The Running Man by Stephen King

the running man

For a time in the late 1970s and 1980s, Stephen King published several books under the pen name Richard Bachman. His publishers didn’t think it was a good idea for King to release more than one book a year, and he is a prolific writer, so he came up with Bachman as a way to release more books.

The Bachman books tend to be grittier, more intense, and grim. Such is the case with The Running Man.  Set in the near future (2025!) America’s economy is in shambles and has become a totalitarian hellscape (!).  The gulf between the rich and the poor has never been wider (!!). To keep the poor from rioting, the government has created a Games Network that features a variety of violent game shows in which people can win loads of cash (if they don’t die in the process, which they usually do.)

The biggest game and the one you can win the biggest loot from is The Running Man, where a few folks are set loose into the world, given a small head start, and then hunted like animals. The longer they survive, the more money their surviving family will receive. 

Ben Richards is poor; his wife has turned to prostitution to make ends meet, and his young daughter is very sick. He becomes a Running Man. He learns he will do anything to survive – lie, cheat and even kill.  He also learns there is a whole underground movement trying to get the people to rise up against the government.

This is King at his most cynical and his grimiest. He breaks his story into tiny chapters (each one with a heading counting down to presumably Richard’s end). There is none of that usual King excess. As such, we barely get to know Richards or this world he’s living in. Still, it is a cool concept, and King is always good at keeping me turning the page.

It is nothing like the Arnold Schwarzenegger film from the 1980s. The more recent adaptation is much more faithful, but it loses a lot of the stories bleakness.

Now Watching: Cherry 2000 (1987)

cherry 2000 poster

Cherry 2000 (1987)

Directed by Steve De Jarnatt

Starring Melanie Griffith, David Andrews, Pamela Gidley, Ben Johnson, Marshall Bell, and Harry Carey, Jr.

Synopsis: When successful businessman Sam Treadwell finds that his android wife, Cherry model 2000, has blown a fuse, he hires sexy renegade tracker E. Johnson to find her exact duplicate. But as their journey to replace his perfect mate leads them into the treacherous and lawless region of ‘The Zone,’ Treadwell learns the hard way that the perfect woman is made not of computer chips and diodes.

Rating: 3/10

The other day a friend of mine posted on Facebook saying that he had created a Substack, and he linked to his first post.  It was a bunch of nothing. Just a list of some recent movies he’d watched and a couple of words (not even full sentences) on what he thought. That was it.

I was shocked. I’m shy about promoting my official reviews or well-thought-out essays on social media, and here he was proudly posting this nonsense.  I was kind of jealous, actually. 

I have always had this idea that I should post about everything I’m reading, watching, and listening to. I like the idea that this blog could be just a collection of little things, mad thoughts, pictures of my cats, etc. But I’m bad at it. I’m bad at social media. I just don’t have the personality to post regularly everyday.

This is especially true with thoughts about films and the like. I always feel like I should write full reviews. But I just don’t have the time or mental energy for that. This is also complicated by the fact that I do write full reviews for Cinema Sentries and this little blog. When I hope to write full reviews, then I don’t write little bitty ones. But then sometimes I don’t write full reviews. 

Even for things I know I’m not going to write full reviews on, I sometimes write things for Five Cool Things. It seems silly to write some little something here and then have to repeat myself for those articles.

And yet.  And yet, here I am. I’m gonna try and do better. I’m gonna try and write at least a tiny thought on the various things I’m enjoying (or not enjoying, as the case may be.) If I then write full reviews, or include it in Five Cool Things, then that’s just the way it is.

Or, knowing me, I’ll write this one post and then never do this again.

And here are a couple of thoughts about Cherry 2000.  For a movie about a dude hiring a sexy bounty hunter to find his sexbot in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, this movie is really rather dull. 

There is a version of this film that is wild, sexy, and fun. One that leans into the ridiculous nature of that story. But this movie just limps along. Melanie Griffith is dressed with absolute drab, and her performance isn’t much better.

Rio Bravo (1959)

rio bravo

Sometimes when I’m reading these old reviews, I wonder what I was thinking. In this review of Rio Bravo that I wrote in 2015, I compare it to High Noon (famously, Howard Hawks made Rio Bravo because he thought High Noon was stupid). I note that both movies are great, but I’d give High Noon the higher rating. I can’t believe I wrote that.  I still think both films are great, but in terms of sheer entertainment, Rio Bravo is one of the greatest movies ever made. 

I think about it often. I pull it out to watch pretty regularly. I rarely think about High Noon.  But whatever, you can still read my review even if I don’t even agree with it myself.

Inside Out (2015)

inside out

Every now and again my connections to Cinema Sentries will give me access to something fun beyond just getting Blu-rays to review. I’ll get tickets to a con or to some special event. Just before Inside Out was released, I got to go to an event with my family where they gave you a commemorative poster (I still have it; it hangs on my wall right behind me), and there was some fun behind the scenes stuff on the screen. We had a lot of fun, and the movie was great. You can read all about it here.

Ripper Street: Season Three

image host

There is just too much TV to watch these days. I can’t keep up. I can’t even remember what I’m keeping up with. Ripper Street periodically pops up as a recommendation to me in my streaming feeds. Sometimes I think I ought to watch it. Apparently, I already have. At least the third season. Reading my review, I have the vaguest recollection of watching it. At least some of those plot points sound familiar. I don’t know if that means I should go back and watch the entire thing, or if I should just give up on it entirely. but I did like that third season, so that’s something.

Ghost Story: The Turn of the Screw (2009)

turn of the screw

I have this memory from my teenage years of walking through Mega Movies – the former Burger King turned massive video store rental place – looking for something to watch. We went there at least once a week (and in the summer multiple times a week). Going so often, I’d reach the point where I’d seen all the new releases and regularly dug into the regular shelves. But it was a big enough place I’d still stumble upon something that looked interesting.

