Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970)

(Second Viewing, Hoopla Steaming, September 2019) I have vivid memories of watching this film as a kid, and being unsettled by the idea of a supercomputer taking over humanity. If anything, re-watching the film as an adult is not necessarily any less disquieting—The Forbin Project takes an almost gleeful amount of time and details to explain how this new supercomputer is invulnerable, impossible to stop and impossible to starve. There is an effective plot beat early in the movie (“There is another system”) that should prepare you for the nightmare ahead, as the film runs through the steps required for the computer to complete its enslavement of humanity, with our heroes being unable to stop it. The paranoia here is top-notch, and the matter-of-fact direction from Joseph Sargent barely represses the growing hysteria of the situation as any human countermoves are detected and deactivated. The now-primitive technology from 1970 paradoxically makes the film more interesting these days, as it creates a near-allegorical atmosphere that would be surely punctured by any modern remake. There is some interesting material for contemplation in having the computer’s motives being somewhat benevolent despite its harsh methods. I’m not entirely happy by the ending, not as much for its downbeat nature (which follows where the film has been heading all the time) but for its lack of final conflict, or strong coda—especially for techno-horror, where you can have a gut-punch denouement. Still, I quite like the result: Colossus: The Forbin Project is a gloriously nasty nightmare of a film, and one that still manages to unsettle even fifty years and several fundamental technological advances later.