Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970)

You are being irrational. Go back to bed.

In December 1943 the prototype for a brand new machine designed to decrypt intercepted radio messages went into operation at Bletchley Park. It was the first programmable digital computer, and proved so successful a further nine machines were developed and in use within a couple of years (with another commissioned). Each and every one of those machines was named Colossus, a name so overtly dramatic it stuck in the head of Royal Navy commander and fledgling writer Dennis Feltham Jones. Eleven years after the war, Jones published his first novel, the tale of a supercomputer gone deliciously wrong. Colossus (1966) would immediately grab the attention of Universal Pictures, and producer Stanley Chase was tasked with pulling the movie adaptation together.

Chase had made his name with the legendary 1954-55 off-Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, which had resulted in a Tony for Lotte Lenya (Best Featured Actress in a Musical) and another for the co-producers, even though the Tonys were usually confined to Broadway productions.¹ He’d made his feature production debut with The Hell with Heroes (1968), which also happened to be the first non-Man from U.N.C.L.E. picture directed by Joseph Sargent. The Hell with Heroes was a bog-standard, slightly old-fashioned, post-war exotic thriller with a whiff of the programmer about it, despite a stacked cast including Rod Taylor (who was still under a cheap-as-chips contract) and Claudia Cardinale (who would find greater success with her other 1968 film, a little western known as Once Upon a Time in the West) But it was at least a foot in the door for Sargent and Chase, and they aimed to improve upon it with Colossus: The Forbin Project.

Colossus: The Forbin Project feels like an early take on the technophobic thrillers of Michael Crichton, a strident warning against artificial intelligence, and yet still (even in 2025, the year of the sex robot) manages to surprise. We open with Dr Charles Forbin (Eric Braeden) and his posse of Poindexters prepping to unveil Colossus – a vast supercomputer-operated nuclear defence system - to the Kennedyesque President (Gordon Pinsent). Colossus is a perfect machine, self-sufficient and almost entirely rational, but when it first identifies and then communicates with a similar system in the Soviet Union named Guardian, both superpowers scramble to shut down transmission. Pretty soon, Colossus is threatening to launch missiles, developing a particularly close relationship with its creator (and its erstwhile nemesis Guardian), and being a right royal global pain in the arse, all leading up to an ending that takes a hard left turn into dystopia.

Colossus the novel is pretty standard science fiction fare, saddled with dry dialogue and pedestrian prose, but it does have a solid premise. James Bridges had only one feature credit to his name (the 1966 adaptation of Robert MacLeod’s The Appaloosa) when he came on to write the screenplay for Colossus, and he rightly jettisoned most of Jones’s dialogue while tightening the story. Bridges had been an actor before veering into writing with several episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (thanks to Norman Lloyd) and would go on to make a name for himself as writer-director of The Paper Chase (1973), The China Syndrome (1979) and (to a lesser extent) Perfect (1985).² As a result, his dialogue – while undoubtedly talky – appears at least to come from the mouths of human beings rather than character types, and enough is done to establish Forbin’s team as a committed, if slightly overwhelmed, gang of nerds.

Heading up those nerds is Eric Braeden as Forbin, a role originally mooted for Charlton Heston or Gregory Peck, though it’s difficult to see how either actor would have been cast given the low budget of $2m. Apparently Chase insisted on a relatively unknown actor for the lead and Colossus marked Braeden’s feature debut. Even though German-born Hans-Jörg Gudegast had enjoyed a successful career (usually) playing villainous Teutonic types in series like The Rat Patrol and movies like 100 Rifles (1969), Colossus was the first outing for his new stage name, concocted because Universal head Lew Wasserman refused to let a German-named actor star in an American film.³

Braeden is an oddly successful choice in what is fundamentally a bizarre role. There’s a touch of Quatermass about Forbin, although it’s given a very Bondian sheen: faced with world annihilation, Forbin very rarely breaks a sweat or even looks that worried. But while Heston or Peck would have pulled this off without looking suspect, Braeden almost leans into it. You’d be forgiven for thinking this slightly square, martini-quaffing computer scientist not only recognised Colossus’s ability to become self-governing, but actively encouraged it, and there are takes on Colossus that read Forbin as a sex-starved Bond villain who parlays potential apocalypse into a way to get his crush (the wonderful Susan Clark, last seen here playing sassy second fiddle to James Garner) to take her clothes off. This is undoubtedly nonsense, but it does speak to Braeden’s performance, which can feel impenetrable to modern audiences used to characters voicing every last thought and intention, and which also feels limited in range almost by design.

