Michael Crichton's feature debut as film director has aged remarkably well due in part to the cleverness of its concept - indeed, it ranks with one of the all time great sci fi concepts, and is so good Crichton reused it in Jurassic Park and Timeline. There is also the casting of Yul Brynner, who makes a terrifying villain.
The Terminator supposedly ripped off an episode of Outer Limits but surely James Cameron also saw this film before he wrote it - the same relentless killer, played by an established star, the same POV shots of said killer, the same theme of technology overcoming humans. Cameron is a far better director than Crichton, though, whose handling is competent at best - he has his excellent screenplay, plus some fine actors (Richard Benjamin as the less brave hero, James Brolin as the tougher seeming guy who cops it early), so it doesn't matter for the most part. It's more when things go haywire that you feel a really good director could have milked the tension - the finale mostly consists of people walking down corridors with loud sound effects of people walking, and Benjamin thinking he's killed Brynner then walking away something like three times.
Also in places the action felt superfluous - like the barroom brawl. It's a shame these sequences weren't cut to free up the tight budget so the money could be spent elsewhere. Still, a fine film and one of the few decent movies made by MGM in the 1970s.
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