I remember watching this film back when I was a kid, and while I knew about Westworld I was never particularly interested in it namely because it was set in the wild west and I really was not a huge fan of the western. Well, I'm still not a huge fan of the western, though there is something interesting about the whole concept, but that is another thought for another time. However, I was interested in Futureworld because that had much more of a science-fiction feel to it, though the only thing that I could actually remember about the film was the holographic game of chess.Anyway, since I have just watched Westworld, and also finished watching the series, I decided that I might relive my childhood and rewatch this film as well. As it turned out this movie was rubbish, and pretty boring as well. It certainly wasn't one of my favourite films as a kid, but it had robots in it, and it was set in the future, so it did keep me entertained for a while. Okay, calling it rubbish is probably a little harsh because it wasn't as bad as some films that I have seen, however putting it up against the likes of Westworld does make it feel very inferior.So, Futureworld is, obviously, the sequel to Westworld, and set a few years after the previous film. The owners of the park have fixed up all the problems, and reopened it, and have invited a couple of journalists to report on the new theme park. Mind you, the fact that the robots have previously gone haywire and proceeded to kill all of the patrons sort of undermined the suspension of disbelief – I simply could not see how a theme park could have survived something like that. Okay, theme parks have survived instances where a ride has malfunctioned resulting in fatalities, however I sort of can't accept it happening in this particular case.While I'm not all that phased about revealing the plot of this film, I won't, just in case you insist on watching it. It is sort of okay, and while they suggest that they attempted not to simply do a remake of the original film, a part of me felt that basically it was, just a lot more subtler. As such there is a lot more interaction between characters, and of course the protagonists are attempting to find out what is going on. As such Futureworld is more like a mystery than a simply sci-fi action film. However, it does drag on a bit, and the scene where the female protagonist dances with the Gunslinger from the first film is simply ridiculous and completely out of place. In the end if you insist on watching it then maybe you will like it, but I wouldn't recommend going out of your way to get your hands on a copy.

It's predecessor Westworld is a bona fide classic. One of those stand alone masterpieces that doesn't warrant or need a sequel. Nothing could compare to it and whatever was served up would only be disappointing.Disappointing is exactly what you get with Futureworld. To be frank it's awful. The story itself has promise, this time the company that create the fantasy theme park and its lifelike robots hatch a cunning plan to clone world leaders and high profile media personalities, bump them off then replace them in the real world with their doppelgangers and RULE THE WORLD! HAHAHAHAHA! (Evil Chuckle). Sounds good right? Wrong.Peter Fonda plays a journalist chosen for "replacement" alongside plucky TV host and love interest Blythe Danner, who are drugged in their sleep on a PR visit to the theme park and cloned. Now this is the worst part of the story. Instead of just killing them while under anaesthetic and leaving their clones go about their business they decide for some ridiculous reason to have the clones kill their own counterparts. So we're treated to the worst shoot-out scene in history when Danner fights it out with her double in the ruins of Westworld and Fonda is chased all around the complex by his double in the most tedious and unexciting sequence I've ever seen in a big budget action movie. Beating their clones our plucky heroes escape the park and the film actually ends on a shot of Fonda flipping the evil Futureworld boss the bird. Yes, really.Everything else about the movie is poor, it absolutely reeks of the 1970's, with terrible clothes and colours, the script is weak, the acting sub standard and the fantastic Yul Brynner only appears in a dreadful dream sequence where he dances with Danner while twirling around a red silk ribbon. In full "gunslinger" costume. Yes, this really does happen.Avoid this at all costs, it's rusty as hell and beyond repair!

THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN DREADED SPOILERS! Having just watched this on Amazon Instant Video (And no they didn't pay me for that free advertisement but I'll sell out cheap! :D ) my perspective is as fresh as my frustration that what turned out to be the last film in the franchise (Funny how a bad entry can do that) didn't end things on a satisfactory note. Since I don't know which you'd prefer first between the good & bad news in my review title anymore than the filmmakers apparently knew how to make a good sequel, I'll arbitrarily choose the good. (I'm an optimist, what can I say?) The music is quite good. Blythe Danner is quite good here as is instantly recognizable baddie John Ryan (Ever notice how most bad guys aren't the most handsome devils in the world of movies? And good guys are always handsome? But I digress.). Also I give them points for recognizing that they NEEDED to bring back Yul Brynner for the sequel.To start off with the bad though whatever points I give for them realizing that they needed Yul Brynner are COMPLETELY negated by the fact they waste him utterly in this made for TV movie looking follow up. He was a virtually unstoppable killing machine in "Westworld", the inspiration for Michael Meyers (John Carpenter has admitted this) & The Terminator as well! Brynner was as The Gunslinger a complete & total BAD ASS! And how do they use him here in his last film? (Tragic when a great actor goes out on a stinker. Reminds me of Raul Julia's last movie being "Streetfighter".) They make him some kind of a Harlequin romance novel fantasy for Blythe Danner's character to get all hot & bothered about!!! I kept WAITING for them to introduce him into the movie thinking "When he shows up it's finally gonna get good!" only to see the aforementioned hippie dippy dream-time sex fantasy sequence! Their misuse of the STAR of this franchise, made all the more sad by it being his last film, was an EPIC FAILURE. I'm not saying that to satisfy me they needed to have him doing exactly what he did in the first one, running & gunning down good guys left & right, but why couldn't they have turned it around & had the good guys use him as their secret weapon when all seemed lost? If you've already seen this imagine how cool it would have been if The Gunslinger showed up at a "We're screwed now!"" moment blowing away his fellow robots with reckless abandon! THAT was what this film needed! But I digress again.Back to what's wrong with "Futureworld".In a word. Fonda. In two words. Peter Fonda.To say that the acting of Peter Fonda in this film was lifeless would be an insult to the dead. It would have been much more believable if they would have revealed that the character that we thought that we knew him as had in fact been a robot throughout the entire film and at least THEN we could have an excuse other than Fonda taking too many drugs in his life or just never bothering to hone his craft because with his name he didn't need to. He's a blight on this movie. Not that it'd be winning any Oscars without him mind you but he didn't do it any favors starring in it either. Makes you appreciate Blythe Danner's talent that much more though. Ultimately what we have here is a sequel that failed for the same reason that most sequels fail. They just didn't try hard enough to make a good film.

Futureworld (1976) *** (out of 4) Sequel to WESTWORLD picks up a couple years after the events in that film as Delos plans on opening Futureworld. A pair of reporters (Peter Fonda, Blythe Danner) are invited into the new theme park but soon they discover that the owners have plans to replace various government officials with lookalikes. FUTUREWORLD doesn't quite reach the levels of the first film but I really give the filmmakers credit for doing something different with the story instead of just delivering a rehash of the first film. With that said, I think the film takes way too long for this story to take place as it really doesn't start to happen until around the 70-minute mark or so and so much of that early running time has us sitting there just waiting for something to eventually take off. It seems that the first half of the film spends a bit too much time with the reporters looking at how good everything in the place is and it just takes too long to get going. I will say that many of the early scenes in the picture are extremely good and especially the stuff dealing with people using the theme park. The jokes about robots that can handle sex were good and I thought there was some other nice humor as well. The performances were also really good with both Fonda and Danner turning in nice work and having some good chemistry together. Yul Brynner is basically here as a cameo but it was still nice seeing the gunslinger again. FUTUREWORLD runs a tad bit too long but the special effects are good and there are several good ideas throughout it.