Terminator Part 1: I'll be back!

Right so here I go again with yet another film review, and this time I have chosen the Terminator films, so I will do my usual by contributing one post to each film, and why not start with the first un, The Terminator, so here we go...

OK the story is set in Los Angeles in 1984, where at night a strange electric storm takes place and from a blinding white light, the figure of a naked man appears, the Terminator (Arnie).  The Terminator soon comes by a group of punks, who attack him with flick knives, but the terminator fends them off with ease and kills one of the punks, ripping out his heart, and he takes the clothes from one of the others.  Around the same time another electric storm occurs, where we see another naked man materialise, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) who quickly evades nearby policeman, by breaking into a closed clothestore, he gives them the slip, and takes a shotgun out of one of the cop cars.  The next day, a young woman, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), who works as a waitress in a local diner, learns on the TV of a murder of a woman with the same name as her, but she brushes it off as a coincidence.  The murder was of course committed by the Terminator, who later on kills another woman of the same name.  With the police deciding to make this information public, Sarah hears this on TV and get's in touch with the police, and when she walks out on the streets, she notices Reese following her, so she goes into a nearby nightclub.  Sarah phones the police on the payphone inside, and speaks to Lt Traxler (Paul Winfield) who tells her to stay put.  Meanwhile the Terminator locates Sarah's apartment and goes in and kills her flatmate Ginger (Bess Motta) and her boyfriend Matt (Rick Rossovich), and listens to Sarah's voice message who calls from the club.  The terminator soon tracks Sarah to the nightclub, and before he can shoot her, Reese guns down the terminator with his shotgun, just in time, as people flee the nightclub, he helps Sarah up and they escape the club, just as the terminator get's up and chases them, unharmed by the gunshots.  Reese and Sarah drive off with the terminator in pursuit as well as the cops, and after eventually shaking off the police, Reese ditches the car in a parking lot and sneaks into another car.

Reese then explains to Sarah that he is from the future in the year 2029, and also that in the future that the world was nearly destroyed by a nuclear war created by the AI military defense machine network Skynet, and out of the ashes rose the machines, who took over the world and put the surviving humans into slave labour.  Reese then tells Sarah that he has been sent back in time to protect her from the terminator, who he reveals is a cyborg assassin, who has been sent to kill her as  her future son John Connor, will become a future resistance leader against the machines.  The terminator soon gives them chase again on the streets, but Sarah and Reese are soon arrested by the cops, who take them both into custody.  At the police station, Reese is questioned by a criminal psychologist, Dr Silberman (Earl Boen) whom he tells his story to, but naturally Silberman thinks he is delusional.  The terminator soon however arrives, and crashes his car into the station, killing many of the police officers in the station, in searching for Sarah.  Reese however manages to escape custody and rescues Sarah before the terminator can get to her.  On the road, Sarah and Reese soon stop at a motel, to lay low, however while at the hote, Sarah phones her mother's cabin house, where the Terminator, who has already gotten there, has killed her mother, and pretends to be her on the phone (as the terminator can mimick anyone's voice) in order to find out where she is.  Reese later on confesses to Sarah that he travelled back in time to meet her because he had always been in love with her since John gave him a picture of her, Sarah touched by this, kisses Reese and they make love (or shag, or have sex whatever way you want to say it).  Later on the terminator tracks them down at the motel where they are staying, and Sarah and Reese escape just in time, but the terminator soon chases them again for the final time, in what becomes the big showdown of the film.

The Terminator is without a doubt one of the best sci-fi films of the 1980s, and it stands as one of James Cameron's very best films.  Cameron himself stated that the idea of the terminator came to him in a nightmare he had when he was suffering from a fever, which gave him the image of the metal skeletal figure surrounded by flames.  Cameron also said that he was also influenced by the sci-fi series Outer Limits as well as films such as The Driver, that helped give him the ideas he needed to develop the story.  And the terminator itself remains one of the great villains in modern cinema, as a killing machine, that has no pity, fear, remorse, or any emotion, and is programmed to do just one thing: kill.  The idea of the terminator as a cyborg is also great, and also how tough and resilient the terminator is, as a cyborg it takes on the appearance of a human on the outside, but has a powerful metal endoskeleton underneath, and in the final scenes where we see the terminator emerge from the flaming remains of the big fuel tanker truck, is one of the film's most memorable images.

