The 2025 TCM Classic Film Festival was way back in April which feels like a long time ago by now, but it would be nice to go back for a few minutes. Finding yourself in the middle of that festival can be like residing in a very relaxing bubble, giving you a chance to do nothing for a few days but focus on going to the movies. And the vibe seemed a little different this year, more crowded than usual whether it really was or not, as if with the way things are in the world right now people wanted to forget about things more than ever and spend a few days just seeing great films with other people who feel the same way. Or maybe people just needed a few days of fun. There was the opening night screening of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK with George Lucas in attendance, a special presentation of WE’RE NO ANGELS shown in actual VistaVision, the great Joe Dante introducing THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN and EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS, restorations of films like the noir classic THE BIG COMBO as well as GUNMANS’ WALK which I’d never heard of but turned out to be an excellent western directed by Phil Karlson starring Van Heflin and Tab Hunter. And a lot more, of course. It’s difficult to name one specific highlight from the festival just like every year, there’s so much going on.
But one point where the bubble of the festival felt like it was being penetrated just a little by the outside world of what 2025 has become was for the screening of COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT, a film I had long been curious about but had never seen. The TCM Festival screening was this year’s Craig Barron-Ben Burtt presentation where the two Oscar-winning special effects legends take a close study at how an effects-driven film was made and their screenings of films like THEM! and WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE in past years have been highlights of the weekend. Sporting a 1969 copyright date and first released in 1970 under the simpler title THE FORBIN PROJECT for its initial New York opening, COLOSSUS is a film that really does straddle the two decades with the clean-cut look of the previous era combined with the more fatalistic viewpoint of the decade to come. Science fiction during that time often feels like it’s about whatever horrible end that the world is unavoidably hurtling towards, likely inspired by whatever feeling that was in the air of how things didn’t seem like they were going to go on for much longer. This dark approach to the genre went away eventually but right then as the ‘60s were ending the future seemed to be in question. And based on how it was portrayed in both movies and tv shows it was clear that the ongoing development of computers was not going to lead to anything good either. In this sense, the movie has aged just fine.
A cult item at most and still deserving of wider appreciation, COLOSSUS feels like an important part of this post-2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY cinematic period, bringing the particular conflict of intellectualism between man and machine that began with HAL down to Earth and the result holds up extremely well, a film showing in stark terms what there was to fear and now maybe is once again, for all new reasons. The talk before the film discussed the history of computers in films and TV at that point along with a close look at the Albert Whitlock matte work displayed in shots that show off the sheer size of Colossus plus the use of the vocoder, a voice synthesizer that was even used for encrypted messages during World War II, to create the unnerving voice of the computer with the involvement of Paul Frees, a valuable introduction to what was exactly the sort of film you want to discover for the first time at this festival.
The newly designed supercomputer Colossus is activated and ready to take control of American defense thanks to its creator Dr. Charles Forbin (Eric Braeden) with the President (Gordon Pinsent) fully embracing this new technological step to protect the country and remove such crucial decisions from the possibility of human error. But when it goes online, barely a few minutes have elapsed before Colossus declares the existence of “another system” which turns out to be the Soviet’s own supercomputer named Guardian. When the two systems become linked up everything at first appears to be normal, but it soon becomes clear that Colossus and its counterpart have their own plans to continue the peace along with demanding exactly what the systems require to maintain control. Dr. Forbin’s close involvement turns out to be a key part of this, forced by Colossus to serve as the main communication point while always being monitored by the computer. In response to this edict, Forbin comes up with a plan to get Colossus to allow him private communication with one of the scientists on his team, Dr. Cleo Markham (Susan Clark), while trying to figure out a way to do something about the system’s growing power. Meanwhile, the two governments initiate a plan to regain control before Colossus becomes too powerful for them to stop.
For a long time not easy to see and the only decent home releases don’t seem to have even happened until the Blu-ray era, COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT is an extremely well-made film that takes a largely sober, serious approach to its subject with a crisp sense of direction brought to it by Joseph Sargent that is always active in a way that moves the story forward with the strength brought to it by the actors a key part of what the film achieves. Sargent is maybe best known now as the director of the great THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE (there’s also WHITE LIGHTNING, the early STAR TREK episode “The Corbomite Maneuver” and, um, JAWS THE REVENGE) and COLOSSUS contains what could be called a similarly punchy style that always keeps the momentum of the story moving even as as it seems to be spread out on only a handful of sets and there’s not an uninteresting shot in the entire running time with a skillful approach that always finds a way to move the story forward. The ambitious and continuous use of TV monitors in the frame to represent video phones as the characters communicate with each other makes one wonder what John Frankenheimer, who loved this sort of thing, would have done with the material but the film maintains its own striking tone that helps it feel completely unique. Many Universal films of the period have a similarly drab look that feels like an insistence on the studio house style, an expectation that COLOSSUS always feels like it’s fighting against, with a strikingly naturalistic flow to scenes helped by the use of overlapping dialogue and a sense of gravity felt all the way through. It’s not just about the performances but about the faces that are always there and how these people react to this unexpected threat that they played a part in creating and it adds to the sense of humanity in the face of this technological takeover.
