EDITOR’S NOTE: This was originally on the site on August 15, 2017. 

There are three things I want to immediately say that I’ve learned upon rewatching this film: Mick Fleetwood is playing himself, it’s aged worse than movies with a much smaller budget, and most importantly, so much of the dystopian future of this movie isn’t as bad as the world we live in right now.

Wait — what, what and what the fuck?

Let’s back up a bit. The Running Man was a troubled production, with original director Andrew Davis (Under Siege, The Fugitive) being replaced a week into filming by former Starsky and Hutch actor, Paul Michael Glaser (he’s gone back to acting, but not before giving us the magic that is Kazaam). In his book, Total Recall, Arnold wrote that this was a horrible decision, as the director “shot the movie like it was a television show, losing all the deeper themes. In fairness, Glaser just didn’t have time to research or think through what the movie had to say about where entertainment and government were heading and what it meant to get to the point where we actually kill people on screen. In TV they hire you and the next week you shoot and that’s all he was able to do.”

Written by Steven E. de Souza (who had a hell of a run, writing Commando, 48 Hrs. and the first two Die Hard films, while also adapting Mark Schultz’s Xenozoic Tales for TV as Cadillacs and Dinosaurs) from the Richard Bachman book (Bachman was and is, of course, Stephen King, who was using a pseudonym to see if his success was due to talent or luck. A Washinton, D.C. book clerk named Steve Brown discovered the truth before an answer could be found. In fact, Bachman’s next book was to be Misery, which ended up becoming a King novel. The Dark Half, which became a George Romero movie, is based on this experience.). In the original book, hero Ben Richards is anything like the physical description of Arnold, who is near super-heroic.

The film starts that in 2017 — a time that we’re all sadly too familiar with — the U.S. has become a police state post worldwide economic collapse — perhaps not as close to home, but uncomfortably nearby. Actually, it’s way too fucking close to reality, as the opening text tells us that the “great freedoms of the United States are no longer, as the once great nation has sealed off its borders and become a militarized police state, censoring all film, art, literature, and communications.”

Within two years, the only thing that keeps the populace under control is The Running Man, a game show where convicted felons battle for their lives against the Stalkers, who are presented as pro wrestling/American Gladiators style stars. Damon Killian (Richard Dawson of TV’s Family Feud and Hogan’s Heroes, as well as one of the first people in the U.S. to own a VCR) hosts the proceedings and remains one of the enduring reasons to enjoy this film. One gets the idea that Dawson was keen to parody his years of hosting game shows and he cuts through this film, making his role so much better than it deserves to be, whether it’s his ads for Cadre Cola or the way he shits on everyone in his path, even lowly custodians. IMDB states that plenty of folks who worked with Dawson on Family Feud claim that he was exactly like this character, but that seems like the sour grapes of hearsay. Anyways, worried that ratings may slip, Killian pushes for Ben Richards, the “Butcher of Bakersfield,” (actually, it was all a setup and he was wrongly convicted of killing citizens during a food riot) to be the next runner.

Ben gets caught because instead of staying at a resistance camp — post-prison break where people’s heads get blown up real good — with fellow escapees Weiss (Yaphet Kotto from Alien and Live and Let Die) and Laughlin, he decides to find his brother. Instead, his brother has been taken in for re-education. In his place is Amber Mendez (Maria Conchita Alonzo, Predator 2, The Lords of Salem), the composer of the music for The Running Man.

Richards takes Amber hostage, but she knees him in the little Arnold and he’s caught with a big net. Oh yeah — we also meet Mick Fleetwood as a resistance leader here. Remember how I said he played himself? Here’s my evidence. He states that the government has “burned my music” and his second-in-command is named Stevie, after Fleetwood Mac band member and former flame Stevie Nicks (but is played by Dweezil Zappa, who is also in Pretty in Pink and Jack Frost). In exchange for Killian not putting his friends into the game, Richards enters the contest, only to learn that it’s all a lie and they’ll all be part of The Running Man.

The game begins and immediately, Richards does something that’s never been done. No Runner has ever killed a Stalker, but he bests and kills Subzero (former pro wrestler Professor Tory Tanaka, who played just about every Asian henchman ever. He’s the butler in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, he’s one of the heavies in The Last Action Hero, he’s Rushmore in 3 Ninjas and his IMDB filmography has many roles that simply list him as “sumo wrestler” or “bodyguard.”).

