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Showing posts with the label Michael Critchton

Random Movie: Runaway (1984)

Pop quiz! When I say Michael Crichton what’s the first movie that comes to mind? Jurassic Park ? Nice job! Twister ? Not too bad! Sphere ? Congo ? Now you’re just messing with me. If you did not think of his smashing directorial success Runaway , I wouldn’t be surprised. This is such an old favorite of mine that I’ve never heard anyone else even acknowledge (excepting PBF who probably saw in theaters). A 1984 movie about killer robots? How original! Oh wait. Terminator didn’t have Tom Selleck’s mustache though. Taking place “in the future” or some weird alt-history 1980s, Tom Selleck ’s Jack Ramsey is head of the runaway squad, a group of police who deal with industrial and household robots that misbehave. Things start off rather uneventful until a servant robot decides to dice up two people and hold an infant hostage at gunpoint. Ramsey discovers the robot was purposely tasked to go off the handle by the over-the-top Gene Simmons to eliminate an engineer who developed the compu