THE TERMINATOR (1984) - ****1/2



"I'll be back."

Does anyone else remember that tabloid rumor years ago that O.J. Simpson was being paid over a million bucks to play the psychopathic killer in an European slasher film? No idea if that project ever came to pass, but I think it's hilarious that he was a candidate to play the title villain in THE TERMINATOR but the filmmakers rejected him because they felt nobody would take him seriously as a murderer.

People have written about how the popular sci-fi/action THE TERMINATOR is actually in fact a well-made slasher thriller, and in retrospect they have a point. You have this freakish killer (cyborg) that is masked (by Gargoyle sunglasses) and stalks several victims (who all share the same name) and his death reaper presence is always felt, even when not on screen. He notches up a solid body count, including two pretty people after they had sex, a genre red alert that you're so gonna brutally die. Also, he is finally defeated only by the last would-be victim (Linda Hamilton) screaming off her head, who overpowers and limps away alive...only to collide with a twist ending.

So if we are to use such argumentation, then James Cameron's THE TERMINATOR is indeed the greatest slasher movie ever produced....ever Yes, even better than John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN and Tobe Hopper's TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. Sorry, but it's true, damn true! In fact, those folks usually forget that TERMINATOR shares another slasher trademark, which is being sometimes being forced to be very creative and uniquely epic in spite of its low budget limitations, i.e. Sam Raimi's THE EVIL DEAD.

Thus if writer/director Cameron has moved on to bigger budgets with better FX, TERMINATOR is still his filmatic peak precisely because of that down-to-Earth scale with gritty intensity that meshes very well with his renown myriad of exciting action cinema and solid storytelling. Cameron-wannabe losers like Michael Bay and Paul W.S. Anderson have tried and failed in replication with much studio dime and time, but just watch this sequence at the nightclub. As as I similarly described for THE ABYSS, you get such well-cut and directed suspense and tension, with appropriate acting which culminates in some good ole bang bang:



Yeah, that's good shit surprised the hell out of everyone back in 1984. I mean from the poster and trailer, those critics were expecting a nasty B-actioneer starring that Austrian Oak from CONAN THE BARBARIAN, and instead they get not just the best goddamn action movie of the year, but this cheapo was superior to that Steven Spielberg's much-hyped and much-funded INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM. Hell, TERMINATOR even made the Time Top Ten list that year. Yes, those snobs thought a picture about a killer robot from the future was as good as any Oscar bait or arthouse fare to come out in 1984. Suck it AMADEUS! Too bad the Academy Awards' prejudice against action cinema was as strong back then as it is now, so basically TERMINATOR was of sorts the THE DARK KNIGHT for that year.

Now if the Oscars weren't such bigots, I would think Arnold Schwarzenegger deserves an Oscar nomination. If CONAN made Arnold a star, TERMINATOR turned him into a global superstar. The part has only 16 lines, and scripted as simply: "It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!" Sure, a giant bodybuilder with a German tongue sounds far from a perfect infiltrating assassin, but Arnold forces you to forget such logic.

What I think attracted him to that character was that he's playing the ultimate unstoppable masculine fantasy: He easily crushes bones, smashes stuff, tosses people like a newspaper, and withstand the gunfire assualt of an army. Consider too that how chiseled the cyborg bodies are, in contrast with the weaker, diseased, and flabbier humans, like poor Michael Biehn. Sure he's a tough little bastard, but being shell shocked, he's only an annoying obstacle for Mr. Terminator, the idealic predator with probing eyes like that of a shark. Guinness Book of World Records once described Arnold as the "most perfectly developed man in history," which means then that Skynet produces human flesh better than the real thing.

Think about it.

But Arnold's sheer incredible physical intensity ushers that role to a whole other level of iconic heights of awesomeness which neither Simpson or anyone else could have pulled. He's the ultimate hero in CONAN, but those gargoyle sunglasses and punk leather jacket, surrounded by composer Brad Fiedel's trademark dum dum dum music, he's not just the ultimate villain in THE TERMINATOR, he's an utter badass. I mean take the most famous scene in all of Arnold's filmography, with how he delivers what inadvertedly became his signature line. Somehow, such a simple shot becomes the most badass moment of all 1980s action cinema, beating out Indiana Jones' creative way to end a sword fight in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and "Yippee ki yay, motherfucker!" from DIE HARD.