Meanwhile, Amber learns from the news that the media’s presented truth does not line up with her memories — Richards is accused of killing numerous people that she did not see him murder. Her detective work gets her caught and now, she’s on the show.

Buzzsaw (Gus Rethwisch, Arnold the Barbarian from House 2) kills Laughlin before Richards dispatches him. Dynamo (played by Erland van Lidth, a classically trained baritone opera singer, who is actually singing the aria that introduces himself), another Stalker, kills Weiss before Richards flips his buggy, trapping him. However, Richards refuses to kill him, which increases his popularity. As the downtrodden people of the U.S. regularly bet on the game, they suddenly stop betting on the Stalkers and bet on a Runner for the first time — to the anger of Killian.

Killian offers Richards a Stalker role, but gets turned down. In retaliation, he sends Fireball, one of the most famous Stalkers, after Ben and Amber. He’s played by Jim Brown, who knows about the world of blood and circuses, seeing as how he is a former NFL football star. Plus. he was also in The Dirty Dozen and Mars Attacks! Fireball’s pursuit takes them into an abandoned factory where they find the charred remains of past winners — all lies, as they were really killed by Fireball, who is killed by his own weapon.

Totally losing his mind, Killian wants to send the game’s biggest star, Captain Freedom (Jesse “The Body” Ventura from Predator) to take on Richards. Freedom refuses, so the show creates a CGI version of reality where Captain Freedom wins by killing off Richards and Amber.

Meanwhile, Mick Fleetwood finds our stars and helps them get into the control room, where Amber kills Dynamo and Richards reveals the truth. Killian begs for his life, as all he was doing was giving the people what they want — death and chaos. Ben refuses, sending Killian into the game zone, where his rocket sled hits a Cadre Cola billboard and explodes.  Boom — a happy ending, as Ben and Amber romantically walk into the sunset, until you realize that their victory has changed absolutely nothing and society will just keep on being the same exact way.

Remember when I said this movie hasn’t aged well? I’d argue that it looks worse than the much smaller-budgeted Warriors of the Year 2072. The costumes look cheap, the video screens look sadly composited and everything feels woefully low budget for a film that cost $27 million dollars to make.

And what of the claim that this film’s post-apocalyptic future is better than our own? One only has to watch the scene where Richards is caught at the airport. Today’s post 9/11 security checkpoints are way worse than anything the hero of this film encounters — he’s never frisked and the tourists freely walk onto the tarmac of the airport, just like folks once could.

Honestly, director Glaser was in well over his head. If a director like Paul Verhoeven was at the helm — like Arnold’s Total Recall — the sheer ridiculous nature of a game show controlling the world could have really been a winner. As it stands here, this is a fun film that makes you wish that it could be so much more — kind of like eating Buffalo wing flavored chips and wishing that they were really Buffalo wings.

In truth, life imitated art in this film, as it inspired the aforementioned American Gladiators and the dance routines were choreographed by future reality game show hostess Paula Abdul.  And the Adidas sponsored costumes of the Runners hints at the days when everything would have a branded logo.

Other films like Death Row Gameshow, Gamer, Battle Royale and The Hunger Games would play in the same game zone as The Running Man. Of all the 80’s remakes, this one feels like the best case for a new, better version. Sadly, I think we’re going to see it in real life before we see it on the screen.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This first ran on June 5, 2021.

As Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally” blares, helicopters carrying Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger), Poncho (Richard Chaves), Billy (Sonny Landham), Mac (Bill Duke), Hawkins (Shane Black), Blain (Jesse Ventura) and Dillon (Carl Weathers) lands in Central America to free a foreign cabinet minister and his aide.

On their way to the target, Dutch discovers a destroyed helicopter and three skinned bodies of a failed rescue attempt. After Dutch’s team decimates the enemy, including some Soviet officers, they learn that it was all a set-up by Dillon to get information from the enemy. Only one is left alive — Anna (Elpidia Carrillo) — so the team takes her to the extraction zone.

And this is where Predator flips the script.

Written by Jim and John Thomas (Mission to Mars, Executive Decision) and directed by John McTiernan (Die Hard, Last Action Hero), this film starts as a testosterone-laced ode to American firepower and then becomes a slasher, as the team is followed by an invisible, nearly-unstoppable alien hunter (Kevin Peter Hall) who has come from space just for the sport of hunting these soldiers.

