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Looker

Looker
Looker imp.jpg
original film poster
Directed by Michael Crichton
Produced by Howard Jeffrey
Written by Michael Crichton
Starring Albert Finney
James Coburn
Susan Dey
Leigh Taylor-Young
Terri Welles
Kelby Anno
Music by Barry De Vorzon
Cinematography Paul Lohmann
Edited by Carl Kress
Distributed by Warner Bros.
Release date
October 30, 1981
Running time
94 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Box office $3,281,232

Looker is a 1981 science fiction film written and directed by Michael Crichton. It starred Albert Finney, Susan Dey, and James Coburn. Former NFL linebacker Tim Rossovich was featured as the villain's main henchman.

The film is a suspense/science fiction piece that comments upon and satirizes media, advertising, TV's effects on the populace, and a ridiculous standard of beauty.

Though spare in visual effects, the film is notable for being the first commercial film to attempt to make a realistic computer-generated character, for the model named Cindy. It was also the first film to create three-dimensional (3D) shading with a computer, months before the release of the better-known Tron.

Dr. Larry Roberts (Albert Finney), a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, is puzzled when four beautiful models working in television commercials request cosmetic surgery to make changes so minor as to be imperceptible to the naked eye. When these models later start dying under mysterious circumstances, he discovers they are all linked to the same advertisement research firm.

The Digital Matrix research firm rates advertising models using a scoring system to measure the combined visual impact of various physical attributes in television commercials. In an experiment to increase their scores, some models are sent to Dr. Roberts to get cosmetic surgery to maximize their visual impacts. Though the models are physically perfect after the surgeries, they still are not as effective as desired, so the research firm decides to use a different approach. Each model is offered a contract to have her body scanned digitally to create 3D computer-generated models, then the 3D models are animated for use in commercials. The contract deals seem to be incredibly lucrative for the models: once their bodies are represented digitally, they get a paycheck for life, never having to work again, since their digital models are used for all their future work in commercials.


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