Print Page - Runaway (1984)

Tom Selleck vs. Gene Simmons.

It's a few years in the future and robots have become commonly used, almost to "Star Wars" levels. Tom Selleck is Detective Ramsey, a cop on the "Runaway Squad", which deals with haywire robots. There've been quite a few of those lately, and they all seem to have some kind of third-party processor chip installed. A little investigation revels that Gene Simmons has been going around to people's homes under the guise of a repairman and installing the chips in their robots. He's doing this as a trial run for his eeeeeeeeeeeeevil terrorist computer chips, which can be used to turn any robot into a murder machine. Oh, and he's also got acid-spraying spider robots, plus a gun with homing bullets. Det. Ramsey and his rookie partner are going to have a hell of a time stopping him.

This movie is bad, so bad, but in most of the right ways. The biggest thing is Gene's homing bullets. They work by homing in on the target's unique thermal signature, so all the killer has to do is point his gun in the general direction of his target and the bullet will do the rest. So far, so good, right? Well, the bullets are about the size of .50 BMG rounds, yet they are fired from what appears to be a regular 1911-type pistol with custom grips. In other words, the bullets themselves are as big as the entire damn gun they're supposed to be coming out of. They're represented in flight by - are you ready for this - black smudges on the film! They couldn't even bother to build a "flying" prop, they just drew a vaguely bullet-shaped smudge on the film with a magic marker! The cops also act like Gene having these bullets is worse than him having a nuke (in so many words)! I dunno, a bullet that only kills one, specific target seems a whole lot better than a NUKE that would kill tens of thousands indiscriminately in one go.

We're on somewhat firmer ground with the robots. For the most part, they look like redresses of toy robots you'd find at Toys-R-Us ca. 1984. Others look like someone went apes**t with an erector set. Sure, it's silly, but it's also believable, since they're all made of real-world parts that actually would work the way they're supposed to. Gene's spider-robots steal the show, of course. They're all anyone who has ever seen this movie remembers about it, for good reason. Although, I've got to say, they'd be a lot less dangerous if people didn't pick them up and hold them against their throats. His robot death cars are, uh, not as good. There was a part in one of the Dirty Harry movies where the villain chased Harry's car through L.A. with a remote controlled toy car. Well, that happens here, too, except there are a bunch of exploding toy cars and the good guys shoot them with lasers.

As far as being an action picture, Runaway ... eh. There's a fairly good scene of Ramsey stalking a babysitter robot that has gotten hold of its owner's .357 (though they foley in the sound of a shotgun being racked every time it shoots). Aside from that, there's the toy car death chase, a standoff where Ramsey lets Gene go because he's using a woman for cover (even though they're standing so close Ramsey's gun is practically against Gene's head), and a shootout at an outdoor eatery (where Gene's super bullets prove incapable of penetrating a plastic lawn table). The best action scene is definitely the last, where Ramsey pursues Gene through an under-construction skyscraper. The circumstances of the chase trap Ramsey in a construction elevator full of Gene's spider-robots, which means he has to crawl outside of it to escape them. Did I mention that Ramsey is afraid of heights? If you are, too, this scene will probably make you puke.

Runaway is definitely worth it for fans of either Tom Selleck or Gene Simmons (I am both). Tom's his usual, reliably entertaining self. Gene seriously does a great job here. He played a few bad guys during the 80s, and I wish he was still at it today, instead of appearing as "himself" in a lot of crap.

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