How did he and Cameron pull that off?



Little admiring touches by Cameron still impress me, like during the police station shoot-out a bullet passes right through Arnold and cracks the glass behind him, but Arnold doesn't flinch at all. Nice. Also Cameron's use of Biehn's dreams about literally his past future life. Most movie dreams try to trick you, but no Cameron knows you're wiser than that. Later with that other flashback to the future, with small money, old school FX and miniatures from the late Stan Winston and Fantasy II effects, industrial resourcing, and economical storytelling, Cameron excellently unveils that possible reality where humanity is on the brink of extinction.

Comparing with 1984 Los Angeles, he puts into perspective what is at stake and what will be lost, and that Biehn only fighting to conserve what little is left for them, so Cameron probably ripped off not only Harlan Ellison, but also LA JETEE. Biehn's best moment though is when he's interrogated endlessly by the cops, and he finally loses his shit. Still, Biehn's moral conundrum does get him some pity sex from Linda Hamilton and her Mullet hair. So maybe being a whiney bitch at times does indeed save the future, one unplanned pregnancy at a time.

I would love to give TERMINATOR the masterpiece mantle, for shit it almost deserves it, but two things that Cameron did always bugged me. For one, that opening text prologue in 2029 A.D. Was that really necessary? Imagine if the film opened with naked Arnold and ass-cheeks arriving in L.A., and from there the movie is patient in explaining itself. Plus, I assume most folks who want to watch TERMINATOR would assuredly know roughly about the premise, right? Second, there is such a major plot hole when after a car chase, Arnold crashes but after the police arrive on the scene, he vanishes.

We've established that those puny cops never would have had a chance of stopping Arnold from doing his quest and exterminating Hamilton, right? So why does Arnold flee? Then again, I guess the dude wants to finish the job while looking cool with that Reagan Decade eyeware. See, it's such little mistakes why you Terminators always fail when you go back in time. When will you all ever learn your lesson you goofy bots?

Anyway, Biehn is a solid if outmatched hero, with enough emotions to be beneficial without being Emo-annoying. For what is usually the thankless role as the woman in an actioneer, Hamilton breaks out of that tradition with earnest seriousness due to strong and surprisingly smart drama material from Cameron. She's a lousy waitress who can't balance her checkbook, can't keep a date, and oh yeah her awful hair. In short, the most insignificant woman alive in 1984, but ends up as the upmost critical within our history, a contemporary Eve. Sorry Virgin Mary, but last I checked, you don't have murdering Terminators chasing after you in biblical Bethlehem.

I guess we have to remember that like those two people struggling to survive against that monster, Cameron had great difficulties to get TERMINATOR produced. He was previously an art designer and FX director for B-film producer Roger Corman. His only pre-TERMINATOR directing gig was PIRAHNA II: THE SPAWNING, which he only got after the original director was fired, and Cameron was himself later axed. Living on his friend's couch, he conceived and wrote the TERMINATOR script, and many major studios wanted to produce it. The problem was, Cameron would only sell the screenplay if he got to direct (much like Sylvester Stallone did years earlier with ROCKY), and that was a deal-breaker for most of Hollywood. Orion Pictures agreed though, but TERMINATOR got delayed for 9 months because Arnold was stuck doing his CONAN sequel, and meanwhile Hamilton broke her ankle.

Then his producers tried their very best to chop up the entire 3rd act, and end the picture after the truck explosion. Cameron won that battle, but lost the war with the studio marketing department who refused to seriously back and capitalize upon TERMINATOR being a major sleeper hit in theatres. But he persevered through all that and created a franchise of three sequels and a television series. The $200 million summer blockbuster SALVATION (starring Batman) set for release this summer, on the 25th anniversary of TERMINATOR's release, which is ironic since Cameron's picture cost only $6 million, which was small potatoes even back then.

TERMINATOR was and still is a great and fully satisfying genre classic in spite of its B-production values which appealed to guys with action, and romance for the gals. Now friggin McG is at the helm. Oh where is the T-800 to look through a phone book for us?