Personally, I rather like Braeden in the movie: his opaque characterisation lends itself nicely to a story which also refuses easy categorisation: initially styling itself as a kind of higher tech Fail Safe (1964), Colossus takes a turn for the weird at the halfway point when Colossus becomes obsessed with Forbin (and, by extension, his sex life) and develops both a voice (by stalwart voice actor Paul Frees) and plans to displace the population of Crete to establish a bigger, more powerful version of itself.⁴ Both Forbin and Colossus have the same ends in mind – world peace – and it’s difficult to believe that Forbin didn’t see any of this coming, seeing as he’s super clever an’ that. While some may consider this a giant plot hole, I think it’s more interesting than that: like any egocentric scientist, there’s a good chance that Forbin did anticipate at least some of the problems Colossus presents, and he didn’t care - it’s all one big experiment, after all.

Because Colossus’s logic is pretty sound, even if it does swiftly become totalitarian:⁵ the first obvious step is to identify and absorb the greatest threat (in this case Guardian), the second is to ensure its continued existence by whatever means necessary, even if it means making poor old Liverpool a nuclear target. Where Colossus differs from other Cold War science fiction is that humanity’s warning comes essentially from within: usually it would be a strange alien race telling us to down muskets; now its our own technology. And this adds an unsettling flavour to Colossus: we can always kick an alien’s arse (or shoot ‘em in the case of The Day The Earth Stood Still) – they don’t know our human ways, after all – but it’s a different proposition when it’s the smartest computer on earth with no off switch. There’s also something satisfying about this machine using colonialist “benevolent dictatorship” reasoning to ensnare world powers: “In time you will come to regard me not only with respect and awe, but with love.” All right, mate, we’ve all had a drink …

None of this would work if Colossus didn’t present as an all-powerful threat, and one of the highlights of the movie is the set, which included some $4.8m of Control Data Corporation computers as well as the Universal payroll machine, and which required its own set of technicians, security guards, and climate control system. Sure, the interface might look a little janky to modern eyes, but we’re still a long way from the blinking cardboard boxes usually seen in movies of this era. The great Albert Whitlock also contributes some cracking matte effects, including the “activation scene” at the beginning of the movie, which does a lot of the heavy work of establishing the scale and power of Colossus.⁶ So while the machine never feels truly realistic, it does feel at least slightly plausible, and when the humans toil to thwart Colossus’s machinations there’s a feeling that they’re in over their heads, not least when Colossus throws a hissy fit when it can’t talk to its new mate Guardian and both machines launch missiles.

This precise moment is a breath-holder, with the score and soundtrack dropping out to silence for a few seconds to allow the horror of the situation to sink in. And for all the odd comic stuff – like a surveilled Forbin wiping condensation from Colossus’s bathroom camera presumably so it can get a better look at the good doctor’s bod – it’s kind of amazing that Colossus maintains any kind of tension at all. It is predominantly set-bound until a forced excursion to Rome allows for location shooting, has very little action and is extremely dialogue-heavy, so it’s no small testament to Bridges’ script (which avoids too much technical mumbo-jumbo) and Sargent’s direction that everything whips along at a canny pace – in fact, it all feels very essential, from the opening exposition dump through to that quintessentially ‘70s ending (a swift kick in the downers, then it’s out of there). Sargent might be seen as a journeyman director these days with one all-time great to his name,⁷ but his experience in television clearly informs his work on Colossus, preferring a gliding camera and sensible blocking to cuts, and making the $2m budget look way bigger thanks to excellent use of the set and a canny eye for peripheral characters and action.

