FROM THE VIDEO STORE GRAVEYARD: 'RUNAWAY (1984)'

What’s not to love about goofy, tech-noir thrillers from the 80s? Robotic home based assistants the size of filing cabinets, office cleaning droids armed with stun rays at some and a police force tasked with the deactivation malfunctioning bots in futuristic precincts fitted with microwave sized computer terminals. It’s all here and more in the 1984 thriller Runaway.

Lushly mustachioed Tom Selleck, riding from the TV ratings juggernaut known as Magnum P.I, stars with Cynthia Rhodes and Kirstie Alley, while author Michael Crichton, the Director of the original Westworld and Jurassic Park scribe, takes Writing and Directorial duties into a future where mankind lives in a society of automation and robotic help that doesn't sound too far off 2018 actually.

Runaway is one of those wonderfully goofy movies that naively wondered how we'd interact with technology in such an 80s way, positing a police division devoted to cops heading out to construction sites, office buildings and even corn fields to disconnect malfunctioning robots (aka Runways), more often that not resulting in clearly amateurish techniques like diving on them or as targets for office furniture projectiles. Selleck as Sergeant Ramsey, clearly a superstar in the area of robot enforcement, is called in to defuse a homicidal robot home assistant (that has somehow learned to wield a revolver) leading him into the path of Luther, a former defense contractor who wants to profit from robots gone awry. The stakeout scene in itself is wonderfully hilarious as Selleck, in his pursuit of a baby in distress, dons a kevlar looking jersey designed to scramble the maniac robot’s tracking signals, but not before an over zealous TV camera man predictably puts duty before common sense to wander into the path of a hail of bullets. 

Around about this time we get to meet Gene Simmons in his feature film debut. The Kiss frontman plays the evil Luther who just can't help leering at anything with a pulse, be it Selleck, his unfortunate former lover played by Kirstie Alley, or the audience in general. His moving mugshot evokes all the fires of hell via Simmons eyes, clearly doing his hardest to ooze pure villain. He succeeds quite amicably actually, coming across as a right asshat who doesn’t care who he’s shooting heat seeking bullets at (yup, he’s got a clip of those). 

Aesthetically, the tech itself is deliciously retro. Office cleaning robots programmed to tase office workers who've decided to stay late, a vacuum cleaner like device seems to be advanced police detection unit, a compact harvesting machine that apparently a half dozen corn farmers can't control, and mechanical spiders armed with needles for injecting acid into their victims (naturally). Helping the Police tasked with malfunctioning robots (robots seem to go on the fritz on an almost hourly basis in this future), is a headquarters tricked out with aforementioned clunky computer screens and run by 80s favorite G.W Bailey (long suffering Lieutenant Harris from the Police Academy series).

Our climax peaks when Luther kidnaps Ramsey’s son, played by Joey Cramer (the kid from Flight of The Navigator), is held hostage atop a construction site, playing with Ramsey’s fear of heights, with added peril from those pesky acid laced mechanical spiders. Unfortunaltey Cramer didn’t get out of the child acting stint unscathed, ending up as a bank robber and serving jail time after his arrest in 2016. Things turned out a little better for his character as Ramsey stages a successful rescue and a grizzly end for Luther who, complete with glorious screams only a Kiss frontman could muster, takes the brunt of the clunky spiders that would come across as rather unthreatening if it weren’t for their leaping abilities. 

Thankfully, Runways is a pure 80s treat, made consistently, unintentionally funny by way of taking itself and the tech seriously, but not being so cheap that it skimps on well constructed chases and set pieces. The spider nasties deliver a nice bout of menace as Selleck dangles from his underneath an elevator and Simmon’s pursuit of our hero by way of advanced bullets that lock onto a victims heat signature gives us plenty of zooming POV shots. Oh and we should give extra points for the filmmakers attempt at self-driving police cars, even if the front seat is taken up with a mannequin policeman and a bunch of hydraulics pushing the pedals. 

From a time when the 80s were obsessed with robots as TV sidekicks, Runway is a goofy way to kill an hour and a half.

FROM THE VIDEO STORE GRAVEYARD: 'THE TOWER (1993)'

The early to mid 90s were a glorious era of future shock and techno fear, movies where we were promised a glorious future of smart office buildings primed to murder and splay any unauthorized individuals caught after hours. Although Alexa and Echo powered smart homes, offices and appliances are today ripe for hacking, one can giggle as Paul Reiser, riding his hot sitcom streak via ‘Mad About You’ (and to be sci-fi fair, an Aliens series alumni), wrestles with all that clunky PC flavored hardware and ultimately taking the system down with a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival (really…).

