When Drunk Monkeys asked me if I would be interested in contributing my own pick for a movie that, despite not receiving critical or audience acclaim, I consider to be great and worthy of reconsideration, I didn’t hesitate to jump at the chance to once again come to the defense of one of the great sci-fi movies of the 1980’s -- Michael Crichton’s ridiculously inventive and thrilling 1984 techno-thriller Runaway.
I’ve been singing my praises for this gem since my Dad took me to see it when it was first released. It had everything an eight-year-old kid who was already big on sci-fi and fantasy could want: bullets that could turn corners in pursuit of a specific target; murderous robots; cool futuristic guns; a real-life version of The Jetsons’ Rosey the Robot (she even makes hot dogs!); an exciting freeway chase involving tiny explosive cars; and of course, metallic acid-spewing spiders. Flash forward 37 years, and it’s even more remarkable to look back on Runaway and realize -- on top of how entertaining and original it is -- just how prescient Chrichton’s vision of the future turned out to be.
Runaway takes place in the not-too-distant-future, when homes commonly have robots that perform common household duties. When one occasionally malfunctions, they call in Sgt. Jack Ramsay (Tom Selleck), an expert at rogue machines. When he and his new partner Karen Thompson (Cynthia Rhodes) investigate a robot-involved homicide, they discover strange, customized computer chips within the robot. Might this seemingly-random loss of life have been intentional?
Enter one of the great cinematic modern takes of the “mad scientist,” Dr. Charles Luther, played with menacing gusto by Gene Simmons. And it’s perhaps here that a presumptive take on the film might be levied -- surely, any film with that guy from KISS with the big tongue has got to be a cheesy B-movie -- and whereas that might be true for Simmons’ Never Too Young to Die or Red Surf, not so with Runaway. In Simmons’ hands, Luther is a surprisingly intimidating presence, delivering a Grim Reaper’s glare at anyone who’s dared get in the way of his sinister plot -- with a grisly death almost always certain to follow. Runaway doesn’t waste time in letting you know who its Big Bad is, setting up a cyber cat-and-mouse chase between valiant hero and psychotic villain that plays out through some arresting set-pieces, including the aforementioned car chase, a shoot-out at a futuristic, neon-drenched outdoor sushi restaurant, and a tense climax on a high-rise construction site.
All of this is from the mind of Michael Crichton, the bestselling author who gave us sci-fi thrillers Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain, but who is perhaps less commonly known as a filmmaker as well, with his feature film debut being 1973 classic Westworld, followed by 1978’s acclaimed nail-biter Coma. While receiving an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, Crichton wrote his first book, then continued to explore scientific possibilities through his writing rather than ever practicing medicine. Much has been said on the focus on scientific principles and probabilities represented in, for example, Jurassic Park, with its could-it-be-possible? extraction of dino-DNA from amber fossils, but consider the world presented in Runaway: in 99 brisk minutes, Crichton’s vision of the future showcases so many concepts that have become commonplace today, including domestic robots, video mail, social media, the Internet, voice-activated computers, retinal identification as biometric security, drone cameras, tablet PCs, wireless headsets, and semi-automatic pistols as police sidearms, as opposed to the revolvers commonly used by police officers in 1984. Even a small flat-screen television that Ramsay’s son Bobby is seen watching in bed in one scene wouldn’t have been available in 1984. For an 80’s sci-fi thriller with a rock star as its villain and Mr. 80’s Mustache as its hero, Runaway nevertheless emerges a film brimming with surprising imagination and innovation, and a fantastic testament to just how shrewd Crichton’s vision of the future would ultimately prove itself to be.
Did I mention the acid-spewing metallic spiders? I really can’t close this out without putting a spotlight on those acid-spewing metallic spiders. Murderous Dr. Luther doesn’t stop at merely sabotaging household robots with corrupt programming intent on making them homicidal -- he’s also got some of his own inventions up his sleeve, the pièce de résistance being those wonderful acid-spewing metallic spiders. Shuffling along bathroom walls with their creepy wind-up sound, accompanied by Jerry Goldsmith’s first purely electronic score, these spiders seriously deserve to be on more “Scariest Movie Robots” / “Best Movie Weapons” lists. Nightmare-inducing stuff for anyone who’s got a thing about spiders. Or being injected in the neck with acid.
So check out Runaway if you haven’t. Is it flawed perhaps by a certain level of 80’s-ness? Sure, it doesn’t help to have Magnum P.I. and The Demon as your stars, not to mention an early turn by Kirstie Alley looking very bit the 80’s Femme Fatale, but at the same time -- just like James Cameron’s The Terminator, which came out the same year and looks and feels every bit as “early-1980’s” -- it all only serves to place the proceedings in a certain era for perspective. In 1984 -- a year made famous by one English author’s 1949 vision of an impending dystopia -- these were Michael Crichton and James Cameron’s nightmares of a cyber-future to come.
Logan Crow is the founder and Executive Director of The Frida Cinema, a community-based, mission-driven art house cinema which has served Orange County as its sole non-profit movie theater since 2014. A lifelong film enthusiast with a particular affinity for horror, cult, and camp cinema, and a passionate advocate for arts education, Logan also currently serves on the Board of Directors for Arts Orange County. and previous to The Frida Cinema was the founder and director of Long Beach Cinematheque, and the cult cinema website MondoCelluloid.com.