Westworld

Medical student-turned-novelist Michael Crichton’s directorial debut was the first of his cautionary futuristic-theme-park-gone-crazy thrillers (the second was Jurassic Park). The last picture produced by MGM before it stopped distributing movies became a huge popular hit and might have cut down somewhat on 1973 Disneyland admissions. The 1976 sequel Futureworld also figured into the popular 2016 HBO tv series adaptation which expands and extrapolates on Crichton’s prescient themes and is expected to return for its fourth season.