[Inspector Abberline]

Runaway (1984 film)
The main problem with Michael Crichton's look at the future and its world full of domesticated robots is that most of them are not exactly scary looking, in fact, the majority of them look like the kind of robots you use to get in the early episodes of Robot Wars, most are just glorified looking Henry vacuum cleaners that give people electric shocks.The fact that you need a special police force just to disarm robots that go a bit mental, would suggest that your better off without them and that the lazy buggers of the future should do their own cooking and be cleaning instead of relying on these rubbish looking plastic boxes that seem to be programmed to do the most mundane jobs around the house yet still manage to have the capability to use a magnum or knife on their human owners.Well, its a god job then that on his day off from being a private investigator that Tom Selleck is a member of the runaway squad, sent out to deal with these pesky malfunctioning robots. Not helping matters much is a suave looking Gene Simmons as Dr. Charles Luther, who has managed to get hold of some computer chips that overrides the computer's safety features and turns them into pesky killers. The problem with predicting the future is that the future eventually comes around and when you compare the two they do not seem that different apart from the fact there seems to be a lot of wonky robots on a killing spree.And even though most of the robots resemble Dusty Bin from the gameshow 3-2-1, the most lethal critter is one nicknamed the spider for obvious reasons, and while it does look like its made out of a Meccano set this lethal bleeder tends to jump onto its intended victim, stabs them in the neck and then promptly explodes, taking out themselves and the poor sucker they have latched onto.Effects wise this is no Terminator, in fact, most of the time it is only step up from your average Roger Corman flick meets Battlestar Gallactica in the special effects department.Selleck is his usual affable and good-humoured self while Mr Simmons makes for a splendid bad guy, as he sneers his way through the role splendidly and comes to a sticky end like all good villains should.Runaway is a fun film, only marred by some tacky effects and the 80's hairdos of some of the female cast.