Book to Movie: The Running Man (1987)

Book to Movie: The Running Man (1987)
Screenplay by Steven E. de Souza
Director: Paul Michael Glazer
Based on the novel, The Running Man by Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman

Two years after Richard Bachman was outed as Stephen King, a movie was made based on a Bachman book. Steven E. de Souza and Paul Michael Glazer took Stephen King’s tense thriller, The Running Man and turned into a glittery action romp.

The plot barely resembles King’s vision. In the movie, Ben Richards (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a military pilot who refuses to fire on a food riot with unarmed civilians. He is put in prison, but manages to escape with the help of an underground that is fighting the all powerful Network controlled by the government.

Richards has little interest in the group’s politics and takes off, looking for his brother. When he goes to his brother’s apartment, he finds a network music writer living there instead and he takes her hostage. He tries to use her and her travel pass to escape to Hawaii, but she turns him in at the airport. Richards is taken into custody again.

Instead of prison, he’s sentenced to be a participant in the Running Man – America’s most popular game show. The two guys with whom he escaped prison are rounded up and join him.

Ben Richards is introduced to America as the “Butcher of Bakersfield” who fired on unarmed civilians despite orders not to. A doctored tape is played for the audience. They also describe the murders he committed at the airport when he was retaken. This captures the attention of Amber Mendez, the girl who turned in Richards because she knows it didn’t happen.

Richards and his friends are propelled via a rocket powered sled through a shoot to a 400 block square hunting zone. They are chased by hunters dressed as various themed characters. While down there, the computer hacker of the trio is able to tap into a network terminal and steal the access code for the Network’s satellite uplink.

Amber Mendez, curious about what the network has done to Ben Richards, sneaks into a film library and finds the doctored and undoctored tapes of Richards’ raid on the food riot. Before she can escape, she is caught and sent into the kill zone to join Richards.

Richards two friends die along the way, but Richards manages to connect with the Underground (led by Mick Fleetwood) who uses the code and the tapes Amber stole to steal the signal and show America the fraud perpetrated by the network.

Meanwhile Richards and Mendez return to the Network and the set of The Running Man. There, Richards and Running Man host Damon Killian have it out.

Insipid is not strong enough a word to describe this movie. It had nothing going for it. Puns not worthy of Loony Tunes. Costumes that would embarrass the stars of 1950s Saturday matinee shorts. A syntho-pop soundtrack of no quality and a plot as linear as a vector.

The cast did the best they could with the horrible script, but a cast with some big names could not rescue this film. Its only saving grace was Richard Dawson who was the only member of the cast who seemed to truly relish his role, hamming it up as game show host Damon Killian. Dawson was the only thing in this atrocious film that was good.

It appeared that perhaps the director and screenwriter were trying to spoof professional wrestling. If they were, they missed their target by making a bad movie. Dawson delivers a witless diatribe about the masses wanting violence and death near the end of the movie. But if you have to sum up the intent of your movie in a monologue at the end, you know you've got a weak script.

I would dare say that The Running Man may be the worst movie based on any King novel. It’s not as bad as a few based on short stories, but no movie based on a book King wrote was worse than The Running Man.

The only thing that makes this otherwise entirely forgettable movie noteworthy is that it features two future governors -- Jesse Ventura who would govern Minnesota and Schwarzenegger who would govern California.

The Running Man By Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman

The Running Man
By Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman
Copyright 1982

In the year 2025, the best men don’t run for President. They run for their life.

Stephen King once again visits dystopia and once again he visits with his nom de plume, Richard Bachman. Once again, the plot centers around games and entertainment and once again, the poor provide entertainment for the rich through their suffering. All of the plot elements that appeared in The Long Walk are in The Running Man. However, The Running Man is a little more action oriented.

The year is 2025 and Ben Richards lives in Co-Op City with his wife and infant child who has the flu and is quite ill. Richards cannot afford to buy real drugs that will help his daughter. So, he leaves the tenement behind and goes to the Network where he is screened to be a game show contestant.

