Bad/Awesome Flixxx Review: The Running Man (1987)

"Uplink underground, uplink underground. If you say that one more time, I'll uplink your ass, and you'll be underground!" - Ben Richards

"...Later, she cheated on College exams. Then she had sexual relations with three, sometimes even four men within a single year. Then came Mad Dog Ben Richards, her *Confederate*, her LOVER!" - Announcer

"I live to see you eat that contract, but I hope you leave enough room for my fist because I'm going to ram it into your stomach and break your god-damn spine!" - Ben Richards

so its 2014... supposedly in 3 years (2017) shit is gonna be wild as hell. Reality television will be even crazier than it is already. Criminals will compete in games to not be murdered by super villain psychopaths. The plot is pretty similar to the much newer movies THE HUNGER GAMES and BATTLE ROYALE but based on an old story by Steven King. Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse "the Body" Ventura, Yaphet Kotto, Mick Fleetwood, Jim Brown, Dweezil Zappa, and Richard Dawson, I present to you THE RUNNING MAN!!!

So, in the future we have a police state scenario and convicted criminals are televised on game shows for a chance at freedom. I guess that's why they chose Richard Dawson since he had already sent so many people to their deaths on Family Feud all those years ago. Anyway, the show and the people who run it are shady as hell, making up a lot of the shit that they tell about the contestants. They'll do or say anything for ratings. Not really so far off from what we have today anyway right? I could conceivably see this all going down in a few years. 
So Arnold is a cop who refuses to shoot a bunch of innocent civilians who are rioting over food. So his pig employers throw him in a sort of concentration camp. He escapes with Yaphet Kotto and a nerd hacker kid. He's asked to join a resistance movement to overthrow the networks, but all he wants to do is get outta the country. He hightails it to his brothers house and finds this hot chick living there. He kidnaps her and tries to split to Hawaii, but she rats him out at the airport and they throw his ass back over to the networks. Dawson is impressed by how ruthless he is, so he asks him if he'll participate in the game show. If he refuses they'll use Kotto and the nerd. So Arnold says ok, only to find out they used his buds anyway. They also took the video from inside his helicopter and chopped it up to make it look like he DID kill all the innocent people. So he's pissed. Now they get sent down this crazy bobsled and attempt to avoid the first "stalker" Sub-Zero. Arnold kills him with barbwire, and the audience can't believe it because no one in the history of the show has ever killed a stalker. 

It just so happens that the chick that got him captured works for the networks. She sees a video and realizes its fake and does some snooping around. She sees that Arnold is innocent but she gets captured and then they make her a contestant as well. So they're all thrown in the game and a bunch of stalkers come out to get them. They are trying to get some codes so they can broadcast over the airwaves and tell the audience that they're all a bunch of sheep. Buzzsaw comes after them, but Arnold kills him with a chainsaw. Then this one dude Dynamo looks like one of the Nasty Boys from WWF only with christmas tree lights on his body and he sings opera. He electrocutes the nerd but Arnold flips his rig (which is sweet by the way), BUT THEN DOESN'T KILL HIM BECAUSE HE DOESN'T KILL INNOCENT PEOPLE. BAM!! Audiences mind is blown again! 
So ******************SPOILER WARNING****************after killing the remaining stalkers and having the last one bail, and finding out that the "winners" from the previous years were just killed anyway, Arnold and the chick are kidnapped by the resistance. Dawson fakes their deaths and convinces the audience that "Captain Freedom" killed them in a photoshopped video. Arnold and the chick give the resistance the codes and they storm over to the studio and take it over showing the audience footage clearing Arnold's name, and then footage of the dead winners. Then Arnold storms in (everyone freaks cause they thought he was dead) and then he straps Dawson to the bobsled and sends him off to his fate (which I'll let you find out for yourself). Should you see this? Of course, this is one of those classic 80s action flicks. Do it.

Thursday, January 9, 2014