This is an under rated Sci-Fi gem. Absolutely powerful story line leaving no room for cob webs in your mind. Dr. Charles Forbin(Eric Braeden)puts his life's work into creating a super intelligent computer that links up with a similar machine created by the U.S.S.R. and tries to hold the world hostage. Dramatic dialogue and crafty schemes seem just enough to outwit the computerized meglomaniac. Tension is tight and privacy is a cherished commodity.

Braeden, who later would become a major TV soap opera character Victor Newman, is outstanding in this role. Susan Clark plays one of his co-workers and pretends to be his lover in trying to fool the computer. Gordon Pinsent plays the concerned President, while Lenoid Rostoff plays his Russian counterpart. William Schallert is the calm and cordial Director of the CIA. Other notables in the cast are Marion Ross and Georg Stanford Brown. If you get the chance to see this Cold War thriller...by all means check it out. If you want to leave your brain at the door, forget it...you will need it.

The film is an intriguing near future sci-fi movie. The USA has created an enormous and state of the art supercomputer designed to control all our defenses against the Soviets. This computer is unlike any other, because it is able to think and reason and adapt. Well, once they turn it on, it starts to take over--infiltrating computers all over the world--including the Soviets'! And, the computer system notes that if it allows humans to regain control, they could potentially destroy the world with their weapons. So, the computers give the world an ultimatum--let us control you or we'll unleash the terror of nuclear annihilation! It's an interesting, though impossible premise starring Eric Braeden--a man mostly known for RAT PATROL and soap operas.

When Eric Braeden playing Dr. Charles Forbin built Colossus he built far better than he could conceive and soon regretted it. This thought provoking science fiction film challenges a whole lot of casual assumptions about man's superiority and dominance of his world. Not too mention the possibilities of the computer age.

Back then in 1970 the idea of personal computers and folks carrying around lap tops was not conceived either. If they had them then, the various members of the cast would just plug them in to get directions from Colossus and Braeden just might be considered expendable.

Braden's Dr. Forbin is the computer genius THE man in the cyber industry. He's built a huge underground computer deep in the Rocky Mountains that has completely taken over the defense of the USA. It's beyond the scope of anything ever developed. The Russians have also developed such a system called Guardian as Colossus learns. They contact each other and forge a partnership to maintain world peace at any price.

Of course man does not like putting himself at the mercy of machines for any reasons. Our Luddite tendencies are not so far beneath the surface. Both machines are capable of exercising the self defense mechanism that the US and USSR have built in and being super smart, they've got some tricks of their own.

Gordon Pinsent plays the president of the USA, the most popularly elected leader on the planet. Yet by dint of the knowledge he has about the super computers taking over, Braeden supplants him as the most important man in the world, a dubious distinction in the world that Colossus and Guardian are going to create.

Except for fans of The Young And The Restless and The Rat Patrol, Eric Braeden got his career role in Colossus: The Forbin Project. This is one imaginative film and the particulars might be wrong as developed, but the general idea about super computers running us eventually is rich food for thought.