With a screenplay by James Bridges (later the writer-director of THE PAPER CHASE, THE CHINA SYNDROME and URBAN COWBOY plus personal favorite
MIKE’S MURDER) based on the 1966 novel “Colossus” by D. F. Jones the film explores the unavoidable result that comes from the casualness of how people are allowing this new technology to simply happen and take control, without ever trying to understand the full nature of what they’ve created, made during a time when people seem to have thought that computers were nothing more than “souped-up adding machines” as they call them here all of which leads to the folly of the belief that humans can’t be trusted with such decisions and only something that apparently possesses a greater intelligence can. The question this leads to is that if something like Colossus gets programmed to keep the peace, if that’s what the people who created it want, what won’t it do to achieve such a goal? And if that something, human or not, decides it will be a God, what will stop it? The novel was apparently set in the future, changed to the less expensive present in the film which still manages to incorporate a design that feels like a sharp combination of futuristic tech and things that are familiar, with written messages to Colossus even typed in on what looks like a normal typewriter. The film’s approach is so skilled that the imposing character of the titular computer becomes convincing right away so very quickly the insistent messages it displays become extremely unnerving.
The way the story is developed, the actual physical location of the giant computer is removed as a factor almost immediately, situated in a Colorado mountain and blocked with a radiation belt with the detail of a lookout point from far away becoming a tourist attraction that becomes a recurring, haunting image through the film, feeling more ominous each time we return to it. This also allows Colossus to hover over everyone in the film like a ghost as it makes its presence known, lending things a sense of distance that infects the entire film and though the tech is of course dated it still looks pretty cool. Even the presence of Colossus grows throughout so when his voice is finally activated late in the film it feels more chilling than if it had been there from the start. At first there’s the feeling that the plot structure might echo the one continuous sequence feeling of DR. STRANGELOVE and FAIL SAFE but the plot expands beyond that, giving it time for the people to realize the true danger of what is happening as the script continually turns its cards over carefully as things get worse and worse and the power of Colossus grows.
The film’s main character Forbin is more sympathetic than he might be portrayed now, a supposedly brilliant scientist who almost seems surprised by the power that the computer he is responsible for is able to achieve and instead of defending his creation even when it goes totally haywire the way an expected mad scientist might, the focus becomes on the growing realization of what he has created. It almost feels surprising how little internal conflict there is between the characters as they address the problem compared with how this would be done now and even when there’s debate about what to do everyone seems to trust each other, a little surprising considering how much Forbin could rightly be blamed for what’s happening and the President himself could be criticized for allowing all this in the first place. You’d think more people would be angrily confronting them with what’s been unleashed and while the title scientist spends the film addressing the problem any feelings of responsibility for his Frankenstein monster don’t come up until late. Whether or not ‘artificial intelligence’ was a phrase used at all in 1970, the term is never spoken here but this is essentially a film about the automatic assumption that this computer will solve all the world’s problems only to create all-new problems and a worse world along with it, a true form of AI that manages to feel like we’re currently living in our own version of a prologue to this film. Or maybe for us it’s already begun.
Much of the narrative stays confined to a back and forth between the President’s war room and Forbin’s own programming center, each presented with stylish production design tied into intriguing location work done at Berkeley, always filmed in a way to make each sequence compelling along with the ongoing thread of the military trying to figure out how to disarm their own missiles without Colossus noticing. To draw a comparison to Sargent’s own THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE, this film also has people working together to solve a problem in an engagingly naturalistic way, the actors working off together well with dialogue as humorous as it would be in real life and the messiness adds to the feeling of actual humanity, each of those personalities having an effect so it remains compelling and suspenseful all the way through. The varied and intriguing score by Michel Colombier adds to this feeling as well, some of it sounding like PLANET OF THE APES or just a general Jerry Goldsmith-type flavor in its futuristic style but always engaging in how it connects to the momentum. The pacing offers chances to breathe in the middle of the tension, expanding beyond the main few locations at times with a section where Forbin travels to Rome so he can meet with his Russian counterpart allowing for a change of scenery from the claustrophobic tension which also smartly divides the two halves of the film even if the detour doesn’t feel as necessary or connected to the overall aesthetic.
Surprisingly, the film does lighten up for a stretch to keep things from being too humorless as Forbin is forced to adjust his living situation to the watchful eye of Colossus with the laughs that come in during the second half feeling like a welcome surprise as opposed to a jarring shift and even if it makes the film a little tonally uneven the switch works, with even the score taking on a jazzier Lalo Schifrin vein. Colossus’s response to the way Forbin makes a martini provides the biggest laugh in the film and the semblance of an odd sort of romantic angle between him and his fellow scientist played by Susan Clark adds humor as well but also a little more humanity, with the actress seeming to play it as if she’s in love with him anyway, as well as more than a little bemused by the whole thing. But bringing in sex, as well as the pleasure of a martini, into this very cold science fiction idea is all a reminder how much this is about a sort of lifeform that will never comprehend these things and no matter how much Colossus is an extension of Forbin’s own brain this is one thing the computer can’t be educated in and it feels like something the brilliant scientist is being reminded of. The time spent doing that makes his character more human, more willing to fight back plus the film getting lighter for a few minutes makes the surprises that are to come all the more shocking.
