Michael Crichton, 1942-2008
November 6, 2008

One news item that I didn’t catch yesterday, probably because I was getting waylaid in the Obama-rama media blitz that took over the air- print- and cyber-waves, was an obituary for the wildly-talented and quite-prolific Michael Crichton, who died of cancer on Tuesday at the age of 66.

Most of the obit headlines I read about Crichton describe him as an author of thrillers, which is undoubtedly, what he is best known for. Crichton’s Hollywood-ready novels have yielded more than a dozen films, including The Andromeda Strain (1971), The Terminal Man (1974), Rising Sun (1993), Disclosure (1994), Congo (1995) and, of course, Jurassic Park (1993) and its follow-up, The Lost World (1997).

But it’s the movies Crichton directed that I wanna talk about; seven all-in-all that are as varied and quirky as the many topics Crichton tackled in his novels. First, there’s a TV movie that I’ve never seen—a political thriller called Pursuit featuring Ben Gazzara and E.G. Marshall. There there are the bad ones: The bad legal thriller Physical Evidence (1989) starring Burt Reynolds and Theresa Russell and then the really bad 1984 futuristic cops-and-robbers flick Runaway with Tom Selleck and Gene Simmons (!) as the bad guy.

Which brings us to the other four, all goodies or, at the very least, guilty pleasures. First off is my favorite of the bunch, 1973’s Westworld. Written and directed by Crichton, the films stars James Brolin and Richard Benjamin as pleasure-seekers who check into a new high-tech resort where the wild west is bought to like via sets, costumes and a phalanx of advanced robots who cater to the guests every whim, be they erotic, exotic or just plain violent. (Just ask the Yul Brynner, who portrays a robotic, six-gun-totin’ bad-ass gunslinger). Also in the group are Crichton’s fine adaptation of Robin Cooke’s medical thriller Coma (1978) starring Michael Douglas and Geneviève Bujold as well as The Great Train Robbery (1979), a fun period heist flick based upon Crichton’s own novel that stars Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland and the shapely Lesley-Anne Down. Finally, there’s a movie that I’ve talked about on these pages before, as it was only released on DVD a couple of years ago. That would be 1981’s Looker (https://www.videobusinesss.com/blog/1740000174/post/1730006373.html), a kind of "VideodromeMeetsNip/Tuck" mélange that stars Albert Finney and Susan Dey. All are available on DVD (even Pursuit) and most are deserving of a look-see. Come on, we know you had to have read at least one of Michael Crichton’s books I the past—how about checking out one of his flicks, now that you know he directed them?

Now, here's a clip of Richard Benjamin doing a real number on a robotized Yul Brynner in Westworld: 

Posted by Laurence Lerman on November 6, 2008 | Comments (1)