Running Scared

Running Scared is a 1980 action/adventure film directed by Paul Glickler, starring Ken Wahl and introducing Annie McEnroe and Judge Reinhold. Plot The film takes place in April 1961, prior to the proposed Bay of Pigs Invasion. Two soldiers, LeRoy Beecher (Judge Reinhold) and Chaz McClain (Ken Wahl), are just finishing a two-year Infantry tour in the Army in Panama. They hitch a ride on a military C-47 back to their home state, Florida after bribing the pilot with a gift of LP records. LeRoy has stolen a footlocker full of surveillance equipment in-particular an infra-red camera (punishable with time in Leavenworth). During the flight to Florida the plane makes a brief stopover on some secret Caribbean island base. While at the island LeRoy, goofing around, unwittingly uses the infra-red camera to take photographs of the base and of Chaz (thereby identifying him). He leaves the tear-off part of the negative on the C-47's floor. The plane then continues to Florida, where Leroy and Chaz disembark and workers (presumably anti-castrist Cubans) sweep up the aircraft and find LeRoy's camera tear-off. The workers take the negative to two superiors (John Saxon and Bradford Dillman), who are planning an invasion of Cuba from the secret island base. They develop LeRoy's negatives and now can visually identify Chaz. The anti-Castrists know the plane was heading to Florida and now think that LeRoy and Chaz are spies sent to give away the secret of the island base and presumed invasion. Saxon and Dillman assemble a large number of armed men and proceed to search for and locate LeRoy and Chaz throughout the Florida Everglades. When Chaz and LeRoy return home they try to re-adjust to civilian life. They thumb a ride with a teenage boy who is on his way to school and drives a souped-up hot rod car. The boy, who has fantasies of joining the army himself, gives Chaz and LeRoy a crazy high-speed ride through the back country, dropping them off in town. Afterward, they go to a diner where the latest music Del Shannon ("Runaway") and Ronnie Dawson ("Decided By The Angels") is playing on a jukebox and they encounter two young high school girls with a station wagon. One of the teenage girls shows LeRoy a new dance called The Twist. The boys go to a secluded spot with the girls and "score" with the girls before they go off to school.