10 Chilling Sci-Fi Movies Where AI Goes Rogue

For 40 years before Jonathan Nolan adapted it for TV, Westworld loomed large in the public consciousness as the original and definitive science fiction western. Written and directed by Michael Crichton, the film is set in the life-like theme park Westworld, an environment peopled by realistic robots, where wealthy guests can shoot, drink, and live out their fantasies of the American frontier in the 1880s.

Peter Martin (Richard Benjamin) and his friend John Blane (James Brolin) choose the wrong time to visit, as malfunctions in Roman World and Medieval World spread to Western World, causing the park's AI to defy their programming and turn on the human guests. Hunting Peter and John is Hollywood icon Yul Brynner (at this time a veteran in adventure movies and westerns) as the nigh-immortal Gunslinger, an android programmed to pick gunfights with the guests, and who won't stop until they're both dead. 

Less of a reflection on the nature of self and sentience than its television successor, Westworld is primarily concerned with the unstoppable potential for untethered AI, choosing to lead with the bare horror of conscience-less androids unleashed on ornery folks. And, boy, if it ain't effective.