We’ve discussed three of Michael Crichton’s biggest adaptations with Congo, Sphere, and of course Jurassic Park but we also covered a bit more of the man and his career in the sections about the stories themselves. While the wunderkind could write novels and screenplays, create TV shows, and even program his video game releases, he wasn’t given the chance to direct often. While he has some fun ones like Runaway and Coma, he also has some genuinely great ones like The Great Train Robbery and Looker. While I enjoy all of those, I think one that is fun, good, and actually really important to pop culture is Westworld. It would invariably lead to Jurassic Park and be more of a precursor to The Terminator franchise than it gets credit for as well as a TV series that I think we can all agree ran on for too long. It was parodied by The Simpsons in one of that show’s best episodes and plays with Western tropes in one of the best possible ways but somehow isn’t held up on the pantheon with some of the author’s other works. Let’s look at the Black Sheep of Michael Crichton’s career with Westworld where nothing can possibly go wrong.
Crichton started his career publishing under the pseudonyms John Lange, Jeffery Hudson, and Michael Douglas but his first release under his real name was a runaway success. Andromeda Strain would quickly be gobbled up and land on the screen just two years later. Crichton would be given a chance to direct something, but it would be an adaptation of one of his own novels titled Binary that would be turned into the TV movie Pursuit, airing on ABC in December of 1972. While he was ready for another movie, he didn’t really want to do a sci-fi movie but also felt that studios would only see him as a sci-fi guy. He was introduced to producer Paul Lazarus and the two agreed on a movie. Westworld’s screenplay was actually based on a Disneyland visit by Crichton, specifically the ride Pirates of the Caribbean, something that Jeff Goldblum’s character Ian Malcolm would reiterate in Jurassic Park 30 years later. As hot as Crichton was at the time, every studio except for MGM turned down the movie and even then, they were only given 1.2 million as the budget.
The studio meddled throughout the entire production as well and stars James Brolin and Richard Benjamin weren’t cast until 48 hours before shooting began. Other actors that were looked at were William Shatner, Peter Graves, James Caan, Lee Majors, Elliott Gould, and Jon Voight. The actual actors in the movie ended up with their roles because Crichton decided he wanted to go both younger and more unknown. This worked out in other ways because even though he was on a downward career trajectory, Yul Brynner was a well-known quantity and his name was what was hoped would draw the crowd and it was his character that is used on the poster. That 1.2-million-dollar budget was paired with just a 30-day shooting schedule, but they made it work. Brynner accepted a much smaller payout as he was struggling with getting offers and both the costumes and most of the sets were left over from previous film and TV projects. The exterior garden shots for Rome World are actually part of Harold Lloyd estate before the whole thing was sold off just a few years later.
Even with all of those constraints, we would get a hell of an experience. Westworld opens up with a reporter asking people about their experience in the Delos trio of parks that include Westworld, Medieval World, and Rome World that include living your fantasy with lifelike androids and being able to do whatever you’d like… for $1000 a day. We then switch to our main characters in John and Peter who are on their way to a getaway in Westworld. John has been there before, and it’s learned through dialogue that Peter is going through a nasty divorce and is trying to let loose a little with the help of John and the unhinged adventure at Westworld. We follow them through the park, and they run into a gunslinger who insults Peter. He shoots him and the next day after partaking in some late-night activities with a female android, he shoots the same bot while he holds John hostage. Intermixed with the adventures of the two friends, we get to see other patrons enjoying the other parks like a man who is only there to cheat on his wife in Medieval World but also see behind the scenes.
The engineers are finding more and more bugs in the programming with both failure rates and interesting actions taken by the park androids. The board of directors goes back and forth on what to do but by the time they decide, it’s too late. John is bitten by a robot snake and in Medieval World, the Black Knight kills a guest. The control room tries to turn power off park wide but that kills them due to the room locking and oxygen leaving while the androids still have enough reserve power to wreak havoc for a while. The Gunslinger kills John and Peter flees for his life while trying to outsmart the robot killer both in the parks and in the operations center. HE finally defeats the cowboy menace but is seemingly alone with no way off the park. While he isn’t in immediate danger anymore, how long can he last?