Made as a TV movie in 1993 before occupying the bottom shelf of a video store near you, The Tower ticks all the right boxes for bad speculative 90s techno fiction. Reiser plays an electronic musician set up with a job at some sort of hi tech office tower sporting an all watching advanced central security system complete with sassy AI named ‘Cas’. Reiser gets into trouble quick with a faulty ID card screwing his automated office entry, his parking space and, thanks to willfully flaunting the strict employee codes, gets marked for 'deletion' by the errant Cas system, assisting him inadvertently to the death of his sociopathic boss in an malfunctioning sauna. 

Apparently skimping on the casting of extras, the massive tower seems to be only staffed by one front desk security personnel, a secretary and Reiser’s eventual love interest. There’s a distinct aroma of the murderous security droids of the gleefully B Grade ‘Chopping Mall’ in this towering building turned hunter/killer, and we must warn you that there will be continuous use of the song ’Bad Moon Rising’ to communicate with the computer nasty. Keep eyes peeled for Reiser freeing himself and love interest from a smoke filled hallway with a bowling ball, a tussle on an errant window cleaning scaffold and icicles forming on our protagonist faces due to the system needing sub zero temperature to survive.

This is the type of film you’d find amongst the last crap standing on a video store shelf late on a Saturday night after all the good new releases were taken, and we kind of love it for that reason. You'll be hard pressed to find this one outside of a shoddy YouTube upload, but we encourage you; come for the clunky computers, stay for the terrible exploding miniatures! Oh, and elevator shaft action aplenty. 

NEON REVIEW: CHOPPING MALL (1986)

'CHOPPING MALL' (1986) is tonight's viewing pleasure and a 'Vestron Video' classic with golden dialogue such as "I guess I'm just not used to being trapped in a mall in the middle of the night being chased by killer robots". Now fully restored on Blu Ray as part of a series of infamous Vestron horror greats (children of the 80s will appreciate that company), once again you can get locked in the most banal looking mall in America with eight horny teenage mall employees who have decided to chill in the bedding store overnight.

Problem is that it's patrolled by three lethal force security robots that look like giant weaponized Nintendo ROB robots. Never mind that it doesn't make sense that you'd actually use bulky death machines to keep an eye out for overnight break ins, just rejoice in teenagers played by actors in their late 20s attempting to dispatch them with vast amounts of military grade weapons and ammunition easily acquired at a sporting store, plus an exploding head or two. Keep an eye out for Dick Miller who got the rough end of a snow plow in Gremlins, who also gets an unfortunate run in with the Mall's pesky security team. And we do enjoy seeing Kelli Maroney kicking ass hot of the heels of (well, two years after) the equally trashy Night of The Comet (1984). Rest assured there is plenty of prerequisite gratuitous 80s slasher film boobs, butts and pecks from both sexes. Enjoy!

Directed by Jim Wynorski. Starring Kelli Maroney, Tony O'Dell and Russell Todd.

NEON REVIEW: COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT (1970)

We get it. Sometimes you just can't make it out to the movies. So we'll be digging up some under appreciated gems that might be a rare find on streaming or strictly only on DVD. So in that case, we'll be presenting a weekly quick review for viewing suggestions...

COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT (1970)

Before google... sorry...Skynet went self aware and destroyed us all in Terminator 2, there was another defence program getting bossy and deciding on what's best for mankind. Colossus is a very, very under appreciated sci fi classic, and warning on our blind faith in technology, full of great disposition over effects, effects, effects. In the near future, America has handed over it's control of arsenals and intelligence to 'Colossus' a massive unmanned artificial intelligence facility deep beneath the Colorado rockies, in an effort for peace by removing the unpredictable nature of man's decision making. While Washington pats itself on the back, the program begins learning at an unfathomable rate, soon learning of another facility in Russia, and wanting to unite with it.

Wishing to maintain dominance, Colossus threatens humanity with it's own nukes if they interfere, while informing the leaders of America and Russia that it has essentially handed them world peace at the cost of it's loyalty to the machine. Central to this is Colossus' creator who maintains a cat and mouse scenario or words and deception in an attempt to outsmart the gargantuan facility and it's machine brain. More or less shot entirely within bunkers and situation rooms, Colossus is swift (just over an hour and a half), and full of that light oddly placed hearted music in 70s movies when we should be getting a big threatening crescendo of sound. Good for those that liked the era of Silent Running, Omega Man and The Andromeda Strain sci-fi films. Via Netflix DVD. Not available on streaming.

Directed by Joseph Sargent. Starring: Eric Braeden, Susan Clark and Gordon Pinsent