I am so not even close to completing my goal of watching every Stephen King Movie ever made. However I have made some major discoveries along the way. The first one is this:
“The Running Man” is THE WORST MOVIE IN THE HISTORY OF FILM and you know that’s saying a lot coming from me. This is movie must be the origin of every bad Schwarzenegger cliche: the gratuitous violence, the implausible romance, the terrible, terrible acting, but most notably…the one liners. I don’t think Arnold has a single line of dialog in this film that is not a groaningly bad pun at his victim’s expense. Can you imagine how frustrating that would be in real life?
Maria Shriver: Sweetheart, the light bulb in the garage just burned out, would you go and change it please?
Arnold: No problem. Thanks for the…bright idea!
Maria Shriver: Sure. And would you mind picking up a gallon of milk on your way home tonight?
Arnold: You are like gallon of milk Maria…you do my body good!
Maria Shriver: Aw, I love you sweetheart.
Arnold: And I love you too…with my penis!
Maria Shriver: I’m leaving.
Arnold: See you later…with my penis!
As hilariously campy as this movie was it was just too contrived and badly written to hold even my interest and I soon found myself reading Jesse Ventura’s bio on my iphone while mouthing along with the predictable dialog in the background. HOWEVER, I will award bonus points for the inexplicable and overly-long 80s dance numbers sprinkled throughout the film which do nothing to further the plot but everything to lighten the pretentious mood.
While so far “The Running Man” takes the cake (of my hatred) there are a couple crucial “also rans” worthy of mention:
“Silver Bullet” is a movie involving Gary Busy and a werewolf (disappointing spoiler: they are not one and the same). The FX in this movie are a brutal reminder of the benefits we’ve gained through digital technology; for every slim CGI Yoda that fails to improve upon the puppet there are a dozen guys in crappy wolf suits with clearly visible separations around the wrists, waist and neck. How are those so hard to conceal? The thing’s covered with hair for fuck’s sake! Despite the shoddy monster’s tendency to take me out of the action, Big Man Busey, God love him, was always there to pull me back in. There’s something about watching an actor who you know deep down is clinically insane; it just makes their performance so much more believable. Even if there are seams on the suit I’m sure it’s all very real to Buse-Dog. Incidently, the Businator has amassed a B-movie resume that would make Loyd Kaufman blush. My favorite titles are “Lethal Tender,” “The Gingerdead Man” and of course “Livers Ain’t Cheap.” Non-BusBus-related bonus points go to this movie for making the werewolf fight a paraplegic Corey Haim and his rocket-launching wheelchair.
See this little guy on the left? That, my friend, is a Shit Weasel, and I’m afraid that everything you’ve just inferred about him is all too true. That’s why the Award for Making Me Afraid of My Own Asshole goes to the film “Dreamcatcher.” This relatively recent flick showcases check-cashing turns from B+ list actors like Tom Sizemore, Jason Lee and Donnie Wahlberg as well as an uncharacteristically violent and vocal Morgan Freeman. The cause of Mr. Freeman’s distress is largely related to the fact that people around him have started SHITTING OUT TOOTHY MONSTERS. Unlike most Steven King movies, the flaw in this one isn’t so much in the execution as in the premise, which is essentially, “Let’s remake ‘Alien’ but with more shitting. Also let’s replace the awesome airlock battle at the end with some confusing-ass mind-war on the astral plane.” I’ll forgive Stephen this one; he apparently wrote it as he was recovering from a near-fatal car accident and was probably on heavy pain medication. I do, however, place blame on the producers for committing his hallucinations to film. This should be a lesson to them, as it was to the characters in the movie, that just because someone might seem reliable, it doesn’t mean that everything they shit out is necessarily good news.
Perhaps I should have been a little more diligent about this movie review project. I don’t think I realized quite what I was getting into. Maybe if I had reviewed one movie a week for a year I could have been an overnight success, like that blogger in “Julie and Julia.” Then they would have made a movie pairing my life story with that of Stephen King! And while the Stephen King story line would have been much more compelling, the parallels between the two characters would have ultimately made for a very entertaining film! Man that would have been sweet! Oh well.
