Taking place in a near future (that looks remarkably like the year 1984 with some clunky gadgets, flashing gizmos and robots on wheels added on) Runaway is a piss poor sci-fi movie with a surprisingly high entertainment value.

A criminal mastermind called Luthor – played to a high comedic value by none other than Gene Simmons – is turning robot servants to killer machines. Jack Ramsay, a cop played by Tom Selleck with a remarkably straight poker while having to deliver a number of inane lines while chatting with some bread box on wheels, is out to get him. G.W. Bailey of the Police Academy fame is a delight like always as the police chief.

For a movie that leans to much to robots, most of the gizmos in Runaway are poorly made and driven by fishing lines that are clearly visible in the fresh high resolution prints. On the other hand there are a few notably well executed scenes here: The chase with the target seeking droids and the sky high elevator duel against the spider bots are both disarmingly clumsy but still have tons of good kind of adventurous video game like vibe to them.

80s-o-meter: 82%

Total: 67%