The score also feels like it’s from a bigger, more expensive movie – Michel Colombier runs through a variety of styles during the hundred minutes, from quasi-experimental synths and strings to Les Baxter-like exotica, to a Schifrin style detour when Forbin shows Colossus around his living quarters. The music, like much of the rest of Colossus, is better than it has any right to be. By all accounts, this should have felt like a TV movie: the cast were predominantly television actors, both director and screenwriter made their bones on the idiot box, and the story has the not-so-faint whiff of The Outer Limits about it. And yet, the movie walks that fine line between Sunday afternoon hokum and genuine thriller with aplomb.

Critical reception was mildly affirmative, with Vincent Canby declaring Colossus “a practically perfect movie to see when you want to go to a movie and having nothing special in mind,” but the release was botched by Universal: a limited release in New York as The Forbin Project resulted in poor box office, and a rerelease later that year as Colossus: The Forbin Project did little to help.⁸ For most readers who have heard of it, Colossus was likely a television watch first, and it was only in 1980 that the movie seemed to gain real critical recognition, with Cinefantastique declaring it the second best film of the decade (after The Exorcist), “a perfect example that literate, thought-provoking science-fiction films need not be obscure, esoteric, or boring.”

While I can’t go as far as Cinefantastique, I can’t fault the reasoning. Colossus may look like a dull-as-ditchwater made-for-TV movie based on its synopsis and cast, but it’s actively trying to be something more, and while it never quite reaches the level of blow-your-head-apart epiphany. neither does it kowtow to generic convention: as I’ve said, there’s something just not right about Forbin as the hero (though he’s arguably more human than the novel’s hero); his team is notably diverse (for 1970, at least) in terms of sex and ethnicity; and the film plays off black humour against genuinely chilling moments. It’s almost as if Colossus doesn’t quite take itself seriously enough, even with its apocalyptic ending, but to do so would be to risk the entertainment value of the thing. You may not find the “mistress” plot particularly involving (and it isn’t, despite Clark’s best efforts and inherent charm), but it is – as Forbin says – “a nutty idea” that actually works when the more standard attacks (essentially a DDoS) do not. And as much as I’d like to, it’s difficult to get away from the movie’s central question of world peace at what cost. The novels would quickly eschew this in favour of cultish shenangians (in 1974’s The Fall of Colossus) and honest-to-God sentient Martian moons (in 1977’s Colossus and the Crab)⁹, but the movie remains perennial, not least in its early depiction of an out-of-control AI that would inevitably influence The Terminator’s Skynet¹⁰ and provide inspiration for a wide range of techbro sociopaths. Those who do not remember Colossus are doomed to repeat it. So do yourselves a favour and introduce yourselves to your new needy, petulant overlord ahead of schedule.

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Next Up: “He’s a Good Cop. On a Big Bike. On a Bad Road.”

1. Chase would finally see his dream of a film adaptation become the shoddy, low energy Mack the Knife (1989), directed by none other than Cannon impresario Menahem Golan.

2. I would be remiss in not also mentioning Mike’s Murder (1984), which finer minds have already written about.

3. Soap fans will undoubtedly recognise Mr Braeden as Victor Newman on The Young and the Restless, a part he’s played since 1980. Nice work if you can get it. And if you get it, won’t you tell me hooooooow.

4. In the book, I believe it’s the Isle of Wight rather than Crete, which confirms that the novel is very much British science fiction.

5. A noteworthy blood-chiller of a moment: Colossus orders the execution of a handful of scientists, whose bodies will be left out for twenty-four hours. You could argue that Colossus wants to ensure they’re really dead, but they also act as a stinging deterrent for any other rebels in the Forbin camp.

6. Whitlock would use this opening scene as an example of his greatest work in a 1975 lecture at the University of Southern California. All hail the matte master!

7. Do I really need to tell you? You’re a sick man, Rico.

8. As the story goes, the movie was first called The Forbin Project, because audiences are stupid and would expect any movie called Colossus to be a sword-and-sandals film starring Steve Reeves. Stanley Chase also stated that he was on the way to the New York premiere and happened to watch Colossus as the in-flight movie, which must have been awkward.

9. The Crab Nebula, in case you’re wondering. I know, I was hoping for some Guy N. Smith action too.

10. James Cameron is a fan of Colossus, and apparently cast Eric Braeden in Titanic (1997) because of the film.