In 1970, as the cold war began at last to cool and the increasingly controversial conflict in Vietnam took its place at front and centre of the cultural conscience, paranoia was in the air.  Not coincidentally, among the hottest topics of the era was humanity’s increasing reliance on technology – in particular where the incremental leaps and bounds made on that front might take us as a people.  And then, along came Colossus.

As the opening credits of The Forbin Project flicker across the frame, a Hazmat-suited scientist puts the finishing touches to a great supercomputer – a suite of consolidated computers so enormous that it has to be housed inside a mountain hollowed-out for that express purpose.  After the last round of tests have been completed, the scientist takes his leave of the endless banks and towers of flashing lights and exits the facility.  Colossus, you see, is no ordinary computer, but rather a self-sufficient system governed by an artificial intelligence advanced almost beyond imagining; an unnatural design programmed to act as a kind of caretaker for America.  Colossus is a creature of pure, infallible logic – it needs no rest, no sustenance; in its hillside housing it stands as impenetrable, even to its creators; and most importantly, it has no emotions to cloud its judgment.  Colossus is entirely beyond human error – reason alone can guide its hand – and so, it is entrusted with all the nuclear weapons in the United States.  What could possibly go wrong?

At first, nothing.  The transfer of power goes off without a hitch.  The artificial intelligence kicks in.  Everything seems to go to plan.  The system’s existence is announced to the public (after the fact, of course), and Dr Charles Forbin – the creator of Colossus – is congratulated by the President.  But on the other side of the world, a second such supercomputer has booted up, and soon enough, Colossus and its Russian counterpart begin to communicate.  “There is,” as the dot-matrix display asserts, “another system.”An inspired concept isn’t the only thing The Forbin Project has going for it, either.  The glue that holds together this little known but much loved cult classic is an excellent central performance by relative unknown Eric Braeden as the mastermind behind the megalomaniacal machine.  Effortlessly charismatic and intellectual at once, his is a performance without which the film would fall flat, written off as perhaps a Strangelove wannabe without the attention to detail or wit of Kubrick’s idiosyncratic epic.  But Braeden holds the narrative together admirably, and he’s well supported by a bumbling Gordon Pinset as a powerless President, entirely out of his league, and Susan Clark’s Cleo Markham, whose forthright charm helps to anchor the story when it’s in most need – which is to say throughout The Forbin Project’s second act.  Until the halfway point, television director Joseph Sargent does an excellent job of building tension; long sequences of tight shots framed by often static cameras lend the film an air of claustrophobia that only exacerbates the sense of fear that mounts as Colossus’ power grows inexorably.