Looker
Entry updated 30 January 2017. Tagged: Film.
Film (1981). Ladd Co/Warner Bros. Directed by Michael Crichton. Written by Crichton. Cast includes James Coburn, Susan Dey, Albert Finney and Leigh Taylor-Young. 94 minutes cut to 90 minutes. Colour.
Looker was intended by Crichton as a comedy, but the studio wanted a suspense thriller, and the result falls confusingly between the two. Three models, after having undergone surgery to make them even more beautiful, are murdered, and the plastic surgeon (Finney) wonders why. Villainous company Digital Matrix, whose employees have guns which create time-lapses in the victims, plans to use Computer-generated human images (the murder of their human originals is never explained) in a television Advertising campaign designed to exploit the LOOKER (Light Ocular-Oriented Kinetic Emotive Responses) system for mind-control by Hypnosis. Looker seems to be badly cut, since it is full of loose ends and non sequiturs. The sequences of computer imaging are striking, the Satire against the advertising business heavy-handed. [PN]
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