Poor college student Elliott Street gets a credit card in the mail, made out to Henry Norman. He quickly realizes that it's a computer error, but with the help of some friends in the computer department, he sets up the credit card, and they begin to use it to buy things on credit. Only a gun purchase shows up, and none of them bought it. When Street and one of the others die, the survivors, Stefanie Powers and James Stacy, begin to wonder if it's the college's mainframe computer, which is also used by businesses within the county, who's doing it. Has the computer become Henry Norman, and is it killing them to protect itself?
It's a nice set-up for the sort of science fictions story which assumes some minor advance in the near future and builds a story on that. In 1971, this didn't even have to posit a minor change, except the paranoid idea of what is today called Artificial Intelligence and go on from there.
In the end, the story is far more commonplace, although that lurking fear remains throughout. This was produced as a TV movie, but I looked at the slightly longer version that was released to theaters briefly. It still looks like a TV movie. With Dean Stockwell and James Olson.
It's a nice set-up for the sort of science fictions story which assumes some minor advance in the near future and builds a story on that. In 1971, this didn't even have to posit a minor change, except the paranoid idea of what is today called Artificial Intelligence and go on from there.
In the end, the story is far more commonplace, although that lurking fear remains throughout. This was produced as a TV movie, but I looked at the slightly longer version that was released to theaters briefly. It still looks like a TV movie. With Dean Stockwell and James Olson.