I remember seeing an adaptation of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. The cover had a girl in a bikini or some scantily clad outfit, and she was standing by a great big hook of some kind. That cover and the fact that the title had “screw” in it made me think this was something titillating, not an adaptation of one of the great literary works of the last century.

I want to say I rented it and was greatly disappointed by it, but I really can’t remember.  But the idea they were trying to reach dumb, horny teens like me with a scintillating cover for a Henry James adaptation makes me smile. I just tried to figure out which adaptation it was, but I had no luck. 

This is not that movie, but a rather dull BBC adaptation starring Michelle Dockery and Dan Stevens. You can read my review at Cinema Sentries.

Compound Cinematics: Akira Kurosawa and I by Shinobu Hashimoto

image host

Originally posted on Cinema Sentries in 2015.

Akira Kurosawa is one of my favorite film directors.  Shinobu Hashimoto is one of the great Japanese screenwriters.  The two collaborated on some of the greatest films ever made, including The Seven Samurai, Rashomon, and Throne of Blood. This book, written by Hashimoto, details that collaboration, but dives into how he became a screenwriter and gives tips on how to write a script.  It’s pretty darn cool.  You can read all about it over at Cinema Sentries.

The Immigrant (2013)

the immigrant dvd

I’m once again going back through my old Cinema Sentry reviews and posting them here.  I wrote this review back in April of 2016, so almost exactly 11 years ago. I haven’t seen the film since. Reading my review, I seem to have liked it so I may have to remedy that soon.

The Immigrant stars Marion Cotillard as an immigrant to the United States. Jeremy Renner and Joaquin Phoenix are two guys that make her life miserable.  Yet it is a story of hope and grace. You can read my full review here.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Q: The Winged Serpent (1982)

q poster

My daughter is celebrating her birthday this weekend. We spent a large chunk of last night putting up decorations, cleaning the house, and otherwise preparing for her party. By the time we were done, I was whooped. I managed to watch this movie, but I was way too tired to write about it. So once again you get a Friday Night Horror Movie on Saturday morning.

When I think of movies from the 1980s, I naturally think of movies I loved as a kid. Movies I actually watched during the ’80s. Then there were also movies that I did not watch. Movies I knew about, but that wasn’t for me. Weren’t for kids. Movies for adults I had no interest in. There were other movies that I’d see in the video rental store but didn’t rent for one reason or another.  And finally, there are movies like Q: The Winged Serpent. Movies I’d never heard of until much later.  Way after the 1980s.  I mean, I don’t think I saw this film in a video store; surely I would have remembered that crazy cover of a dragon-looking monster on top of the Chrysler Building.

But as an adult, this film kept popping up in my feeds. Someone would talk about it on social media, or it would come up in some list. It definitely kept rearing its head when I went searching for movies to watch from the 1980s.

I put off watching it for a long time because I kept getting it confused with another 1980s horror movie. One whose name I can’t remember now, but that apparently has some pretty nasty rape scenes, and I’m never in the mood for that.

But it popped up again last night, and the Letterboxd reviews didn’t mention any nastiness, so I put it in.  It’s actually pretty good for a goofy, low-budget monster movie.It was directed by Larry Cohen, who was kind of the king of surprisingly good low-budget horror movies in the 1980s. He made movies like The Stuff, A Return to Salem’s Lot, and Special Effects. 

Someone is killing people in a gruesome, ritualistic way. At the same time, a number of people have literally lost their heads (and other body parts) whilst wandering around New York City. Detective Shepard (David Carradine) and Sergeant Powell (Richard Roundtree) are on the case.The ritualistic killings seem to be a part of some kooky Aztec cult, and Shepard starts to think they might have awakened Quetzalcōātl, an ancient Aztec serpent god. He’s right, of course; otherwise we might not have a movie.

Accidentally mixed up in all this is Jimmy Quinn (Michael Moriarty), a cheap crook who really just wants to play jazz piano. He gets mixed up with the wrong guys, and when a robbery goes bad, he decides to hide in the top of the Chrysler Building. Guess where old Q the Winged Serpent, is hiding out, has made a nest, and laid an egg?

Made on a very modest budget of $1.1 million, Cohen keeps the monster off screen for most of its runtime. He makes great use of shadows sweeping across the New York City landscape, and we get snippets of wings, claws, and beaks.  Once it fully shows up toward the end, it looks like…well, it looks like a claymation monster made on a budget. But I’ll still take that over most of the CGI slop we get these days.

The acting is quite good for a film like this. Moriarty plays Jimmy in a way that is both sleazy and heartbreaking. He’s a guy who just can’t catch a break, and yet constantly makes the dumbest decisions.  After learning where the monster lives, he goes to the authorities but refuses to tell them where it is until they agree to give him $1 million in cash, amnesty for all his crimes, and photographic rights to the serpent.

Carradine and Roundtree are having a lot of fun as the cops. They are tough and smart-assed. Cohen keeps things moving at a clip, and he creates plenty of modest thrills.I’m a big fan of the low-budget monster movies they made a lot of in the 1950s, and it’s always fun to see homages like this from later decades. It isn’t a great movie, but darn if it isn’t a fun one.

Watch Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings play the Grateful Dead

Gillian and Dave are curretnly doing a small tour where they are playing Grateful Dead and Dead adjacent tunes. None of the shows were anywhere near me (though they are playing a free gig in Tulsa later this month, but it isn’t listed as part of this tour, and presumably will play their own songs). Man I wish I’d spent the money and caught one of these shows. This snippet is amazing.