile London movie set. So has the THE DARK KNIGHT completed knocked my beloved 1989 BATMAN from super hero film glory?

Not exactly.  The strength of this BATMAN are the actors.  With all the well earned accolades and awards given to the late Heath Ledger for his rendition of the Joker in THE DARK KNIGHT, it's hard to believe 21 years ago we were bestowing similar praise to Jack Nicholson's Joker, believing his was the definitive performance.   Nicholson's Joker is a bit more likable and accessible than Ledger's but he'll still kill an innocent bystander or his girlfriend (Jerry  Hall) in an instance.  Ledger's performance is amazing but Nicholson's Joker is inspired. And Michael Keaton's Bruce Wayne/Batman is equally interesting. Usually the super hero plays second fiddle to the more colorful super villain but Keaton holds his own, making Bruce Wayne a delightfully absent minded millionaire and his Batman just a hair less homicidal than the Joker. I give Keaton's Bruce Wayne a slight nod over Christian Bale's  Bruce Wayne in THE DARK KNIGHT.  I do like the look of Val Kilmer's Bruce Wayne in BATMAN FOREVER (1995) but I need to see that film to make a final verdict.

BATMAN pits Bruce Wayne aka Batman against his arch-nemesis Jack Napier aka the Joker. Napier/the Joker (Jack Nicholson) works for Boss Carl Grissom (Jack Palance), Gotham City's resident crime boss. But Grissom doesn't trust Napier and sets him up to be caught by the police at a chemical factory Grissom owns. Batman (Michael Keaton) shows up, Gotham's new caped crusader, and accidentally knocks Napier into a pool of acid. The acid not only corrodes Napier's face into an unnatural grin, it causes Napier to go insane. Reborn as a white skinned, green haired homicidal criminal, the Joker begins a war on his fellow crime bosses, Gotham City, and Batman.

Bruce Wayne/Batman is haunted by the death of his mother and father, gunned down in front of his eyes by a mugger with the catch phrase, "Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?" His parents deaths lead Wayne to use his wealth to fight against the forces of evil. Aided by his faithful man servant Alfred (Michael Gough), Batman matches wits with the Joker and his gang as the Joker poisons the city's toiletry products in an attempt to terrorize Gotham City. The two also battle for the affections of photo journalist Vickie Vale (Kim Basinger).

The Batman/Joker/Vale triangle is an interesting element.  All three are touched and affected by violence. Vale photographs images of famine and war for a news magazine and is drawn to Batman in his crusade to stop violence in Gotham City. Wayne's parents were murdered by a gunmen who we will eventually discover was a young Jack Napier. Because of their deaths, Wayne turns to crime fighting and as the Batman, Wayne causes Napier to become the Joker, in essence creating his nemesis. The chemistry between Keaton and Basinger is great too, a connection of two lonely souls I never full appreciated when I first saw BATMAN in a San Fernando Valley multiplex.

BATMAN falters toward its climax as director Burton and writers Sam Hamm and Warren Skaaren seem to run out of plot ideas as the Joker tries yet again to harm Gotham City with poison gas from a giant parade balloon and Batman comes out of nowhere with the Bat Jet to thwart him. Action scenes are not Tim Burton's strong suit and most of the action pieces in this film are clunky and not very well staged. BATMAN was only Tim Burton's third mainstream film and over his amazing career, he will get better with action scenes. Burton's strong suit are his flourishes of macabre and his visual and design flair.  Besides the aforementioned bad Gotham city set, Burton hits it dead-on with the Bat Cave and the Gotham Museum and Vale's apartment and even the Hammer film like Gothic cathedral where Batman and the Joker have their final duel. The late production designer Anton Furst (FULL METAL JACKET) deserves some credit as well for the film's look. I forgive them for the poor Gotham City set, probably a casualty due to the actor's salaries and the the high cost of filming outdoors on location. 

Some of the characters integral to the Batman mythology aren't too prominent in this BATMAN. Harvey Dent (Billie Dee Williams) and Commissioner Gordon (Pat Hingle) are very peripheral.  Only Alfred has a key role, acting as a surrogate parent and partner for Bruce Wayne/Batman.

Tim Burton does tip his hat to the BATMAN TV series. Nicholson's Joker owes a slight nod to the TV Joker Cesar Romero with his crazed laughter and theatrical nature. The Bat Mobile is more a muscle car in this film then the 60's TV car. And when the Joker's henchmen wear Joker buttons on their coats, I  smiled to myself knowing that Burton had watched a few BATMAN TV episodes during his research to get the henchmen just right.

In the end, I was pleasantly surprised that BATMAN held up a little better than I thought to the more recent and well made interpretations of Bob Kane's original hero. Keaton and Nicholson and Basinger contribute immensely to this comic book film being taken seriously and the choice of a young, imaginative Tim Burton put super hero movies back into our consciousness and paved the way for the likes of SPIDER MAN, IRON MAN, and even the Batman reboot THE DARK KNIGHT.