Before he was Dr. Dinosaur with the smash hits of Jurassic Park (both the book and the movie) and E.R. in the early ’90’s, Michael Crichton wrote and directed a bunch of cheesy sci-fi movies. As a filmmaker, Crichton proved to be a pretty good novelist. His flicks were a lot like his books: intriguing concepts with cool tech, stiff dialogue, and wooden characters.
They’re nerdy B-movie treats at best. Some, like WestWorld, have become cult classics (and got remade as classy TV shows on HBO) while others like Coma and Looker are now lost to the streaming wasteland. Fire up your Roku and search for them on Prime or AppleTV if you’ve got some time and $3.99. Crichton is a clever storyteller, but his movies always proved clunky and a little heavy-handed. The last flick he wrote and directed was 1984’s Runaway.
It used to play repeatedly on HBO back in the late ’80’s. I must have watched it dozens of times in between viewings of Ishtar, The Wraith, and episodes of 1st and Ten. Runaway is a tech-noir along the lines of Blade Runner and RoboCop only not as sleek. It lacks their style and edge, but it does have Tom Selleck, Gene Simmons, and jittery robot spiders that inject hot poison. Set in the very near future of 1991 (remember it was made in 1984), Selleck plays the top cop in the police’s Runaway unit, which goes after robots who have gone rogue.
In this timeline, robots have replaced humans for most blue collar and domestic duties. Occasionally, they go haywire and when that happens, they call in Magnum. Selleck does a lot of mustache acting here as Sgt. Jack Ramsay, a dedicated cop with a tragic past. Cynthia Rhodes (from Dirty Dancing) plays Karen Thompson, his perky new partner. Character actors Stan Shaw (Fried Green Tomatoes, The Monster Squad, and the OG Battlestar Galactica series) and G.W. Bailey (the Police Academy movies and TV’s The Closer) fill out the precinct as fellow cops.
I do love watching old sci-fi movies when our present year already has surpassed their neofuture setting. Back to the Future, Part II was set in 2015, Blade Runner was 2019, Soylent Green was supposed to be 2022, and 2001 took place in…well, you get the idea. We may be living in the future, but where’s my flying car or condo on the moon? Runaway’s future setting just looks a lot like 1984 (the year not the book), but with a lot of robots.
It’s kind of cool how Crichton crafted a contemporary cop movie with a few subtle nods to technological advancements. Everything just bumped up a notch. The sci-fi here is more for flavor than setting. All the robots are slow and chunky. They resemble how real robots might look and act. It’s less C-3PO and R2D2 and more talking vacuum cleaners. This decision makes for a more believable-looking future and I’m sure it helped the production budget quite a bit.
While this realistic approach to the future feels adroit, it makes Runaway appear drab when compared to its flashier peers. This flick plays like a low-rent version of Blade Runner. We get a tough cop chasing killer robots, but no cool Ridley Scott visuals or moody tunes by Vangelis. Instead, we get a goofy synth score by Jerry Goldsmith, which just makes me sad. This guy was the maestro who composed iconic themes for Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Planet of the Apes, but Runaway’s music sounds like a 10-year-old pounding away on a Casio.
This movie does deliver an unforgettable villain, played by KISS frontman Gene Simmons. While he was a glam rock icon, Simmons was still a neophyte actor in 1984. He had only previously appeared onscreen in KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, a hokey TV movie produced by cartoon giants Hanna-Barbera. What Simmons lacks in thespian ability in this film, he more than compensates for with charisma. He’s dripping with menace as Dr. Charles Luther.
This evil tech genius has computer chips that can turn any robot into a murdering machine. The nasty gadgets at his disposal include those aforementioned robot spiders, smart bombs on wheels, and a gun that fires tiny heat-seeking missiles. Simmons’ villain and his robot minions provide most of this flick’s popcorn moments. Luther literally has a bullet with your name on it. He becomes the prime suspect when Ramsay investigates a homicide with a domestic robot goes bad and chops up its owners.
The cop discovers that the family bot had been modded with one of Luther’s murder chips and tracks him to a defense contractor. Luther has been looting their inventions and selling them to the highest bidder with his robots silencing his contacts on the inside to cover his tracks. Ramsay intercepts Jackie, Luther’s gal pal (Kirstie Alley in her first big role after Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan), before she bolts with a purse full of stolen tech.
He uses her as bait to draw the bad guy out in the open, but first there’s a car chase with those mobile land mines choreographed to Goldsmith’s grating digital riffs. Before our hero can nab the bad guy, Luther grabs Ramsay’s partner and exchanges her for Jackie. Following a classic standoff in a crowded restaurant, he discovers that Jackie has double-crossed him and given the templates for the computer chips to Ramsay.
This really ticks Luther off so he kidnaps Ramsay’s kid and offers a trade. They meet for a showdown on top of high-rise under construction. The drama is amplified because our hero is terrified of heights. Facing his fears, Ramsay evades Luther’s heat-seeking bullets and his acid-injecting spider bots to win the day, save his kid, and kiss the girl. You may be asking which girl: the femme fatale Jackie or the virtuous Thompson? Duh, he smooches on his partner.
Did I forget to mention that in between robo homicides and car chases, Ramsay and Thompson indulge in an awkward flirtation? Their coupling culminates with tonsil hockey after she shows up at the building to help out. This cringy canoodling proves that Crichton’s just not super adept at staging romance. While he does a decent job of making this cops and robots flick watchable, he’s no Paul Verhoeven.
Following Runaway, Crichton put away his director’s chair and stuck to writing best-selling novels (although he did return to movies for Twister, the Bill Paxton tornado classic that he wrote with Anne-Marie Martin). But Crichton’s cinematic legacy doesn’t end there. In the wake of his blockbuster success with Jurassic Park, Crichton’s books were adapted into hit movies like Disclosure, Rising Sun, and Congo.
All of them far surpassed Runaway’s modest fame as a cable TV staple. While I am awfully fond of Congo and its martini-swilling talking gorillas, Runaway remains a beloved guilty pleasure. Rent it today on Prime or Apple TV to marvel at the sneering genius of Gene Simmons or bask in the mustachioed glory of Tom Selleck’s noble hero. Just know that tinkly tinkly Jerry Goldsmith score will haunt your dreams. And those robot spiders are coming to get you.
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Author: Jeff Stanford
Nerd Dad who loves his family, coffee and movies.
