Brainstorm

 Dr. Lillian Reynolds (Louise Fletcher) and Dr Mark Brace (Christopher Walken) are working on a machine to record sensory input directly from the brain and play it back into the brain of another person. After some initial success their industrial sponsor fully funds the project and starts to develop a product around it, bringing in Brace's estranged wife Karen (Natalie Wood) for this part of things.

As it develops they manage to capture emotions and memory with great positive applications emerging but also some dangerous ones.

No good will come of this.

Douglas Trumbull's famously troubled sci-fi showcase nearly never saw the light of day due to Natalie Wood's death and subsequent complete shutdown. It's both visually old fashioned and forward looking at the same time.

The concept of computers recording people and playing it back is a common trope now but less so in 1983. There's a really quite nice corporate espionage style plot, a heist, an Orgasmatron, death by playback, computer hacking, a genuinely good romance subplot, machines run amok and some metaphysical woo reminiscent of the end of 2001 to round it out.

It's a little disjointed in places but given the circumstances it's far far better than it has any right to be. The end result shows that sometimes 'doomed' productions can still work. If things had been different I think it would be an absolute classic.

Worth your time for a very early 80s view of a scientific revolution that never happened 7/10.