cult film freak: PILOT EPISODE OF THE TELEVISION SERIES 'BEYOND WESTWORLD'

Nancy Harewood in Beyond Westworld 1980 Rates: ***1/2

Unfairly maligned, BEYOND WESTWORLD was a pretty great short-lived series, lasting only five episodes but starting off strong with a pilot that's a kind of hour-long TV-movie following the WESTWORLD robots (including bar girl Cassandra Peterson) killing the customers...

Followed by an expository explanation not in the ambiguous Michael Crichton cult classic: The man behind the massacre was the assistant to that world's creator, and is played by puma-faced James Wainwright who, with gorgeous assistant Nancy Harewood at the controls, attempts to kill agents Jim McMullan and Judith Chapman (soon replaced by Connie Seleca), and the action's pretty great...

Especially a battle against a bionic, spring-loaded, venomous rattlesnake with infrared vision followed by a few intentional accidents and a nostalgic bout with a gunslinger. All this between the main plot of a nuclear submarine wherein one of the crew members is a robotic spy, and that's basically the plot of each episode: to find the sole android that will cause havoc unless stopped on time, making this series go well BEYOND science-fiction and into the realm of mystery... WHO'S THE BOT? would have been a more befitting... and in later episodes range from professional football teams to cheesy rock bands.