TV REVIEWS : A Diabolical Computer in ‘The Tower’

Fox’s slate of first-run TV film, which got off to an uneven start, has suddenly found its stride with a couple of summer movies that point to an imaginative movie signature.

Two weeks ago it was the stylish outlaw car-racing movie, “Born to Run,” and tonight it’s “The Tower,” another stylish action entry with a futuristic sheen that is technically adventuresome (at 8 p.m. on Channels 11 and 6).

In the tradition of “Duel” (the TV movie about the mad diesel truck that catapulted Steven Spielberg’s career) and with debt to “THX-1138,” “Brave New World” and even ghost stories and haunted houses, “The Tower” pits an inanimate object--a diabolical, main-frame computer--against two mere office workers (the romantic and humorous duo of Paul Reiser and Susan Norman).

Like Hal in “2001,” the implacable force here likes to talk and is affectionately called “Cas” (for Cybernetic Access Structure). Cas runs the tower, even waters the plants and makes the coffee. But she won’t tolerate any tomfoolery. You tamper around with corporate rules and Cas will mark your electronic I.D. with “deletion,” a euphemism for murder.

When Reiser’s rebellious character engages in one prank too many and Cas goes into her “hyper-security mode,” the world’s first completely automated building literally implodes.

What propels the story is its uneasy sense of prophecy and its blend of thrills and a sly sense of fun, with several clever throwaway lines in the script by John Riley and Richard Kletter from a story by Riley. In addition, Reiser and Norman contribute a sexy kind of Nick and Nora repartee.

But it is the look and sound of the movie that lingers. Kletter directs with a keen eye for a cold, sanitized world dominated by blue-gray colors and elevators and propeller-driven ventilators that whoosh and whir with malevolent speed and power. Seldom does a TV movie rely so heavily on sound design (Arne Schulze), art direction (Aram Allan) and visual effects photography (Dave Stump).