On Location with Westworld (1973) User Reviews

Coming Attractions

[boblipton · 5/10 · 12 July 2020]

Long after the major production companies abandoned the short subjects in the middle of the 1950s, MGM would occasionally turn out an extended "coming attractions" short, masquerading it as a "behind the scenes" short feature. Here's one for WESTWORLD.

There are clips in which a bizarrely young Michael Crichton talks about the script, shots of the cast relaxing between takes, and clips from the actual movie, and co-stars Yul Brynner and Richard Benjamin about their characters.

It's impossible to say how much an effect this short subject had on ticket sales, but WESTWORLD did well enough that the title is revived for new properties more than half a century later.

Nice Promo on Westworld

[Michael_Elliott · 18 July 2011]

On Location with Westworld (1973)

*** (out of 4)

Ten-minute promotional piece about the making of WESTWORLD has director Michael Crichton talking about his inspirations for making the film and why the material just wouldn't work as a novel. He then talks about the production of the movie as well as if he thinks there might be a real Westworld sometime in the future. I always enjoy watching these promotional pieces from this era because the narration is always so dead serious that you can't help but feel as if you're watching something that your life depends on. The main goal of these things are to drum up interest for the film in question and for the most part I think that succeeds here. The short does a very good job at building up an interest for the story, although at times I think it makes it a tad bit too confusing. Not only do we get comments from Crichton but Richard Benjamin and Yul Brynner are also on hand for short interviews. As with a lot of these promo pieces, quite a few scenes from the movie are shown and I think a bit too many because there are a couple big spoilers here so if you haven't seen WESTWORLD then view it first before this short.

Texas was in the news recently . . .

[cricket30 · 7/10 · 29 January 2019]

. . . when local lawmakers squelched the business plans for the first proposed brothel in which all of the "working girl" jobs would be performed by full-size sex dolls. ON LOCATION WITH WESTWORLD underscores the fact that little changes from one century to the next, at least in our "Lone Star" state and the rest of America's Greater West. As Real Life Boys with Toys from "Chuck Whitman" to "Lee Oswald" have so often demonstrated, dudes here get a much bigger kick when they do Dallas themselves, rather than letting "Debbie" have all the fun. Actor "Rich Benjamin" says this in so many words when he's interviewed for this promotional short. ON LOCATION WITH WESTWORLD provides multiple glimpses of the female bots programmed to make all their male customers' endings happy, but you will NOT find even one actress' name among the credits for this piece. That's because when "Tex" has a choice between shooting up someone or firing up the letters of a rearranged grill, he'll pick slugs over jugs every time. "Abigail Adams" may have asked her POTUS spouse "John" "not to forget the Ladies," but they didn't live Out West!

This behind-the-scenes piece goes far beyond its movie . . .

[pixrox1 · 7/10 · 20 May 2014]

. . . in establishing the theory behind the modern "Theme Park" experience. The key goal is to extract at least $1,000 daily from visiting families. Thanks to inflation, we have not had to wait until the robot-inhabited WESTWORLD (or its pretend "sister parks," ROMANWORLD and MEDIEVALWORLD, or its main rival, JURASSIC PARK) became realities for the thousand-bucks-a-day threshold (to which key WESTWORLD robot portrayer Yul Brynner alludes during ON LOCATION WITH WESTWORLD) to be reached. Try to get by with LESS than 10 C-notes in your pocket (or within your credit limit) at Disney World, Harry Potter World, Universal Studios or any of the other major American theme parks enjoyed by the "Ten-Percenters." While most of us (if you subscribe to Jefferson's "one human, one vote" as opposed to the U.S. Supreme Court's "one dollar, one vote) struggle to make ends meet from one day to the next, the Ten-Percenters are living it up in 3D theme parks which far exceed the "luxuries" shown on two-dimensional film sets ON LOCATION WITH WESTWORLD. At the rate the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer in today's America, ELYSIUM is just around the corner (and millionaire Matt Damon will NOT ride to the rescue, any more than Yul Brynner ever did in "real life").