The Last of Sheila (1973)

This is one of those parlour game thrillers in which the characters run around playing macabre games involving murder, but it isn't one of the greats like Sleuth or Deathtrap, but rather more on the level of the very entertaining but imperfect Knives Out and reminscient of April Fool's Day with its dated look and not entirely satisfactory mystery involving, similar to April Fool's Day, a gathering on a yacht of a group of film industry associates whose host has organised an itinerary of games and puzzles designed to flush out a killer.

★★★☆☆

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Westworld (1973)

In this 1973 Michael Crichton written and directed scifi thriller, the author's first directorial effort, Isla Nubla is an immersive theme park and the dinosaurs are robots built to interact with and accommodate the high-paying tourists' every holiday whim, and while especially shallow (the plot is three-quarters peculiar robot glitches that perturb the theme park scientists but not enough to progress the plot, and one quarter sudden showdown (in which mildly perturbed scientists flip their lids and turn suddenly into shrieking there's-no-stopping-them, robots-will-kill-us-all nihilists) it is a ripping sci-fi tale full of Planet Of The Apes/Soylent Green era kitsch and quite prescient future-imagining, with amusing performances from Richard "The 70s? I'm in everything" Benjamin, Josh "Am I twenty or seventy?" Brolin, and a 1973 version of the T-800, a sinister, sparkly-eyed Yul Brynner.

★★★★☆

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