Chiasmus cult cinema trailers - "The Running Man" (1987). *These will be ongoing posts, courtesy of the A.Glass DVD collection. As I offer via Chiasmus Cult trailers, my summarized overviews*

As Generation Xers, demanded less sex in their Hollywood Blockbusters, and more blood, violence and explosions going into the 1990s, the "boomers" dystopian warnings of proto-fascist landscapes ala the 1970s and early 1980s science fiction, were still popping up in scripts, and the 1987 Sci-Fi dystopic movie "Running Man" holds onto that fear of 2000s going down that dystopian path, which was based off the Stephen King's 1982 novel of the same, penned by King's split personality/ pseudonym of "Richard Bachman" (an even darker writer than King?) who wrote a slew of books from 1977 through to 1985, when King admitted he had created a fictional character, to become his pen name.  And when "Running Man" was released in 1987, King insisted that Bachman should appear on the credits, not him.

Production began in 1986, after two directors left, and American actor and director Paul Michael Glaser, who was hired by the production company at the time Taft Broadcasting, which ceased as an entity in 1999, and was part of the CIC-Taft Home Video company network, Glaser, with script writer Stephen E. de Souza, rewrote the original Stephen King story, to a more 1980s esque, glammed up dystopian nightmare, of a autocratic, Fascist society that uses entertainment, in this case, a violent television show called "Running Man", to keep the people entertained, and vindicated, that enemies of society (various everyday criminals) are punished, when it was in fact enemies of the state who have to run through a broken down part of the city, while being chased by gladiator type killers.  De Souza, under Glaser's rewrites ensured that the production did very much feel like a television spectacle, reflecting those delicious differentials of excesses and decline, which occurred throughout the 1980s, as that 1970s fear, once a correlation between the real and hyperreal merge, in this case the year 2017, the dystopian emerges.  Sound familiar?  Ala Trumpansim of 2025 redux. 

And "Running Man", despite many plot holes and some comedic moments that do feel out of sync with the seriousness of the subject matter, but were designed to propel Arnold Schwarzenegger, who plays the main protagonist "Ben Richards", who was a cop, refusing to shoot in innocent civilians in a "food riot", career into the late 1980s and well into the next Three decades.  The now very relevant message of media manipulation, technological-Fascism, and how the truth when distorted, will be believed by the masses, when critical thought has been eroded, very much offers that, as mentioned 1970s and 1980s latent counterculture fear that Facisims, if left unchecked, lurks in our shadows.

So,when "dystopian" themed 80s cult movie night swings around, add "Running Man" to the movie marathon (hint:  it pairs well with John Carpenter's 1982 classic, "Escape From New York"), and have a sombre chuckle that the script writers 40 years ago, got it right.     

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(A.Glass 2025)

All CHIAMUS Cult Cinema trailers/commentary to date: chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/search/label/Chiasmus%20cult%20cinema