6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
Two reporters, Tracy and Chuck, get a message from a third one who discovered something about "Futureworld" and becomes killed before he could tell anyone about it. They visit Futureworld to find out what he knew.
Starring: Peter Fonda, Blythe Danner, Yul Brynner, John P. Ryan, Stuart MargolinSci-Fi | 100% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 2.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
Michael Crichton wrote and directed Westworld in 1973, and some three years later a Crichton-less sequel called Futureworld appeared. But revisiting either of these films now with 20/20 hindsight one might be tempted to wonder whether Crichton plagiarized himself some two decades later when he came up with Jurassic Park, since both “franchises” (even though the World films probably shouldn’t rightfully be thought of as an actual franchise) deal with technology run amok in what is more or less an amusement park. Westworld was Crichton’s debut as a film director, and it along with Futureworld were in a strange way also sort of sci-fi siblings to Ira Levin’s 1972 novel The Stepford Wives, since all three offerings posited plots that featured something akin to those animatronic robots that became sensations in the sixties when Walt Disney introduced them in such Disneyland attractions as The Hall of Presidents and The Pirates of the Caribbean. If the robots are intentionally submissive in The Stepford Wives, they’re anything but in either Westworld or Futureworld, and in fact are as unpredictable as a charging Tyrannosaurus Rex in Jurassic Park. Crichton was often fascinated by technology gone awry, whether that was a space probe bringing back an unwelcome “visitor” in The Andromeda Strain, brain engineering in The Terminal Man or the vagaries of time travel in Timeline, not to mention those dastardly dinosaurs in what became one of Crichton’s signature pieces. It is manifestly unfair to blame Crichton for much of what ails Futureworld, for in many ways this is sequel construction by rote, regurgitating the basic premise of Westworld with little of the first film’s ingenuity or excitement. The film may hold a certain cachet now as it is one of surprisingly few features to star Blythe Danner, who is of course now better known for being Gwyneth Paltrow’s mother, not to mention the television pitchwoman for an osteoporosis drug.
Futureworld is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Shout! Factory with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This was a fairly low budget affair to begin with and was never a huge hit, so has probably not been curated especially carefully over the years, and this high definition transfer can only do so much with some problematic elements. There's occasional damage sprinkled throughout, with quite a few specks (both white and black) dotting the premises, as well as some minor scratches and the like. The color here seems to have faded appreciably, with skin tones verging perilously close to brown territory quite a bit of the time (Metrocolor has this tendency to begin with quite a bit of the time). The overall image is fairly soft looking, and actually gets toward the fuzzy end of things in midrange and wide shots. Those who fear DNR need not worry, as even if there has been some digital scrubbing applied (which is doubtful), there is still quite visible grain apparent, especially in the many optical effects included in the film, where it's understandably and expectedly magnified.
Futureworld features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mix that has withstood the vagaries of time much better than the image quality. Fidelity remains very good, if not spectacularly brilliant, with dialogue, effects and score cleanly presented and well prioritized. There's not a huge amount of stereo separation here, and in fact a lot of the time the dialogue sounds like it's pumping out of both channels simultaneously, but even without an overly wide splaying of effects, this mix has a reasonably fulsome sound and certainly nothing like the damage issues of the video elements.
Westworld was a fun throwback to the kind of fairly low rent sci-fi fare that used to populate drive-ins in the late fifties, albeit gussied up in a lot of techno-speak and proto-futuristic trappings. Ironically, Futureworld hasn't aged half as well as Westworld has, looking decidedly dowdy and old fashioned, perhaps due to its relatively meager budget and American-International production roots. Performances here are okay, though one gets the distinct impression most of the major players were wishing they were in some other world, like an A-list film, when they were shooting this escapade. This Blu-ray has some fairly problematic video, though the audio is quite good. Fans of Danner, who never really got her due as a leading actress in films, may want to check this out one way or the other. But for Crichton fans who are aching for a film about technology running amok in an amusement facility, the much better bet would of course be Jurassic Park.
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Roger Corman's Cult Classics
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Grave Desires / Tomb of the Living Dead
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Graveyard Tramps
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