It becomes very clear that Colossus wants to rule through peace under the continual threat of war, its determination to remove what it calls ‘the emotion of pride’ from the human equation that comes out of freedom. This builds to is an ending which feels very much of the time the film was made, something that comes out of the human decision from all this and not the action taken as a result. It goes to a darker place than you’d expect while leaving things somewhat hanging, which makes it very much a part of the cinematic decade to come but is still less fatalistic than certain other science fiction films from around this period that likely starred Charlton Heston. And it feels like the right conclusion to see, especially at this moment in time when those in alleged power who might be able to fight back are steadfastly refusing. But then again, the film doesn’t consider the possibility that people would love what Colossus wants to do. After all, considering the final speech that the computer gives to the world, maybe it would just need its own nightly TV show to get everyone on its side. But at what point do you say that one word at the end that Forbin does? That’s the question posed at the end of COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT and these days it feels all too often the answer is that they won’t.
The buildup to that single last line includes Colossus stating that through its authority, “We can coexist but only on my terms” and the second half of the Barron-Burtt discussion followed immediately after but not before someone shouted, “Better than (Name Redacted)!” which there’s no point in dwelling on and certainly the two hosts didn’t want to, but the bubble had been punctured. Everyone in the theater was likely thinking this very thing anyway. The post-film talk featured lead actor Eric Braeden, maybe best known for his role on THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS (so I’m told, but I recognize him from playing John Astor in TITANIC) and he clearly got his role as the much more villainous scientist in ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES the following year based off his work in this film. After viewing the film in the audience, Braeden talked about how overwhelmed he was after seeing it again and his recollections included how the German-born actor was required by Universal to change his name from Hans Gudegast in order to get the part, flying in to audition from Spain where he was appearing in the western 100 RIFLES still under that name along with a cute bit that involved an ”appearance” by the voice of Colossus being reunited with the actor. During the talk Braeden mentioned that the young Steven Spielberg was on set shadowing Sargent during filming and it’s hard not to notice that the active direction here does feel like the beginnings of a certain kind of Spielberg aesthetic particularly in something like CLOSE ENCOUNTERS. He also told a story about James Cameron quoting the film’s final line back to him on the set of TITANIC after a take, also a reminder of how much Colossus was clearly a forerunner of what became Skynet in THE TERMINATOR, just a few indicators of how much this film has been an influence over the years without ever being particularly well known.
The casting of Eric Braeden is a key part of that effectiveness and although big names like Charlton Heston and Gregory Peck were brought up during the casting process, as much as one of them might have helped it commercially in this case the lesser known Braeden not only adds to the verisimilitude as the threat grows, the intelligence he brings to things continually adds to the natural power of the film and his presence adds greatly to every scene. Susan Clark also brings a likable intelligence to her role and with each close-up you can see the character thinking things through. Gordon Pinsent is a believable President who also comes off as surprisingly human and the very familiar William Schallert as the CIA chief is likably cynical with his bemused disbelief at what Colossus might be capable of makes him maybe the closest thing the film has to an audience surrogate. Familiar faces in the cast also doing strong work in their smaller roles include Marion Ross and Dolph Sweet plus Georg Stanford Brown, James Hong and Robert Cornthwaite who are seen throughout as scientists.
There were so many good films shown this year at the TCM Classic Film Festival but COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT along with the Barron-Burtt presentation of it still seemed like one of the hidden gems, maybe because there’s never as much focus on the lesser known ‘70s titles. A few shown over the weekend from that decade included CAR WASH, SUPERMAN, a Technicolor dye transfer print of JAWS from the BFI, APOCALYPSE NOW in 70mm and nothing wrong with any of these but they are familiar, at least more than COLOSSUS ever has been. It’s a film that feels like an important part of the genre from the time when that genre didn’t get as much respect, even with PLANET OF THE APES and 2001, but still feels like it’s had a surprising amount of influence over the years including possibly being one of the inspirations for the Entity plotline in the last few MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE films. But it’s all certainly a part of a message that feels necessary right now. The welcome chance to see COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT was a reminder of how surprisingly relevant a forgotten film can be to the current moment, especially when it’s as good as this is and it’s a film that feels difficult to forget about, I haven’t been able to shake it, even when the festival was already months ago. It really was nicer in that TCM Fest bubble, even with this reminder of the outside world. Sometimes films are used as an escape, to forget. But in a way, the very best films never let you forget anything.
