I kind of wish the New Beverly could’ve gotten a hold of Logan’s Run, but Westworld was a fine alternative.

Jeff, I’d never noticed it either until I was standing outside the theater waiting for the ticket booth to open.

Joel, it was a little odd seeing this as an adult because in a way it was like exorcising the boogie man, or looking under the bed and seeing there were no monster’s there. Yul Brynner Acid Face wasn’t quite like my overactive kid’s imagination remembered it…though the crispy Yul Brynner corpse was still pretty good.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Z3-liEsr974&feature=related

Eighty television channels, Alison! You are lucky. We were so poor when I was a kid we lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t’ mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi’ his belt.

That Westworld poster is creeping me out every time I load the LIC homepage. Yul Brenner with robot jaw is one of my childhood fears.

I didn’t see The Magnificent Seven until many years later (I think Craig introduced me to it…and Seven Samurai) but I’ve never gotten past the idea that my notion of the character is warped by the semi-parody that is Westworld. I think being mildly tramautized by Westworld first actually made his original performance much more gratifying, even if I liked Vaughn, Coburn, and Bronson’s performances more.

I live nowhere near this theater, so I’ll have to wait for a festival in one of the NY arthouses that plays it or revisit it on DVD.

I can’t seem to remember what Soylent Green is, though. Isn’t it made out of old tires or something?

Never has the term “steely-eyed” been more appropriate for Yul Brenner in Westworld.

The sequel, Futureworld, with Peter Fonda, Blythe Danner and a returning Brenner, was a movie I found nifty when I was really young, but unlike the two movies reviewed here I haven’t seen that one in a long, long time.

I’m so glad that the preposed remake of Westworld, with Ahnold reprising his Terminator role in place of Brenner, never got off the ground. Not only was it a painfully obvious concept, but the idea of Ahnold trying to one-up Brenner’s performance by doing a somewhat meta self-mocking take on his own robotic acting just seems like too much.

Funny how Crichton’s take on man-made technology gone awry has had such a profound effect on filmgoers over the years. Andromeda Strain remains a great, overlooked movie and lord knows Jurassic Park is actually a pretty good story/movie, warts and all.

I am ignoring Sphere and Congo, but they don’t really cover the same ground anyway.

That Christian guy owes me two dollars. I want my two dollars.