By Maria Loreto Published Sep 22, 2026, 12:00 AM EDT What to Watch It's now streaming for free on YouTube
Image: Tri-Star Pictures Add Us Summary Generate a summary of this story Jump links Jump Links What is The Running Man about? Despair, but make it camp Like Like follow Follow followed Followed Thread 1 Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap 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.
Image: Tri-Star Pictures 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.
Image: Tri-Star Pictures 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…