No Good Very Bad Movies 21: The one by Michael Crichton

 

Title: Looker

What Year?: 1981

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ Parody/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: Who Cares? (2/3)

 

As I write this, it’s not quite a month since I put together a list of the best movies I’ve reviewed. In the course of that project I freely admitted that many if not most of the ones I listed there weren’t the ones that got my highest ratings. Since then, I have pondered further whether the same could be said for the “worst” ones. What I’ve come to recognize is that there are times even the test of personal hate doesn’t give the full picture, especially for the big-budget films. Movies like Star Trek The Motion Picture and Santa Claus don’t offend the way Inseminoid and War of the Planets do, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t as bad or worse in their own hollow, muddled way. I definitely vented my distaste for mainstream gloss in reviewing The Golden Child, which brought me in turn to what was always next in line. I present Looker, a strange entry that has stuck in my mind with more than enough force to hate, but as we will see, things aren’t quite that simple.

Our story begins with a beautiful woman who answers the door in her underwear, then gets apparently murdered by a mysterious, possibly invisible assailant. We then meet what will pass for our protagonist, a plastic surgeon whose clientele seems to be mostly already beautiful women looking for an extra edge. All is not well, as it turns out several of his clients have been killed off in apparent accidents and suicides. Then one of the girls comes to him, warning that she fears for her life because she is “perfect”, just before taking a dive of her own. When a new patient is offered a new modeling job, the doctor investigates and discovers LOOKER, a program that turns real-life women into digital models that can be used in any setting. But the same tech has been used to manipulate human minds, creating an assassin who can make himself invisible and brainwash his victims into doing themselves in. Then the doctor discovers his part in the real plan- to use plastic surgery to create perfect women for the bad guys’ machine, and then dispose of the originals!

Looker was the fourth film directed by Michael Crichton, reportedly based on ideas developed soon after his debut film Westworld. The film was produced by The Ladd Company, with distribution by Warner Bros. The film starred Albert Finney as Dr. Roberts and Susan Dey as Cindy, with James Coburn as the villainous executive Reston. Like Westworld and Futureworld, the movie made substantial use of CGI, including possibly the first digitally-rendered nude figure. It further portrayed the use of 3-D scanning and digital composite shots, though no sequence in the film used such technology. The soundtrack was composed by Barry DeVorzon with a theme song performed by Sue Saad. The film was a commercial failure, earning $3 million against a budget of up to $12M. Contemporary reviews were also negative, with Peter Nicholls describing the film as “barely  comprehensible”. Crichton is believed to have made substantial cuts and changes, for uncertain reasons. Coburn later stated that his own role was “left on the cutting room floor”. The film is available on multiple formats, apparently only in its theatrically released cut.

For my experiences, this was one I looked up not long ago, after coming close to buying it outright. What immediately stood out was that it anticipated the future that has come to pass, while still getting things entirely the wrong way round. With the current state of technology, what’s shown is definitely feasible if a bit extreme; at the same time, the whole scenario is simply redundant. With a big enough CGI budget, we could make Oprah Winfrey look like Grace Jones and make Ms. Jones look like she did in Conan The Destroyer, without laying a finger on the originals. (I honestly couldn’t think of a more contemporary reference.) We don’t do it because the tech has already advanced as far as demand will take it, and if it comes to that, society at large has gotten more accepting and diverse in its standards of beauty. The decisive consideration for advertising in particular is that an ad only needs to be good enough to sell the product. If you shell out millions to get some ideal of perfect aesthetic beauty, you’re not only spending far more than you need but possibly distracting from the product you’re trying to sell, an obvious consideration which the movie seems to acknowledge at one point.

Moving to the film itself, what’s jarring to the point of distraction is how often it calls up other movies that should have been independent. There are especially strong similarities to Brainstorm, which would have been filmed at about the same time but got held up by scandal and actual tragedy. Then there are the more obvious though fairly superficial parallels to Tron, plus The Hidden, They Live and perhaps Predator. The most completely random déjà vu moment is the demise of a patient in full view of the doctor, literally identical to the opening nosedive in Lethal Weapon. It all makes the film feel unmoored in time, enough that I went back and added my admittedly overused Anachronistic Outlier designation. What’s stranger still is that this is by all indications meant to be funny or at least satirical, as if Crichton were writing color commentary on tomorrow’s news… and not doing it that well.

That brings us to the central reality, this whole thing is a flat-out mess. Sure, there’s some great and indeed amusing surreal moments, especially in the finale, which is the only reason I didn’t give this the lowest rating outright. (This incidentally demonstrate why you film your actors and render your environments rather than vice versa.) But it never really goes anywhere, because it never makes any sense. It’s one thing to fail to anticipate the future of the technologies that are portrayed, and bad enough from a usually insightful futurist like Crichton. It’s another to lay down a scenario that hinges on the bad guys killing people who should by all means be worth more alive. My acid test of evil plans is the simple question, would this make sense to Megavolt? (See Frankenstein’s Army, etc.) Here, that great mind could definitely raise some concerns. So you already have the live models scanned; what’s the harm in having them around to do it again if you have to, especially if you’re relying on early 1980s hard drives? So you might have to pay them royalties; how does that really compare with dealing with a hitman who can both rat you out and kill you if betrayed or annoyed? So they could use the plastic surgeries you paid for to get a job with a rival company; can’t you just use your tech to make a few good old-fashioned blackmail videos, assuming you can’t get them the old-fashioned way?

That leaves the “one scene”, and despite strong competition, there was one that came out ahead very quickly. As the protagonists explore the villainous corporation’s headquarters, they hitch a ride on a cute little retro housekeeping bot, which would have gotten honorable mention if it wasn’t more or less in the same sequence. This leads them to a room where the doctor continues nosing around, while one of the company’s advertisements plays. It’s the ad that stands out, every bit as ridiculous as any number of actual 1980s spots. It’s an encounter between a housewife and a costumed mascot for a cleaning product called warrior. I will admit I can’t recount it, because to my surprise I couldn’t find a clip after I sent a disc I used for this review, but I don’t think I could capture any better the bizarre feel as the lady all but propositions the mascot. What’s most telling is that the actress playing the housewife has clearly had none of the medical or digital treatments that the models are supposed to have been put through, and equally clearly doesn’t do any worse presenting the product. Then in the midst of it, the doc turns to the damsel, to find her staring at the video.

In closing, what this really brings me back to is why I keep saying I don’t do worst movies lists. This was one time I came in ready to deal with a movie far more harshly than I have, and the fact that I have relented doesn’t mean I am taking anything back. This is absolutely among the worst movies I have seen, especially with my usual adjustments for budget and talent, certainly far more so than any of the usual suspects I’ve seen fit to defend. On top of that, it’s among the most obscure movies I’ve investigated (see Two Evil Eyes, and my best movies list while you’re at it), again proving that other people’s supposed worst lists don’t top what I turn up virtually at random. With my knowledge and experience, however, the one thing I can’t say is that it’s unique. On the contrary, it is a perfectly typical example of the glossy mediocrity of an entire decade that it was barely a part of to begin with, and on a certain level, even going harder on it would just be giving it more attention than it deserves. With that, I say enough, and gladly end things for another day.

Image credit Movie Screenshots.