Ooh! This is one lovely, lovely, awful movie. Throughout his career, Arnold Schwarzenegger has made some truly bad bad bad bad movies, as well as some very good action movies, but this ranks amongst the most gut wrenchingly hilarious.

Based on a short story by Stephen King, written under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman for some reason (!), the story centers on a man sent to a maximum security prison some time in the 21st century for massacring hundreds of people in his police helicopter.

And guess what? Can you guess? You can, can't you? Yes! That's it! He was framed! He was arrested for a crime he didn't commit!

So he is enlisted as a contestant on TV's top rated game show, "The Running Man," in which convicted felons battle lots of elaborate supervillains to the death in order to win their freedom.

Of course, this is a fabulous opportunity to exhibit some of the most fabulous, cheesiest of cheesy pay-off lines, which are, of course, the most entertaining thing about the last century of cinema.

For instance, after chopping a guy in half with a chainsaw, the heroine asks, "What happened?" Arnold replies, "He had to split."

After throttling a guy with barbed wire and tying it up, the heroine asks, "Where is he?" Arnold replies, "Hanging around."

See?? Great or what!?

So, he kills lots of people live on TV, clears his name, gets the evil host of the show, and gets the mysterious European brunette. If you want any more from a junky film, you're insane.

Rating: 5 turkeys.

Best line: "You'd better leave enough room in your next meal for my fist, because I'm going to ram it into your stomach AND TEAR OUT YOUR ****** SPINE!!!!"

Things that make you go "Huh?": That anyone at all would be attracted to that repulsive woman.

Response From RinkWorks:

I love the kid who gets brutalized by one of the costumed baddies: "Buzzsaw touched me!"

King's story was *way* better than this movie -- not that that is really saying much.