The ending and overall feel of the story fits right into the nihilism of the 70’s. While the Jurassic Park book is pretty dark and kills off a ton of people, the movie is far kinder. Had it been made in the 70s I feel it would have chosen to fit the tone better. While some 70s fare like The Omen or The Wicker Man went full downer ending (sidenote: please let me know if you guys want an original Wicker Man video), other stuff like The Exorcist and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre had the heroes live albeit with serious damage done. Westworld takes that route with Peter living but losing his friend, being stranded, and every other human at the park dead.
While Jurassic Park is a spiritual sequel to Westworld, let’s briefly talk about its remake, or I guess sequel if you believe the clues left for us on screen. The show that ran only 4 seasons but somehow 7 years isn’t as good as the movie. While it would seem to be more prescient with its use of AI going wrong and humans beginning to lose the battle against machines, it also went on far too long and kind of lost what it was. The first season and most of the second season are pretty great but then it leaves the titular park and goes as rogue as its androids. While its creative team pedigree is more impressive in scope, though Crichton being the writer, director, and editing drive alone in the first one is damn impressive, it’s also already lost to time without any kind of living legacy or media inspired by it.
On the other side of that coin, the Westworld movie has a legacy that is undeniable. While the author’s own Jurassic Park is the logical progression, or evolution as it were, there’s another strong inspiration here that Crichton offered the world. Yul Brynner, who most of the viewing audience knew as hero Chris from The Magnificent Seven 13 years prior, becomes a single-minded killing machine bent on taking down Richard Benjamin even after he is shot at, burned with acid, and destroyed with fire. He just keeps coming. Sound familiar? While the most commonly attributed ingredients to The Terminator are Harlan Ellison’s short story Soldier from Tomorrow and James Camerons bogus Italian journey fever dream, its hard not to see where some of the mannerisms and techniques come from here. The Android is called a 406 which in addition to sounding similar to a 404 error on a computer, also could be the genesis for a T-800.
This brings the horror element to prominence here as well. In addition to being shades of a terminator, the Gunslinger is almost slasher like in its approach to going after Richard Benjamin. It has a slight sly smile when it shoots John dead and then uses powers that seemingly leave Peter, well, powerless to stop him. The music in the movie drastically changes from period piece or vaguely science fiction to what sounds like broken gears attempting to work and ups the tension and intensity. The end of the movie also houses two of the best slept on horror segments of the 70s. The first comes when Peter frantically looks for an escape in the underground maintenance section of the park and when he runs into a dead end, he lays on a table and pretends to be a corpse. Crichton liked this segment so much that he created a slightly different version of it in his next directorial effort Coma. This is where Peter also throws acid on the bot’s face which again echoes a final girls attempts at stopping a slasher.
The second and arguably more intense scene is when Peter flees to medieval world and a damaged Gunslinger comes after him. His sensors are damaged, and he has difficulty seeing Peter with the torches being lit on the walls. The concentration the killer android has on his face as he tries to parse out what heat is human and what isn’t while Peter holds his breath for dear life is terrifying. We get a great shot that is almost over Peter’s shoulder, and you are really unsure if he’s going to be seen or not. It ends with a quick fight and escape where the Gunslinger is burned and then the movie ends with a solid jump scare. Everything about the Gunslinger is fascinating from his line of antagonizing Peter with “He wants his Mama” to how unpredictable and unhinged he becomes. He mostly walks but at some point, runs which got my heart rate up, and the use of Yul Brynner, especially in a get up nearly identical to his most famous hero role is genius. The Oscar winner turning killer is on par with Henry Fonda being the big bad in Once Upon a Time in the West.
Some other fun tidbits that are very Michael Crichton are that this was the first movie ever to use computer digitized images. It’s what you see from the Gunslinger’s point of view and took what was at the time astonishing with 8 hours to produce the 10 seconds of footage. His original screenplay which he decided to cut down as he thought was boring was also put out as a movie tie-in book, giving him the distinction of a reversal where one of his movies became a book instead of his books becoming movies. Westworld is not only better than the show that shares its name but it’s also one of the most influential sci-fi horror movies of the 70s. Book your ticket today, what could possibly go wrong?
A couple of the previous episodes of The Black Sheep can be seen at the bottom of this article. To see more, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
Arrow in the Head
