Colossus: The Forbin Project is a movie from 1970. I am sort of astounded that I recall this movie since I saw it when I was 10 years old. It was filmed, or at least one of the primary sets was filmed at the Berkley Lawrence Hall of Sciences. This building is atop the hills over looking Berkley. This another place my mother used to take us kids during the summer school break.
I believe that this was one of the first serious Progenitors of the Terminator movies. And how AI was coming for us all.
I watched a movie last night. It is in my opinion one of the best of the worst movies I have ever seen. It has a great idea for a plot line and it is executed pretty well… mostly. It is a 1997 movie called “Event Horizon”. It is a horribly gruesome movie. I don’t know why I stayed up to watch it. I felt very ugly and dirty and small afterwards. The short of the story is that a Dr. Weir developed a spaceship that is capable of folding/bending space. The Idea is to bring two distant points in space, say many many lights years apart, together, then to transition from the start point to the distant point. This allows the ship to sort of cheat at traveling faster than the speed of light. But there seems to be a catch, as you might guess with any cheat of this magnitude. There is a gap between the two points. That gap is apparently hell. The ship, on its maiden voyage to Proxima Centauri, disappears. Seven years later it reappears near the planet Neptune. A rescue ship, the 'Lewis and Clark' sent to investigate. The 'Event Horizon' comes back “possessed” by something… presumably the devil but certainly evil and very malevolent. The possessing 'spirit' fills the rescue crew with false and hateful images of fear and, you guessed it, gore, slowly pushing some towards insanity. The "bad" part is this; these are images flashed at the audience at high speed and frightening clarity in short bursts… ala subliminal advertising… that are absolutely horrific . I won’t even describe them. I said all that to say this there are a whole raft of movies out like this. The "Saw" movies, the "Hostel" movies where gore and unspeakable violence are the central attraction. They are like porn movies only... no sex, just evil, pain, and gore. At a certain level I would rather watch the porn movies… but they are not too very good for the soul either… more on that another time. How is it possible that there are enough people who will watch a movie like this, let alone enough who pay to see them to make them profitable? There must be lots of people out there willing to pay to see them… they make them all the time. Not too much for plot holds them together just excuses to torture and eviscerate people slowly and cruelly. Like I said Porn with gore not sex. Instead of the hapless pizza guy with a huge schlong who delivers to a sorority party or cougar party you have individuals with various emotional or mental deficiencies who like to bathe in blood or worse. Another movie I saw that perhaps I should not have... "The Cell" from 2000. The Cell has an Interesting sort of SCI/Fi-ish plot which is what interested me initially, layered with a time critical serial killer search. The Cell features amazingly beautiful cinematography hung on horribly ugly plot points. Sort of like having beautiful royal purple velvet drapes and furnishings in a battle field foxhole where infantry men had been blown up. I stayed to watch it but my fiancé... she did not. She was horrified by it and left.
In hind sight I should have been also. I wish, now, that I had also.
