Fabulous Films, out now

Ben Richards, The Butcher of Bakersfield, faces his deserved fate in a brutal contest to the death watched by millions of avid viewers.

OK, that headline is probably as much fake news as anything that’s in this 1987 movie, based incredibly loosely on the novel by Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King). It’s a star vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger but perhaps not too unsurprisingly hasn’t become a cult hit in the way his other big movie of the year, Predator, has.

It’s one of those movies of the period churned out for the fans, with a dose of satire a la Robocop, alongside action sequences that feel very much drawn from a template – and which become a little too repetitive as the movie goes along. Arnie gets a chance for some not-so-classic one liners (and a few repetitions of his Greatest Hit) and Yaphet Kotto is rather wasted in a subsidiary role, while assorted pro sportsmen of the period don outlandish costumes and go as over the top as they can. It’s held together by Richard Dawson as game show host Killian – which had a lot of double meaning for US audiences (for UK viewers, imagine Terry Wogan in his Blankety Blank mode as the host).

This is the film’s first Bluray release in the UK, and it looks good; the material is ported across from the Lionsgate 2010 US release (which itself contained the extras from the DVD release). The commentaries are interesting in terms of how the film was put together – Starsky actor Paul Michael Glaser was a late addition to the director’s chair, and there’s various tales about the problems leading to that and that it caused. The other two features – on the Patriot Act and reality television – are interesting historical curios.

Verdict: Not Arnie’s finest hour, but an entertaining 100 minutes whose influence on later material such as The Hunger Games is evident. 7/10

Paul Simpson

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