Westworld (1973 Film)

Westworld, the sci-fi--horror tale of a Western-themed audio-animatronic amusement park gone horribly awry, marked writer Michael Crichton s debut as a feature director. Helping set up an authentic, deliberately cliché-ridden Western atmosphere, veteran Fred Karlin serves up healthy dollops of screeching fiddle and twanging banjo, before gliding effortlessly into edgy, modern territory. These spare, haunting cues are frequently electronically infused, and they help define the cold, nightmarish mechanical reality that lurks just beneath the glitzy theme park s veneer. Given the park s extremes of environment, Karlin s mastery of idiom gets a few other surprising workouts as well. --Jerry McCulley