Stephen King is one of the definitive authors of our time. Known as a horror master, he’s worked across all sorts of genres, from high fantasy to dystopian fiction. King’s visions of the future are often just as bleak as his work in horror, swapping supernatural monsters for advanced technology and how it complicates the human condition. They’re also often eerily prescient — and only get scarier as time goes on.
One of King’s most prophetic books was released in 1982 under the pen name Richard Bachman. The Running Man has a Simpsons-esque knack for predicting our future: a world where spectacle is wielded to influence the public and keep them in line.
While Edgar Wright put a modern spin on King’s story in 2025, there’s still something charming and surprisingly resonant in the extremely campy version that came out in 1987 starring Arnold Schwarzenegger at the height of his action-star powers. That version of The Running Man is now free to stream on YouTube, and it takes the real and somber concerns of King’s novel to hilarious (and believable) extremes.
What is The Running Man about?
Directed by Paul Michael Glaser, The Running Man opens with a helpful crawl in bright white letters over a red backdrop, laying out the vision of the future while establishing the film’s striking color palette.
The year is 2017, and the world’s economy has collapsed. The U.S. is a police state divided into paramilitary zones. To keep the people controlled and entertained, the state-owned network airs a reality TV show called The Running Man, where prisoners can earn their freedom if they survive attacks from some of the country’s most skilled assassins, called Stalkers. The show’s promise of freedom is, of course, a lie. No contestant has survived the game.
Ben Richards (Schwarzenegger) is a former cop who was framed by his unit after he refused to shoot an unarmed group of people, resulting in his imprisonment and the nickname The Butcher of Bakersfield. He escapes prison, finds some allies, and is hunted by the state. The Running Man’s host, Damon Killian (Richard Dawson, host of the real Family Feud), sees Ben as the perfect way to revive the show’s waning ratings. So the show’s editors doctor footage to make him look like a ruthless killer and turn the audience against him.
Despair, but make it camp
If that all sounds grim, gritty, and self-serious… it’s not. Glaser trades the despair that permeates the novel for camp, and it works.
In the book, Ben is a desperate father who signs up for the games to afford medicine for his sick daughter. Spoiler alert: Things don’t work out for Ben, and the novel ends with him finding no better option than to defiantly crash a plane into the TV networks’ headquarters. Glaser’s ending is a lot more satisfying.
King has noted the tonal gap himself. In the introduction to his collection of pseudonymous novels titled The Bachman Books, the author described his version of Ben “as far from the Arnold Schwarzenegger character in the movie as you can get.”
Glaser’s film makes for an entirely different experience. The Stalkers are as entertaining as they are lethal, introducing themselves to a clapping studio audience like a twisted take on The Masked Singer: There’s a chainsaw-wielding Stalker called Buzzsaw and an opera-singing one called Dynamo. Then there’s Subzero, who dresses like a hockey player as he chases contestants across an ice rink, slashing them with his stick and even treating one of them as a hockey puck.
While all of this is happening onstage, audience members take in all the gore by cheering and howling, dropping their own commentary as they self-righteously look down at the criminals. They fawn over Killian, the ultimate celebrity. They can even win money and prizes if they make the right bets.
“Here is Subzero. Now plain zero,” says Ben after taking out the Stalker. It’s one of the great Schwarzenegger deliveries, making it easy to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. But look at what surrounds the joke: a crowd that sneers at the condemned from the safety of the stands, a host worshiped like a star, and a network that plays with the truth to keep its audience entertained. Four decades later, a culture that values spectacle over truth and treats public humiliation as entertainment no longer looks like an exaggeration.
Despite the opposing tones, the core premise was King’s from the start. “The finest men in America don’t run for President. They run for their lives,” reads the novel’s tagline.
If you’re looking for higher fidelity to the source material, Edgar Wright’s The Running Man is a good option. But if you’re looking for ‘80s camp that turns King’s warning into a hilarious game-show spectacle that still hits hard, Glaser’s film is the right place to start. When a show like this feels so familiar, what else can you do but laugh?
The Running Man is free to watch on YouTube.