Michael Crichton's "Looker" certainly isn't a hopelessly bad film, but it is pretty forgettable and way too ambitious for an early 80's thriller that superficially looks like a brainless horror effort. The VHS cover art as well as the super-cheesy title song make "Looker" wrongfully appear like an ordinary, by the numbers stalk-&-slash film. An often encountered and unjustified praising is that Crichton's screenplay is intelligent and far ahead of its time. Well, the basic premise may be clever but the film features a countless amount of obvious flaws and, to me, the whole just looked like putting together leftover ideas from Crichton's previous (and much better) scripts for "Westworld" and "Coma". The story revolves on media tycoon John Reston, whose newly founded company Digital Matrix developed hypnotism-techniques that increase the impact and awareness of ordinary TV-commercials among the viewers. The beautiful models that star in these commercials therefore have to be 100% perfect and thus surgically altered to the millimeter. When three models die in mysterious circumstances, the police immediately suspects Dr. Larry Roberts who performed the plastic surgery on all of them. I can't really give a listing of all the flaws and illogical aspects without giving away essential spoilers, but I can say that the story never gives an apparent reason why exactly these fashion models have to die or how Digital Matrix plans to endlessly re-use holograms of dead models without raising suspicion.
Oh well, maybe I've been analyzing the credibility of the plot too much whereas I should've paid more attention to the entertainment value. "Looker" undeniably contains some professionally mounted suspense sequences and introduces a couple of very ingenious gimmicks, such as the 'denuralizer'-gun (I don't know how else to call it) and the perfection-measurement techniques. Michael Crichton also successfully captures the high-society world of Beverly Hills, where plastic surgeons drive around in expensive sport cars and live in fancy beach houses and where young models only care about their looks and dating wealthy doctors. This is not a gory flick but there is at least one disturbing and beautifully shot death-sequence that involves a model falling down from the balcony of her apartment. Albert Finney and James Coburn are both terrific and even the lesser-experienced female beauties give adequate performances. "Looker" may perhaps be a tad bit underrated but it sure isn't a gem that urgently needs to be (re-)discovered.
Oh well, maybe I've been analyzing the credibility of the plot too much whereas I should've paid more attention to the entertainment value. "Looker" undeniably contains some professionally mounted suspense sequences and introduces a couple of very ingenious gimmicks, such as the 'denuralizer'-gun (I don't know how else to call it) and the perfection-measurement techniques. Michael Crichton also successfully captures the high-society world of Beverly Hills, where plastic surgeons drive around in expensive sport cars and live in fancy beach houses and where young models only care about their looks and dating wealthy doctors. This is not a gory flick but there is at least one disturbing and beautifully shot death-sequence that involves a model falling down from the balcony of her apartment. Albert Finney and James Coburn are both terrific and even the lesser-experienced female beauties give adequate performances. "Looker" may perhaps be a tad bit underrated but it sure isn't a gem that urgently needs to be (re-)discovered.