Directed by Nicholas Niciphor & Allan Arkush. Starring David Carradine, Richard Lynch, Claudia Jennings, David McLean, William Smithers, Will Walker. (R)
In the distant, desolate future (some time after those pesky "Neutron Wars"), criminals are pitted against each other in a deadly sport called Deathsport (how apropos) where motorcycle riders fight it out to the death on a minefield. Making "The Running Man" look like the work of Isaac Asimov, this brainless, incoherent, ultra-cheap concoction is terminally strange and often off-putting, despite plentiful nudity and gratuitous explosions. Starts out with Carradine on horseback wearing only a cape and diaper-like loincloth while wielding a Plexiglas sword (so far, so amazing), but the filmmakers forgot to make anything that followed actually fun. As unpleasant as it is visually (aside from Valerie Rae Clark's birthday-suit dance, of course), it's even worse on the ears, with an execrable synthesizer score and Z-grade audio effects that sound ripped from terrible dubs of "Star Wars" and "Looney Tunes" shorts. Produced by Roger Corman, who also did some uncredited directing work (because two directors weren't enough?).
10/100
In the distant, desolate future (some time after those pesky "Neutron Wars"), criminals are pitted against each other in a deadly sport called Deathsport (how apropos) where motorcycle riders fight it out to the death on a minefield. Making "The Running Man" look like the work of Isaac Asimov, this brainless, incoherent, ultra-cheap concoction is terminally strange and often off-putting, despite plentiful nudity and gratuitous explosions. Starts out with Carradine on horseback wearing only a cape and diaper-like loincloth while wielding a Plexiglas sword (so far, so amazing), but the filmmakers forgot to make anything that followed actually fun. As unpleasant as it is visually (aside from Valerie Rae Clark's birthday-suit dance, of course), it's even worse on the ears, with an execrable synthesizer score and Z-grade audio effects that sound ripped from terrible dubs of "Star Wars" and "Looney Tunes" shorts. Produced by Roger Corman, who also did some uncredited directing work (because two directors weren't enough?).
10/100