10. “I GOT YOU, BABY GIRL”: A post-apocalyptic film with some emotional heft.

The Prize Of Peril is a game show that everyone in France is crazy about. The rules are pretty simple. A helicopter takes contestants a mile away from the studio and they’re given four hours to get back. If they do, they win a million. But ah, the show also has five hunters who can kill the contestants. No one has ever won. Frederick Jacquemard (Gerard Lanvin) thinks he can do it.

Based on a story by Robert Sheckley and not Richard Bachman AKA U of M graduate Steve King, whose The Running Man came out only one year before, Le Prix du Danger is the second adaption of the story after the German made for TV film Das Millionenspiel.

Directed by Yves Boisset, The Prize of Peril has a great host in the middle of all of this craziness, Frédéric Mallaire (Michel Piccoli), which is also something that, you know it, shows up in The Running Man.

What the Arnold movie does much better is explain the rules of the game show. And have characters who have meaning and that you care about. Frederick seems like someone we shouldn’t like, the journalist character seems like she’s going to stop the show and the other contestants barely register.

But Yves Boisset thought that this movie and Twentieth Century Fox’s films were real close. Too close. He thought the screenplay was the same one, in fact. He sued and IMDB claims that the paperwork for the case was lost in a plane crash in the New York bay, which yes, is IMDBS.But nonetheless, it may have taken eleven years, but Boisset won.

Maybe because the novel The Running Man is nothing like the film.

Looking for more game show movies? Try The 10th Victim, which was also written by Sheckley. I also recommend Warriors of the Year 2072 and Endgame.