The inspiration for the film came from a joke that after Rocky IV, Stallone had run out of opponents on Earth. If they made another film, he’d have to fight an alien. Jim and John Thomas were inspired by that and wrote Hunter, which became Predator. One could argue that they had seen Without Warning, which is nearly the same idea, with an alien — armed with futuristic weaponry and also played by Kevin Peter Hall — on Earth to hunt humans.

There are so many stories about how JCVD was once the Predator. Why that ended is up for debate. Maybe it’s because Van Damme was only 5’9″. Or it could have been because all Jean Claude did was complain about the suit being so hot that he kept passing out. Or maybe the original design just didn’t work. The Stan Winston redesign? It’s as iconic as the xenomorphs of Alien, which the Predator would get to battling soon enough.

Predator just works. I’m a fan of Predator 2 as well, but the first film is absolutely perfect. The ultimate hunter against the ultimate soldier? Yeah, this is what an action movie should be.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was originally on the site on October 30, 2020.

Along with Edge of the Axe and Deadly Manor, Spanish horror director José Ramón Larraz made this movie explicitly for the burgeoning American video rental market. It has all the cheap thrills you want, but it feels like a Michelin star chef just made you a mac and cheese pizza.

Helen Hewitt (Lorin Jean Vail, The Patriot) and her husband Bob (Scott Thompson Baker, Open House) have just moved into the country villa of her recently deceased Aunt Catherine. Everyone there is pretty much beyond rude and more in your face hostile to them both, which is only the start of the weirdness they endure. I mean, I would have given up when the corpse of Catherine sat straight up when Helen kissed her.

Actually, even before they get there, Helen learns that her father was Catherine’s ex-husband and that he died soon after she was born. Her aunt has held a grudge out against the family, but still gives her everything she owns before she commits suicide during the video will by drinking poisoned milk. Yes, you read that correctly.

This is another movie I have to add to my poison milk Letterboxd list, which also includes La muñeca perversa, The Cat O’Nine Tails, The Two Mrs. Carrolls, The Killing Kind, Impulse, The Woods, Confessions, Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker, Edge of Darkness and Revenge of the Living Dead Girls.

Jack Taylor — who was in more horror movies than even I have watched, but I’ll list out the Nostradamus films, The Ghost Galleon and Female Vampire to start — plays a blind musician who plays a concert while everyone in the town conspires against the two newcomers. Eurohorror queen Patty Shepherd also shows up as a character named, get this, Gertrude Stein.

It’s not great, but the idea of a great movie is in here. But you know me. This is exactly the kind of goofball horror that I love.

You can get this from Vinegar Syndrome.

Cross My Heart (1987): Armyan Bernstein is usually known as a producer, but he directed and co-wrote this movie with Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman co-creator Gail Parent.

It has similarities to When Harry Met Sally as David Morgan (Martin Short) and Kathy (Annette O’Toole) — our lead couple — are continually advised by their respective friends Bruce (Paul Reiser) and  Nancy (Joanna Kerns). Now, they prepare themselves for their third date, the one where they may finally make love, and more importantly the one where they’ll reveal themselves for better or worse to one another.

It’s an interesting film, as I never saw Short as a sexual romantic lead before and there it is. This is a movie where their conversation nearly happens in real time. O’Toole is gorgeous and if you have a strange crush on short, well…allow this to be your film.

Pure Luck (1991): One of Becca’s favorite movies, Pure Luck has Martin Short in the traditional role you know and enjoy him for, as a bad luck office worker who can’t help but be overly sure of hismelf despite destroying everything in his path.

Directed by Nadia Tass and written by Francis Veber (it’s based on his French movie La chèvre and it’s not the only movie he made that got remade by Hollywood; there’s also Le Grand Blond Avec une Chaussure Noire (The Man with One Red Shoe), L’emmerdeur (Buddy Buddy), La Cage aux Folles (The Birdcage), Le Jouet (The Toy), Les Comperes (Fathers’ Day), Le Diner de Cons (Dinner for Schmucks) and Les Fugitifs ( Three Fugitives)), Herschel Weingrod and Timothy Harris.

Short’s Eugene Proctor is just as clumsy as his boss’ missing daughter Valerie (Sheila Kelley), so a psychologist named Monosoff (Harry Shearer) decides that he’d be the perfect person to find her. To ensure that he doesn’t screw up, he’s assigned Raymond Campanella (Danny Glover) to the rescue trip to Puerto Vallarta.

