COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT (1970: Dir. Joseph Sargent)
Apocalypse movies are the most fashionable film genre of our post millennial age. Every week it seems there is a new release dedicated to visualizing the end of the world as we know it. The turmoil of the first decade of the second millenium, shared much in common with the transitional decade of the Sixties. Both decades contained great economic, social, political, and scientific upheaval. As 1969 drew to close, there was understandable trepidation in the air with the Vietnam war raging, the rise of the PLO, Woodstock, and man landing on the moon. It was also the year that ARPANET, the precursor the internet, was created. Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, it was developed to link computers worldwide, revolutionizing communication and security. Based on the 1966 novel Colossus by British author Dennis Feltham Jones, Colossus: The Forbin Project, was an attempt to examine the issues raised by the burgeoning influence of computers, as it tells the the story of a sentient American super-computer that exceeds its programming by assuming control of all nuclear weapons, thereby blackmailing humanity into "peace". Not surprisingly the film was a failure at the box office, most likely due to its sterile paranoid atmosphere and humourlessly downbeat tone. Courageously, former television director Joseph Sargent eschewed the casting of stars in the lead roles. The results bore unexpected fruit, with German actor Eric Braeden as the misguided scientist Forbin, along with Canadians Susan Clark (as his girlfriend/colleague) and Gordon Pinsent (as the US President!) all distinguishing themselves in memorable performances. Since 1970, the size of computers may have changed but the danger of sentience is still with us. BLU-RAY
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