Bottom Line: While the plot of Looker is ridiculous, the movie is nonetheless entertaining because of a decent performance by Albert Finney, eye candy courtesy of Susan Dey and several captivating action sequences.  Put your brain on hold and watch those crazy light guns!

What I remembered

• There was a lot of nudity for a PG movie.  You could show a lot of skin back when this movie was released so long as it wasn’t in a sexual context.
• The “looker” light weapons, with their pulsating light effect and accompanying sound effect, were cool.
• When Albert Finney’s character is repeatedly zapped by a looker gun, his desk clock marks how much time he was zoned out.
• Susan Dey getting a fully nude body scan by a computer, effectively turning my childhood memories of The Partridge Family upside down.
• In the movie’s climactic action sequence, a dead bad guy’s body is included in the set for a CGI commercial.

Brief Summary

In Los Angeles, television commercial actresses are committing suicide.  Each of them had just paid a visit to plastic surgeon Dr. Larry Roberts (Albert Finney) to have some minute changes made to their bodies.  Each insisted that the changes were necessary so that they would be perfect.  But to whom and for what purpose?  After the law pays Roberts a visit, he witnesses one of the women apparently plunge to her death from her apartment balcony.  Roberts sees a large man with a mustache peering over the balcony.  Roberts rushes into the model’s apartment and misses the mystery man but does manage to strengthen the police’s case that he’s killing his perfect patients.

Believing that Cindy (Susan Dey), the sole remaining model he made perfect, is next on the kill list, he has her accompany him to a fundraiser.  He meets shady corporate overlord John Reston (James Coburn), who helpfully explains how the three dead models are linked to a subsidiary of his international conglomerate called Digital Matrix.  As Roberts digs into the workings of the company, he uncovers a secret program code-named “Looker”.  Digital Enterprises incorporates the technology in commercials to deliver subliminal messages to the viewer.  They’ve also developed a ray gun that paralyzes its target with blasts of light.  Digital Matrix may be evil, but they’re no slouches.  Unfortunately, Roberts now knows too much and Reston and the Mustache Man (Tim Rossovich) set out to kill him.  Can keep himself alive long enough to rescue Cindy from certain death?  Can a movie with this much nudity only be rated PG?

Looker is a perfect example of a movie that entertains even though little of it makes sense.  The movie accomplishes this by way of shiny objects that distract us from its ridiculously contrived plot.  These distractions include numerous shots of models in varying states of undress, a weapon that paralyzes with a strobe light effect, several decent action sequences and Barry De Vorzon’s pulsating electronic score.  Looker is not one of writer-director Michael Crichton’s better efforts (see Westworld, Coma), but it is entertaining in spite of its silly contrivances.

Analysis

The principal reason why Looker includes so much distracting eye candy is because the plot requires Dr. Roberts (a plastic surgeon) to play detective instead of having Lieutenant Masters (an actual detective) play that role.  Since Dr. Roberts doesn’t know the first thing about  investigating crimes, the plot regularly assists him with his investigation by placing clues in broad daylight for him to find.

After being questioned by Lieutenant Masters about how coincidental it is that two of the women he’s operated on have committed suicide, Roberts is immediately visited by another patient who is worried she’s next.  After expressing her concern that “they” are killing all of the women and asks if he’s seen “a big man with a mustache”.  She leaves in a panic but leaves her purse behind.  When Roberts looks inside, it contains a computer printout with “Digital Matrix” at the top along with the changes the other women asked him to make.  Without doing any investigation at all, Roberts already has several leads, including a description of the killer.

When Roberts arrives at Tina’s apartment building, he sees flashes of light coming from a balcony.  After witnessing Tina falling to her death, he sees a man fitting the description Tina gave conveniently looking down from her balcony.  Roberts proceeds to the crime scene and looks out from Tina’s balcony just when Masters pulls up.  Timing certainly is everything, especially in a movie like this one.

The next day, when Roberts and Cindy attend a fundraiser for a pediatric burn unit, John Reston (James Coburn) casually reveals that his conglomerate has a division that does work in television commercials, and that his main squeeze Jennifer runs Digital Matrix.  John and Jennifer are so fiendishly coy as they connect the dots for Roberts that only an idiot wouldn’t guess that they are the movie’s bad guys.  Not only is Roberts clueless when the plot needs him to be, he also neglects to pass along this information to the one person he knows who could actually act upon it.  For his part, Lieutenant Masters is becoming more convinced that Roberts is the murderer, given how he found him at the scene of Tina’s murder.

Sensing that Cindy is next on the hit list, he takes her to his place for protection.  He drives her to her set the next morning, where the commercial director asks her to fall into the sand again and again because the computer insists on her movements matching something.   Aside from watching Cindy repeatedly fall in the sand in a low-cut bikini, the scene does provide an opportunity for Roberts to look inside a Digital Matrix truck on the set.  