In an interview, Tass said, “It was successful in a financial sense but not in a satisfying sense. It was congenial doing a Martin Short comedy, but American comedy is different from Australian comedy. It is broader. American audiences enjoyed Pure Luck, but audiences in other countries did not enjoy it so much with the exception of the Germans. I wanted to do something else with the comedy and so did Danny Glover. I would like to have put a lot more pathos and pain into it. But they wanted a comedy for America.”

He still gets residuals from the film, so there’s that.

It’s a silly film that has a stand out scene with Short’s face swelling up from a bee sting that never fails to make me laugh. Yeah, it’s not much, but if you get one laugh from it, can it be that bad?

You can get the Mill Creek Martin Short Double Feature – Cross My Heart / Pure Luck from Deep Discount.

Puneet Issar is the man known as both Shekhar and Superman in this 1987 B. Gupta-directed remix remake ripoff of 1978’s Superman. He’s sent to Earth by his Kryptonian father Jor-El (Dharmendra) and as the planet explodes, the footage from Richard Donner’s film, as well as the John Williams score, is used.

After landing in India, Shekhar has the same upbringing as Clark Kent, except that he seems to really enjoy the song “Beat It.” He then grows up, goes to college and falls for Gita, who is also being pretty much stalked by K. K. Verma (Shakti Kapoor), so we have our Lois and Lex. After his father has a heart attack, Shekhar finds a tube in the rocket that brought him to Earth and becomes Superman, all while Gita finds work both in a hostel and at the Daily Times. Shekhar joins her and they both learn that Verma is now a criminal mastermind, complete with an army of strong women.

This is a Superman that has telekinesis — that he uses to feed orphans with dancing food — and a Lex Luthor that frequently has dancing girls show up and perform musical numbers for his pleasure.

Of course, Superman flies around the world just like the Hollywood film and yes, it’s the exact same footage. What a magical world we live in.

You can watch this on YouTube.

You’d think that Michael Moriarty would have had enough of window washers falling off of high rises, but he’s back — well, he’s playing a security expert instead of a thief, this time Dennis Randall — and he’s trying to figure out why people keep dying inside a possessed high rise.

The mystery that I will solve for you is that director Ken Barnett is really two people.

Original director Ken Wiederhorn (Shock Waves) was replaced by Freddie Francis. Yes, the Amicus director, making his last movie.

He wasn’t the only replacement. Moriarty replaced Roger Daltrey and Jenny Agutter (An American Werewolf In London) replaced Lucy Guttridge.

Released in the U.S. as The Curse V and as Demons 7: The Inferno in Japan, this movie starts with some great deaths — and Agutter in some of the most ridiculously unrevealing lingerie ever seen in a movie — and becomes a haunted high rise movie that can’t compete with Demons 2 or Poltergeist 3.

It does have Kevin McCarthy playing a psychic trying to investigate what’s happening as well as a finale that has Agutter’s hair and wardrobe looking different in nearly every scene.

This was a Sandy Howard production, just like Blue Monkey, so it definitely was on the shelf of your video store.

Look, you can watch any one of these three movies in any order you’d like. Things just seem to happen, plot lines stop and start with no reason behind them and most of the movie is fight scenes, which is as it should be. If you’re the kind of person who needs things to make sense, run fast and run hard.

These were directed by Joseph Kuo, the same man who brought the world Mystery of Chessboxing, World of the Drunken Master, Deadly Fists of Kung Fu, The Old Master, 36 Deadly Styles, 18 Bronzemen, Shaolin Kung Fu and so many more. His movies are all pretty wild but these ones, well, they take that level of strangeness to unseen levels.

Ninja Death I (TUBI LINK): The description of this on Tubi says that it’s “A late-‘80s martial arts film about the owner of a prostitution brothel who is also a secret kung fu artist on the side with a powerful master.”

Sure, OK.

Tiger (Alexander Lo Rei, USA Ninja) is a bouncer at a Hong Kong brothel who learns that another house with red doors has opened across town but it’s all a trap. That jack shack’s owner, The Grand Master is hunting for a fighter with a plum tattoo across his chest and that man is, of course, Tiger, who is trained by The Master to battle that man’s various ninjas and fighters.

Also, this movie begins with a baby being protected from an unstoppable warrior who kills everyone he touches including taking a man’s eyeballs out. There’s also a credit sequence of ninjas battling in front of a red seamless background and I could watch an entire movie of just that.

