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DeKALB | Before he was the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger was one the biggest names in action films. Not so long ago the governator was the “Terminator,” but every one knows that. Let’s look back at a less infamous movie the governator made, lets go back in time to one his so bad it’s good movies, “The Running Man.”

Like most of his movies “The Running Man” took place in the future, 2017 to be exact. In this future, the world economy is in bad shape, ruled by a totalitarian society and the prison system is flooded with criminals. However, one thing thrives in this crumbling future, a game show called “The Running Man.”

In this game show convicted felons are given the chance to run to their freedom by surviving a gauntlet of even more malicious killers than the convicts, named stalkers. In this gladiatorial game show the contestants must survive unarmed against professional killers with exaggerated and creative weapons and armor.

Schwarzenegger stars as Ben Richards a cop who is framed for massacring innocent civilians and is now a contestant on the game show. He, and the other three contestants, must now kill or be killed by the stalkers and be a symbol of hope to the civilians trapped in a totalitarian society.

Although Schwarzenegger and director Paul Glaser tried making a serious futuristic action-thriller they accidentally made a best-worst movie, kind of like “Snakes on a Plane” or the official best-worst movie “Troll 2.”

“The Running Man” was filled with cheesy one-liners, lame costumes and bad acting, which made this classic movie so bad that it became great. Schwarzenegger and the rest of the ‘80s action cast’s terrible delivery of even more terrible dialogue can only be described as unintentionally comical.

The laughable costumes the stalkers wore didn’t help this movie’s seriousness either. I mean really, how is a man with an accent as thick as Schwarzenegger, dressed like a Christmas tree, zipping around in a little electric car suppose to be terrifying? It isn’t. The stalkers’ costumes were purely laughable and seemed to be dressed like that only to set Schwarzenegger up for his corny dialogue.

The irony in and behind “The Running Man” is just as noticeable as Schwarzenegger’s infamous accent. The “violent” criminals, who are charged for murder, are now being hunted by even more violent killers in a bizarre search for justice. The irony even goes beyond the script, because all the aspects of the movie that make this movie so bad simultaneously make it so great.

Although “The Running Man” was labeled as an action-thriller it really should be under the genre of action-comedy, it would have been much more fitting. If watching “The Running Man” thinking it’s going to be a serious kick-ass action film you might be disappointed at just how cheesy and lame it is. Then again that might just be this movie’s saving grace because if it weren’t so entertainingly bad it would be totally forgotten like Jackie Chan’s 2002 “The Tuxedo.”

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