12 Most Underrated 1980s Sci-Fi Movies

While many millennials fell in love with The Hunger Games franchise and its 'original' premise, fans of this 1987 Arnie film know that it had been all done before. The plot will seem mighty familiar to fans of the Jennifer Lawerence lead films, with the Government of the 'futuristic' 2019 facilitating game shows in which criminals are compelled to fight to the death.

The story sees police helicopter pilot Ben Richards, played by Schwarzenegger, placed into 'The Running Man' competition, with the expectation being that he will die in the game like the majority of previous 'contestants'. Richard Dawson does a great job as game show host Damon Killian, who serves as both a genuinely mean piece of work, while also serving as an every day worker trying to appease his boss.

The film serves as a brilliant allegory of the human obsession with violence while also being ahead of its time in prophesying the rise of popularity in reality TV. While serving as an allegory for hit TV shows like Gladiator and even the entire MMA, the film is at its best when examining the fraud that is reality TV, the use of editing to blindside the public a tool still used today in all reality shows.

The film works in spite of Arnie being slightly miscast thanks to its abundance of clever ideas, while credit must also go to the inventive attempts of predicting current fashion trends.