Venue/Location: Hollywood Theater, 4122 N.E. Sandy Blvd, Phone: 503-493-1128
Date: Thursday, May 31, 2012 - 7:30 PM
PSU Film Department Presents 1980’s Vision of the Future Double Feature: Michael Crichton's Runaway and Looker
Admission: $7.00
Join us for a fun, old-fashioned double feature of sci-fi exploitation flicks with big studio budgets - the half-crazy, half-spot-on vision of novelist, physician, futurist and filmmaker Michael Crichton.
The two films will be introduced by PSU Film Professor Dustin Morrow, who will also screen other tech-based clips from the 80s demonstrating that decade’s mostly-off- the-mark vision of what our present day would turn out like, as well as clips of Crichton himself.
Runaway looks at the incorporation of robotics and artificial intelligence into law enforcement and organized crime, as it pits tough-a-nails cop Tom Selleck against psychotic gangster Gene Simmons (yes, Gene Simmons!) and his arsenal of futuristic weaponry, which includes exploding robotic spiders and a handgun that fires miniature guided missiles. Throw in a young, thin Kirstie Alley as a femme fatale, a weird neo-noir industrial vision of Los Angeles, and breakneck pacing, and it’s a recipe for one of the odder sci-fi tech thrillers of its decade.
Looker darkly satirizes television advertising and image consciousness, telling the story of a plastic surgeon (an incredibly hammy, over-the-top Albert Finney) investigating the murders of a series of models on whom he’s operated. Among other things, this deliriously entertaining thriller features perhaps the coolest sci-fi weapon in the history of cinema. To tell you about it would be to ruin a few of the film’s many gonzo, left-field plot twists. Looker is one of the all-time great “What the hell?” movies. As in, every few minutes something happens that’ll leave you smiling and saying, well, “What the hell was that!?”