No, seriously. I was born in ‘90, so I don’t have any actual memories of anything from the decade. Hell, Transformers have been around longer than I have. The best I can remember is how weird the early ‘90’s were in terms of pop culture and trends, which I assume is a result of ‘80’s style refusing to die. Everything I know about ‘80’s pop culture comes from stuff I’ve seen or read later. It just wasn’t my time.
However, I have spent many a meaningless hour watching old movies and TV shows and listening to music from that very decade. And the more I learn about it, the more I’ve come to form a few definitive truths about what the 1980’s were. As best as I can understand, in the 80’s:
- neon was everywhere
- all music had to have a synthesizer or electronic sound to it
- clothing with clashing colors, styles, or patterns was considered fashionable
- special effects looked about as real as my attempts at Photoshop
- action movies were BADASS
This is fact.
The reason I bring this up is that about a week or two ago I was hanging out with Adam and we ended up watching a RiffTrax of one of the coolest ‘80’s movies ever: The Running Man.
And I ran, I ran so far awayyy.
Love this movie. It's another one of those movies you'd sneak in to watch just cause it had girls, and guns, and ACTION! Some of it doesn't hold up to today's film standards, but it's still cheesy fun. It's main man Scwarzeneeger.
It's also a Stephen King book. Yep, cause when I think Stephen King, I think a burly Austrian. Arnold and King go hand-in-hand in this film, though, cause it hardly follows a lick of the book. Go figure. Still a cool flick though.
Running: something that occurs in every King book. Usually from Tim Curry.
Here’s the story: it’s “the future,” so of course society’s fallen into being controlled by a totalitarian police state where riots happen all the time and the government keeps people in line by distracting them with TV and entertainment. Alright, why is it that society as a whole always seems act like we have ADD?
But whatever. None of that’s really important. The story basically starts with Schwarzenegger as a military pilot named Ben Richards, working a mission and flying a helicopter over L.A. street riots that have broken out.
Insert “Get to the choppa!” joke here.
And he boned every single one of them.
Richards is ordered to fire on the (unarmed) crowd but, being the good guy, he of course refuses… and is promptly beaten down by the other three steroid-abusing commandos who have no such reservations about killing indiscriminately.
The people are gunned down, the whole thing is pinned on Richards, and he ends up in a forced labor camp. After being stuck there for a while, Richards stages a break-out with the help of a few other inmates, Laughlin the token black protagonist, and Weiss the token nerd/techie. Turns out that in the future all prisons will be protected by the equivalent of an electric dog fence, which will blow up the inmates but Weiss the token nerd finds a way to hack through. I guess the prison couldn’t afford an actual fence.
Anyways, they escape and Richards decides to lay low at his brother’s apartment for a while, and arrives only to find his brother gone and the apartment now owned by a girl named Amber, or as I like to call her, Whiney McGee, because most of her scenes have her either complaining, screaming, whining, or all three.
Actually, she’s Hispanic, so I’ll call her Whiney Chiquita.
She spends most of the movie, and her career, in this position.
Whiney Chiquita recognizes Richards from the news and freaks, but Richards manages to catch her and tie her to her exercise machine. No, no, he doesn’t do anything to her. But he does decide she’s going to help sneak him onto a plane out of the country and, to ensure her cooperation, demonstrates his badassery by ripping the bolted-down exercise equipment out of the floor, splintered floorboards and all. Damn. I mean, dude, if you can do that I don’t know what’s standing in your way. You are obviously a Terminator.
So Richards and Whiney Chiquita make it to the airport (dressed in their finest tacky ‘80’s casualware), but she of course alerts security and, after a brief chase scene, Richards is caught on the runway and taken to network headquarters. Why? To make him a star! Well, okay, really the network is just looking for new cannon fodder for their most popular show, The Running Man, hosted by (evil corporate douchebag) Damon Killian, played by real-world game show host Richard Dawson. In the show, “runners” try to evade “stalkers” through various death-match areas and, if they win, get the chance to be pardoned and set free.
But, as with any 80's-era villain, the latter is all but true. Muhahaha.
A lot of weird expressions in this picture.
Killian tricks Richards into competing in The Running Man by threatening to use his two other escapee friends- Laughlin and Weiss- instead. Richards complies and for some reason actually has to sign a release form to play. I don’t know why, seeing as how he’s a known convict, but whatever. He stabs a guy with a pen. Ha-ha! Anyway, as the show begins, Killian reveals that Laughlin and Weiss are being forced to play anyway. And it wouldn’t be an Arnold movie if he didn’t threaten:
His actual campaign poster.
The trio are sent into the game zone by being shot in rocket sleds down these winding sewer tubes which, while silly and impractical, I think look pretty damn cool. The rest of the movie is them making their way through each of the game zones and (surprise, surprise) actually beating the stalkers! What a shock!
The stalkers are what makes this movie hilarious, too. Being a cheesy game show in a cheesy ‘80’s movie, each one is gimmicky and laughable. You’ve got Subzero, a guy dressed in hockey pads and ice skates wielding a razor hockey stick. He inspires probably the most awesomely bad line in the whole movie when, after Richards kills him, Richards looks to the security cameras and boasts, “Here is Subzero! Now… Plain Zero!”
Oh, and Jessie Ventura’s there, too. But he just gets pissy when ordered to put on a costume and go fight Schwarzenegger. Not much of a sexual tyrannosaurus anymore.
Who's the slack-jawed faggot NOW?
Along the way, Laughlin gets killed, Whiney Chiquita is forced into the game after finding out Richards was set up for the massacre, and Weiss, after getting mortally injured (by Dynamo! Seriously, how is this guy able to kill anything other than his lunch?), tells Richards and Whiney Chiquita to find the network’s uplink facility.
Yeah, I probably should have mentioned it earlier, but everyone else forgets about it til the end anyway. Laughlin and Weiss are part of a “resistance” and hope to broadcast Richard’s setup to the world to bring down the TV station. How’d they get film from inside Richard’s helicopter? Why is the resistance operating in the game zone? How will this bring down the government?
Hell if I know. Richards and Whiney Chiquita find the resistance, broadcast the truth, storm the studio where The Running Man is being filmed (and finally kill Dynamo), and Richards gets revenge on Killian by strapping him to a rocket sled and sending him through the tubes to crash into a billboard and explode. Horray! Richards and Whiney Chiquita kiss in front of a neon background while ‘80’s pop music plays. Roll credits.
Nothing more badass than this: Arnold Scwarzenegger and a biker with a chainsaw.
Like I said, “The Running Man” is just pure ‘80’s cheese. But I still love it. That’s what makes it fun. The bad one-liners, the effects, the colors, the sheer ridiculousness of the action and the stalkers… everything that makes this movie a silly ‘80’s action flick makes it awesome. I loved watching it as a kid, and still do, because of how stereotypically cheesy it is. Rent it out sometime, get yourself a VHS. It's all good fun, until the one-liners hit the fan.
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