In 2025, the Network is king. It governs and provides entertainment via the Freevee which killed newspapers and most other forms of entertainment. The shows produced by the network are usually life and death matters like “Treadmill to Bucks” where cardiac patients run on a treadmill while answering trivia questions. If they live, they earn.

The big show is The Running Man. It is for this show that Richards has qualified. He has to stay on the lam for 30 days while hunted by professionals hired by the network. Viewers are invited to phone in tips and can earn money if their tip leads to a kill of the Running Man.

Richards meets with the producers and the host of the show who are eager to have him compete. They have high hopes that his cunning and anti-establishment behavior will generate ratings. After the meeting, he is treated to a few days of high living in a fancy hotel room with all the booze and food he can consume.

He is then set free to hide for 30 days. Each day he lives earns his family money. He must mail in two tapes a day of himself for the Network to play.

He buys fake papers and he travels, first to New York and then to Boston. Always in disguise, he hides in lonely hotels and YMCAs. In Boston, he thinks he sees the hunters outside the YMCA, so he blows the place up and slips out through a storm sewer in the basement.

After escaping from the sewers, Richards meets a kid who takes him in and teaches him about air pollution and the conspiracy run by the Network to hide science. The kid also helps him acquire a car and gives him a contact in Portland, Maine.

Richards makes it to New Hampshire and poses as a blind priest. There, he spends his days at the library, reading about pollution. His video tapes consist of his rants against pollution and the collusion to hide its effects. The Network talks over them when the program airs, so nobody hears him. Finally, after a few days, he gets nervous and decides to get out of New Hampshire and head for Portland.

He gets to Portland and meets his contact. They go to his home, but the kid’s mother calls the Network and turns Richards in. He flees, but the hunters catch up with him and he is wounded in the side and breaks an ankle before eventually escaping.

The next day with the hunters closing in and every resident in the area looking for him, he takes a woman hostage and makes her drive. Richards uses her to generate publicity about where he is, figuring they can’t kill him without killing her and they can’t kill her in public. He has the terrified woman drive to the airport in Derry, Maine.

Claiming that he’s acquired enough explosive to blow up several acres, he demands an airplane be supplied to him. When the plane arrives, he demands that the head of the hunters join him aboard the plane. Once aboard, Richards is contacted by the network. His wife and child have been murdered. Now free of family burdens, they offer him amnesty and a position on The Running Man as the new hunter.

Richards accepts their offer. He then kills the hunter aboard with him and the flight crew who all work for the Network. With the plane’s controls in his hands, he heads for the network building, coming in low. . .

All I could think about as I read this book was “Bread and Circuses.” This Roman concept held that if you gave the masses enough food and entertainment, they would be distracted from corruption and not bother the ruling class.

This book has a subtext of class warfare that is at the fore. In 2025, the rich and the middle class hate the poor. They are a burden and to pay for their burden, they must entertain.

The Running Man bears a great deal of resemblance to The Long Walk in theme and subtext (although the subtext of socio-economic class was buried much deeper in The Long Walk). However, The Running Man is quite action oriented where The Long Walk was ponderous. The Long Walk was dialogue broken with the occasional action scene. The Running Man was just the opposite. Yet, the novels were quite similar.

King wrote The Running Man in just one week. He described himself as angry and obsessed with the craft. Given the time period in which it was written, one might wonder if he wasn’t stoked with coke as well.

Of the books written under the Bachman pen name, I would rank The Running Man just behind The Long Walk. It is far superior to Rage, Thinner, and The Regulators. The Long Walk had just a little more subtlety about it that I liked.

In 1985, a movie was made loosely based on the novel. It starred Arnold Schwarzeneger as Ben Richards. It played up the game show angle (with the legendary Richard Dawson serving as host of The Running Man) and played down the class conflict. Also appearing was Jesse Ventura. Two future governors appeared in the same movie.

The Running Man the movie versus The Running Man the book reinforces the old adage, “Don’t judge a book by its movie.” The book is very good. The movie, not so much.