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FutureworldThey had some great games in the 1970s. Ker-plunk, Buckaroo, Mousetrap, Mastermind (not the one with Magnus Magnusson, the one with the Roger Whittaker look-alike and the exotic Asian lady) - all guaranteed fun aplenty. However, none of these was as interesting or as testing as a game that circulated in film circles - name two films Peter Fonda made post-Easy Rider.
Of course, if you were a movie buff, you might rattle off the three cracking films Henry's little lad made with Warren Oates - 92 In The Shade, Race With The Devil and The Hired Hand. However, if you didn't live in the cinema you might find it tougher to recall what Peter did in between creating American independent cinema and rediscovering his mojo in the late 1990s courtesy of Ulee's Gold.
Killer Force, High-Ballin', The Cannonball Run - given his name and the importance of his breakthrough picture, it's surprising how much time Fonda The Younger spent scraping the bottom of the barrel. That Futureworld is effectively the high point of his 1970s career illustrates just how far he'd fallen. A low-budget sequel to the highly influential Westworld, Fonda and Blythe Danner play undercover journalists investigating Delos, the company who've made a fortune out of human-robot interaction. With the firm's resort back up and running following the 'unfortunate incident' covered by Michael Crichton's picture, the journos think they've landed a pretty cushy assignment. Delos, though, have moved on from wanting to entertain people. Now they're bent on placing their cyborgs in positions of power the world over.
Overseen by the notoriously frugal Samuel Z Arkoff for skinflint Roger Corman's American International Pictures, Futureworld proves that sometimes less really isn't more. An episode of a 1970s sci-fi TV show masquerading as a full-blown feature film, Richard T Heffron's picture lacks everything that made Crichton's movie so remarkable - everything, that is, except for Yul Brynner who returns as the enigmatic Gunslinger in an appalling dream sequence. Sadly this cameo would mark the end of Brynner screen career - that's unless you count those advertisements where he spoke about the evils of smoking from beyond the grave (cue sinister laughter).
A picture that exists simply to make Westworld seem more impressive, proof of Futureworld's insignificance can be found in Peter Fonda's autobiography, 'Don't Tell Dad'. Afforded all of six lines (there are pages and pages on a certain bike movie), the only thing the actor can remember about the picture is that Japanese audiences thought the events depicted were real. Yes, of course they did, Peter. And Easy Rider has aged really well.
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