The Running Man (1987)

If you’re going to talk about post-apocalyptic science fiction movies then The Running Man, released in 1987, cannot be ignored. It was one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s early hits. It’s another movie inspired partly by Richard Connell’s 1924 short story The Most Dangerous Game.

It was directed by Paul Michael Glaser, Yes, Starsky from Starsky and Hutch.

It’s based on a Stephen King novel. King had a knack for writing mediocre novels that could be turned into excellent movies. Steven E. de Souza wrote the screenplay. It bore a sufficiently close resemblance to Yves Boisset's 1983 film The Price of Danger to allow the producers of that French film to successfully sue for plagiarism.

This is a post-apocalyptic story but in this case it was an economic apocalypse. This resulted in most people getting a whole lot poorer but of courser the elites became a whole lot richer. It also resulted in social chaos.

The country is now a police state. The populations is brainwashed and terrorised into submission. The policy is to offer them bread and circuses. The circus is in the form of a TV show called The Running Man.

This is perhaps not a pure post-apocalyptic movie. This is not a wasteland in the mode of A Boy and His Dog (1975). The collapse of society has not been total. But it is very much a dystopian movie and the post-apocalyptic and dystopian genres do overlap.

Ben Richards (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a cop who is ordered to massacre unarmed civilians. He refuses and ends up in a labour camp. He makes a daring escape. He finds that his brother’s apartment where he hoped to find shelter is now occupied by Amber Mendez (Maria Conchita Alonso). He is recaptured, but this time falls into the hands of Damon Killian (Richard Dawson), the sleazy producer and host of The Running Man TV series. Amber turned him in to the cops but when she sees the TV newscast report that claims Ben killed several people during his escape attempt she figures out that people are being lied to. She knows that he did not kill anyone. Maybe Ben will now have an ally.

Whether he likes it or not Ben is now going to be a contestant on the show.

In the show there are Runners and Stalkers. The Stalkers hunt down and kill the Runners much to the delight of the folks watching at home. Ben is going to be a Runner, along with his two buddies from the labour camp and Amber.

Their aim is not just survival but to destroy the show by hooking up with the Resistance.

Much mayhem will ensue.

Maybe Schwarzenegger isn’t the world’s greatest actor but he’s quite competent, this is well within his range and the man has serious charisma. He even copes with some truly cringe-inducing dialogue.

Richard Dawson is delightfully and outrageously evil and slimy.

The action scenes are fine although they’re not as varied as they might have been.

This is obviously a satire on television. A satire with all the subtlety of a baseball bat to the back of the head.

I saw this movie many years ago and thought it was trashy and reasonably exciting. Seeing it again I still think it’s trashy and reasonably exciting but today I have a bit more tolerance for 80s trashy excess.

It’s not particularly original. There are striking similarities to Lucio Fulci’s Warriors of the Year 2072 (1984), made a few years earlier. I think Fulci’s is the better film. It also bears some very slight resemblance to the very underrated Australian movie Centrespread (1981), which is a much much better film. But The Running Man is entertaining and it’s recommended.

The Blu-Ray is barebones but looks good.

Murder in a Blue World (1973)

Murder in a Blue World (AKA Una gota de sangre para morir amando AKA A Drop of Blood To Die Loving AKA A Clockwork Terror) is a 1973 Franco-Spanish co-production which is a mishmash of genres. It’s also a bit of a mess.

When it was released Spanish critics accused it of heavily plagiarising Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Director Eloy de la Iglesia reacted with outrage to the accusations but those critics had a point. Large chunks of this movie are lifted directly from Kubrick’s movie. This is not an homage, this is grand larceny. Interestingly the scenes copied from A Clockwork Orange are copied badly. It’s like a backward pupil copying the homework of the smartest kid in the class but still getting the answers wrong.

It has the same kind of not-too-distant future setting as Kubrick’s movie. There is a juvenile delinquency problem. We see a home invasion, carried out by a gang of four juvenile delinquents (just as in Kubrick’s film). We see the gang driving along a quiet country road at high speed (just as in Kubrick’s film). The gang members brutalise the husband and rape the wife (just as in Kubrick’s film). But while the scene in Kubrick’s movie is genuinely disturbing because it’s filmed with so much skill and style the equivalent scene here is dull and obvious and crude.

Then there’s a fight as the gang leader tries to reassert his dominance over the gang (just as in Kubrick’s film).

This ends with David (Christopher Mitchum) being cast out of the gang. Later he will be beaten up up by his former gang-mates (just as in Kubrick’s film).

Dr Sender (Jean Sorel) is working on a new technique of behaviour modification to cure violent offenders (just as in Kubrick’s film). David ends up in custody and is chosen to be one of the experimental subjects (just like Alex in Kubrick’s film).

But Murder in a Blue World is actually more like three or four movies jumbled together without rhyme or reason. There are two main plot strands. The first is the one stolen (sorry, homaged) from A Clockwork Orange.

The second is much more interesting. It’s a serial killer story with some genuinely intriguing and unsettling elements. A number of young men have been murdered. We know that the killer is Ana Vernia (Sue Lyon), a nurse at Dr Sender’s clinic. I’m not revealing a spoiler here - we know she is the killer pretty much from the beginning.

Ana is one crazy chick. She thinks the world is entirely inhabited by dead people who think they are alive. It’s OK to kill them because they’re already dead. In fact she’s doing them a favour, freeing them from their nightmare existence. She is an angel of mercy. Killing them is an at of love. She always has sex with them first - for her the killing is just an extension of the love-making. This is all truly creepy and Sue Lyon is great - she makes this strange confused twisted character oddly believable.

This part of the movie is excellent and it should have been the focus of the whole movie.

Director Eloy de la Iglesia was gay and he adds lots of gay elements that feel like they’ve been shoehorned into the story. There’s a scene in which Ana masquerades as a butch lesbian. Why? I have no idea. There’s also a gay rape which I assume was included to shock the bourgeoisie.

Eloy de la Iglesia was also a communist so there’s political content that is also shoehorned into the story, stuff about the evils of capitalism and consumerism. It’s heavy-handed and embarrassing.

While Sue Lyon is terrific the other main cast members present problems. Christopher Mitchum is very good but he makes David much too sympathetic. A Clockwork Orange works because the viewer feels so conflicted about Alex - he’s so likeable but he’s also a vicious little thug. We are conflicted about the things that are done to him - are they justified or not? David is just likeable. He’s just a slightly naughty little boy. David needed to be given much more of a nasty edge for the Clockwork Orange Rip-Off plot strand to work. I’m not sure if the fault is Mitchum’s or the director’s.


Jean Sorel was a superb subtle actor with an extraordinary knack for playing super-nice charming guys whom we do not trust one little bit. He’s entirely wasted here in a nothing part.

The few really striking images are mostly lifted (sorry, homaged) from Kubrick’s movie.

There’s an attempt to link the two major plot strands but it just doesn’t work. The two stories just don’t mesh. The final scene is just so absurd that it pretty much makes a mockery of the whole movie.


There’s an extraordinary lack of erotic heat, perhaps not surprising given that the director presumably had no interest in male-female eroticism.

Murder in a Blue World is two movies in one, one of them really interesting and one of them a total failure. The Clockwork Orange stuff ends up going nowhere, although maybe the director thought it was some kind of critique of capitalism.

Almost worth seeing for Sue Lyon’s performance and the interesting twists on the serial killer theme but overall it’s a bit of a trainwreck. Hard to recommend this one.