Good Ideas and Bad Ideas

[mbarrick]

So Elaine and I went to Shelley's 30^th birthday party last night and I had fun. We came up with what I think is the best idea for a 30^th birthday gift - a copy of Logan's Run. I was difficult to find, but worth the joke. However, combining Guinness, too much cake, and brandy-beans was a bad idea. Today has been shot to hell.

Comments

This Is The Voice of World Control

[sovietnimrod.livejournal.com]

Logan's Run is brilliant but I still much prefer THX-1138 for its sheer bleakness - and Donald Pleasence (my favourite actor) is in it along with Robert Duvall. Overly sampled as well for those "Take Two red capsules; in ten minutes take two more" and "I need something stronger" lines.

Another VERY good movie from that era - very hard to find but well-worth checking out - is Colossus: The Forbin Project. Very low-key production but great storyline. My favourite line has to be: "This is the voice of World Control. I bring to you the peace of plenty or the peace of an unburied grave", after which the supercomputer then detonates a couple of nuclear warheads to prove its point.

Here's the Amazon review I wrote two years ago about it:

* * * *

THIS IS THE VOICE OF WORLD CONTROL - November 24, 2000

Reviewer: David XXXXXXXXXXXXX (Vancouver, British Columbia Canada)

Every five years or so - usually quite often by chance - I'll catch an obscure, low-key movie on late-night television that will enthral and mesmerise my interest through either a really great story or stylistic visual look. Colossus: The Forbin Project is one of those movies.

The basic premise of the movie is a vast computer system, named Colossus, built by the computer genius Dr. Charles Forbin to manage the United States nuclear missile stockpile - thus successfully eliminating the potential dangers of nuclear war due to man's irrational and emotional reaction by allowing a rational decision-making machine to safeguard the American defences.

As mankind soon discovers, much to the dismay of its creators, Colossus does its job far better than originally programmed to do.

Once activated (I just love those scenes at the beginning where the lights in the complex are turned on), Colossus soon detects the existence of a Soviet counterpart system (named Guardian) and requests, no... orders its creators to have Colossus linked up to the Soviet machine.

Once the two systems are able to communicate on the same level (they devise their own computer programming language that only they know), the Colossus-Guardian system begins to issue demands on the threat of nuclear death.

What follows the fast-paced attempt by Forbin and his colleagues to somehow dismantle the threat posed by Colossus before the computer gains too much power.

The movie ends on a gloomy note. Colossus has just broadcast over television his ultimatum-greeting to the world ("This is the Voice of World Control...") and then detonates an American missile silo to show that it means business. Until this point, Dr. Forbin had shown himself to be calm and civil while dealing with his 'problem child'. The shock of Colossus' cold murder leads Forbin to believe himself to be the cause for this new terror unleashed on the world.

Granted, the dated 1970s 'futuristic' feel is fully evident here. The computer terminals are very big and antiquated compared to our present-day PC terminals and Colossus' raspy electronic voice is typically Kraftwerk-esque robotics at its very finest. However, considering that this was evidently a low-budget film, the sets are still executed suitably and superbly.

A fellow cinema buff told me that Colossus: The Forbin Project bombed in the theatres mainly due to its sudden, depressing ending and an obvious lack of big-name stars. In my opinion, the acting by Eric Braedon and Susan Clark is excellent, and so too are the rest of supporting cast.

It is these very factors along with the tight storyline that actually give the movie its strength