Roberts takes Cindy to Digital Matrix after the shoot, and Jennifer helpfully shows him around the place.  At one point they pass a room named the “Looker Lab” where flashes of light emanate from behind the door.  When Roberts asks Jennifer if he can have a peek  inside, she says she doesn’t have access.  Jennifer takes him to a room to show him how digital models are made.  A security badge is conveniently sitting on the technician’s desk for Roberts to grab.  With no actual investigative acumen, Roberts knows the exact room where nefarious things are happening, and has a badge to get in there.

Unfortunately, the badge doesn’t let Roberts and Cindy into the Looker Lab, but a computerized maintenance robot bails them out.  Thankfully they are big enough for the two of them to sit on.  But getting Roberts into the lab isn’t enough.  The plot leaves a binder of information on the Looker Program that provides all of the answers Roberts needs.  How he, a plastic surgeon, is able to understand complex engineering schematics and technical jargon is anyone’s guess.

As contrived as the plot of Looker is with Dr. Roberts, the way the villains react to his sleuthing efforts defies explanation.  The initial plan by John Reston and Jennifer was to frame Roberts for the murders.  After he’s able to uncover damaging information about their sinister operations, they decide to kill him.  They attack him at his office with machine guns, which somehow don’t manage to attract the attention of the police.  They laser beam him while he’s driving, but they don’t bother to see if he actually dies from the crash.  Then, after Roberts unwittingly puts himself into the clutches of Reston Industries security personnel, they take him back to Digital Matrix where a big reception is being held.  After Roberts escapes, Reston and the Mustache Man hunt down Roberts with guns blazing right in the middle of a demo of their subliminal advertising technology.

Lastly, the looker gun is cool, but the rules for how it works makes no sense.  Why does the gun first paralyze the victim for an hour or so, and then let them see everything but the shooter for some period of time later?  Why can Roberts see the Mustache Man on television monitors and the lower half of his body?

Bits and Bytes

The movie begins with Lisa explaining to Roberts that she needs her areola distance corrected by five millimeters because she acts in commercials.  What commercials is she doing, anyway?

She's a looker
That's what they say
She's got it all
She's got it made
She's a looker
With a beautiful face
Always on display
- Kim Carnes

The cheesy song that plays in the beginning of the movie, “She’s a Looker”, was written by Kim Carnes of “Bette Davis Eyes” fame.  Despite the best efforts of the movie and this song, calling a woman a “looker” thankfully never caught on.

After killing Lisa, the Mustache Man leaves behind a pen and a button in clear view so they will be easy for the police to notice.  There’s something to be said about not being too obvious when you frame someone for a crime.

Lisa falls from her balcony in her underwear.  Tina falls from her balcony in her slip.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Finney and Dey have zero chemistry in this movie, and their presumptuously flirtatious dialog falls flat.

Dey’s character is told several times in the movie that she’s perfect.  The movie must have been a huge ego massage for her.

In their first scene together, Roberts and Reston walk arm-in-arm.  While they are acquaintances, they aren’t that close.

If Tina is worried about being killed, why does she go back to her apartment alone and change her clothes when she gets there?  (Hysterics are not a thing, sorry.)

I suspect that the scene of Tina falling from her balcony onto a car below provided the inspiration for the opening scene for Lethal Weapon which would come out several years later.

At the benefit for the pediatric burns unit, Cindy spends dinner giving Roberts her best “take me to your beachfront house and rock me to the sound of the crashing waves” eyes, but when the incredibly easy opportunity presents itself, Roberts says there are fresh towels at her disposal.  She presses further and practically begs him to make love to her, to no avail.  What does a drunken model need to do to get some action around here?!?

The commercial director is played by Terry Kaiser, who would eventually be known for playing the corpse that would not rot in Weekend at Bernie’s.

The beach commercial scene makes little sense in retrospect.  If all the computer needed to do was scan Cindy to be able to puppet her around, why bother with having her fall again and again on the sand at all?  With that in mind, why didn’t the computer add the two moles that are clearly visible on her chest to the list of items to be fixed before she is scanned?

At Digital Matrix, a technician tells Cindy that she’ll make $200k a year for the use of her digitized image.  Taking inflation into account, the background actors Disney insisted on scanning for “future use” would be ecstatic to make that much.

Roberts “uncovers” numerous clues that point to who killed his patients, but never passes them along to Masters.  Instead, Roberts continues to play detective, putting his life, Cindy’s life and the investigation at risk.  Thankfully, Masters is following Roberts around because he’s the only suspect in the investigation.  This proves to be fortuitous to Roberts in the end.

Roberts is a top-notch plastic surgeon, and his beverages of choice are RC Cola and Budweiser?  A true man of the people.

After a lengthy attack from The Mustache Man, Roberts finally shows some competence by donning the reflective glasses to repel the light blasts.  He effectively subdues his attacker, but tosses the reflective glasses away.  Given that Roberts knows that they negate the looker gun, why doesn’t he keep them as protection?

The final confrontation that happens at Digital Matrix is nonsensical.  Wouldn’t it have been better to have taken Cindy and Roberts anyplace besides where the big reception is being held?

The movie never bothers to explain why Reston and Jennifer want to kill the perfect models in the first place.  What company would want their commercial to feature a dead actor?

Tim Rossovich has no lines of dialog in the movie.  Impressive mustache, though.