There’s also a torture scene where The Master keeps poking Tiger in all his pressure points and asks him if he saw Drunken Master because he sure has. He then has dudes beat Tiger with sticks, pours snake venom all over him and makes then freezes him inside a block of ice. He also makes him drink vinegar because that’s training. How this so-called training teaches you to fight is a mystery; I get the wax on, wax off lesson of Miyagi, but how does this make Tiger a better fighter? And when Tiger asks for a lesson about ninjas, the Master tells him a long story that’s mostly a long and involved sex scene.

The Master is also a ninja — with a baby mask for a face — and he ends up facing Devil Mask, who is controlled by The Grand Master with a flute and also has the power to become a tornado.

There’s also a girl named Sakura in love with Tiger and Devil Mask is probably The Master’s brother. So much happens that you may be bewildered but that’s OK, there are still three more parts to make your head spin.

Ninja Death II (TUBI LINK): “When his master is killed, a young martial artist must continue his training with other teachers to prepare to fight the evil ninja in his pursuit.”

Spoiler warning, Tubi!

The second chapter uses its first half to explain what we just saw but it helps it make more sense: In the flashback that started the last movie, The Master was the man who ran away with young Tiger, the man who lost his eyes has become a blind fortune teller and Devil Mask is Tiger’s brother and The Master’s brother. Then, he kills himself by karate chopping himself in the brain as his injuries from the last movie are too much to handle.

Oh yeah — that entire sequence feature’s John Barry’s score for You Only Live Twice.

At one point, Tiger is poisoned by ninjas and falls down a waterfall and yet lives because he’s nursed back to health by a kindly old man and his granddaughter. Tiger is nearly insane from the poison and he pretty much assaults the girl because he dreams that she’s Sakura and is poisoned which is a defense that would not work in any country. He apologizes when he’s healed as if it helps. The grandfather gives him the antidote as long as he promises to come back and marries the girl, but then as soon as Tiger leaves, ninjas kill them all and it’s basically the good guys cleaning up the mess of the bad guys.

There’s a lot more training because the big battle is coming.

Ninja Death III (TUBI LINK): “The blind fortune teller and his crew, Tiger and the Japanese brother and sister prepare to battle the Grandmaster, Devil Mask and infinite ninjas.”

After the second problematic and repetitive part of the series, Ninja Death III rebounds with moments like Tiger nearly being able to fly, Devil Mask becoming a horizontally flying force of ninja magic and The Grand Master, who has gold clothes and hammers that he can throw. Actually, that weapon is called the Double Sky Hammer and I better get it right.

Also, that description is correct: there are so many ninjas in this I lost count.

Tiger learns a new style from the blind fortune teller — who remarks after everyone in a village “I can’t see anything” — and learns who his mother the Princess is.

You have to respect a ninja series that not only has ninja battles but goes all in on the sleaze. If you’re going to have a hero who runs a cathouse, you better show the cats — and cat — in action. I mean, the second movie goes wild with a bloody ninja attack while people are in the midst of people exploring the clouds and rain, as the Chinese say.

In my magical dreams, there are action figures of every character in these movies.

Watching a Godfrey Ho movie, you often ask yourself, “Have I seen this before?”

That’s because he reuses so much footage and has so many similar titles that it can be incredibly frustrating to know if you really have just spent a small;l part of your life seeing the same ninja movie again.

If you already saw Ninja Masters of Death or Ninja Project Daredevils, you’ve already seen G.I. Joey.

Also, if you’ve somehow already checked out the Korean war movie 13se Sonyeon (At 13 Years Old), you have also already seen this movie.

Or some of it.

That means that some of this movie is about the eternal struggle between capitalism and Communism. But with ninjas, so it does feel as dire as a Thanksgiving dinner when someone has just come back from college and wants to fight their Fox News parents and you just want to eat some cranberries.

Nothing in the description of this movie happens in the movie.

In fact, I wish that all arguments over belief structures had easy-to-follow color-coded ninjas for me to cheer throughout their battles, because then I’d actually care about politics.

If you ever have a conversation with me in person, please know that all I really want to talk about is cannibal movies, mondo films, the crossover between Gary Garver in porn and horror movies, Cannon movies and Godfrey Ho. No one ever wants to talk about those things. I never want to talk about politics because the world is a ratchet effect: one side blocks movement back to the left, another turns everything to the right and you are a spoke on their wheel. There is no two-party system, you are being lied to, there are only poor people and those that have everything and all we can do is take care of our immediate circle of people and attempt to start a better world on a small scale, if we can, except you know, the world is heading toward a climate change that will negatively impact everything on earth.

Can we just talk about fucking ninjas now?

You can watch this on Tubi.