In terms of the performances in the film well you have to say that Arnold Schwarzenegger is the star of the film, even if he is far from a great actor, his performance as the terminator is sheer perfection, as he Arnie plays the part of the cold, ruthless killing machine better than anyone ever could have.  He also of course delivers one of the most iconic lines in modern cinema, in that moment where he arrives at the police station to see Sarah and is told to wait, as he looks around the room he looks at the police officer behind the desk window and says "I'll be back!" (and as wee fact Arnie only has 18 lines in the film in total!).  Linda Hamilton is excellent as Sarah Connor, a young lass who basically went from having an ordinary life, working as a waitress, living with her somewhat self absorbed flatmate Ginger, to being thrown into the chaos of playing a crucial part in the fate of the future of the world, and being hunted relentlessly by an unstoppable enemy.  Linda also makes that nice transition from a young scared woman, into a strong independent fighter by the end of the film.  One of her best lines in the film comes when she realises the task ahead of her as she angrily says to Reese "Do I look like the mother of the future?! Come on, I can't even balance my own cheque book!".  Michael Biehn is also really good as Kyle Reese, the human resistance fighter from the future, who protects Sarah from the terminator, who he plays it pretty much straight and serious down the line, but its a good solid performance, and he captures the pain and loneliness of Reese's character really well.  And Biehn also get's one of the best lines in the film where he tries to make Sarah understand "that terminator is out there, it can't be reasoned with, it can be bargained with, and it doesn't feel pity, or remorse or fear, and it absolutely will not stop, ever! Until you are dead!".

There are also some good supporting cast performances as well, especially from Paul Winfield, as the police Lieutenant Traxler, who tries to help Sarah, before the shit goes down at the station.  Winfield also shares a nice bit of banter with Lance Henriksen in the film, who plays the part of one of his fellow policeman, Hal, and I like the way Traxler always cuts off what Hal says before he can finish.  And my favourite exchange of theirs in the film is where Traxler is about to go and speak to the press and he asks Hal how he looks, who says "like shit, boss", and Traxler says "you're mama!".  Earl Boen is also very good as the criminal pscyhologist, Dr Silberman, who plays him as being rather smarmy, and he would later on go to play a larger part in Terminator 2.  Boen's best moment in the film comes when after showing the video footage of his interview with Reese, Sarah asks him "So, is Reese crazy?", and Silberman replies "In technical terminology, he's a loon!".  And finally Bill Paxton makes an amusing brief cameo as the punk leader at the start of the film who taunts the naked terminator by saying "I think this guy is a couple of cans short of a six pack!" and delivers the classy response when the terminator asks for their clothes, "fuck you, asshole!".  

Visually the film looks very impressive given its small budget of 6.4 million dollars, the model effects of the machines in the future look very impressive, and Stan Winston's effects make-up for the terminator are great as is the actual design of the terminator skeleton metal frame.  Although of course it is pretty obvious the scenes where we cut from the mechanical version of Arnie's head, to the live make-up he is given to wear!  The only downside to the effects is the scenes where we see the skeletal terminator stalk towards Sarah and Kyle at the end and these scenes are done using stop motion instead, which makes it look a bit false.  But the terminator's infra-red vision effects are for their time are actually quite impressive and I quite like the way they are revealed in the chase scene after Sarah and Reese escape from the nightclub.   

Flaw wise the Terminator doesn't have too many, although I would say the film probably like others of its time is a victim of the fashions of the 1980s, and it is populated by some cheesy 80s pop tunes, which we hear Ginger listen to on hear tape player, and the scene in the nightclub and when Kyle turns on the car radio.  Also why didn't the Terminator ever think to wash itself and give itself a bath or a shower???!  As surely its skeletal frame would be able to cope with water, as it can certainly cope with fire!  The scene where the housekeeper in the motel knocks on the terminator's door and asks if he has a dead cat in there or what, is quite funny, especially when the terminator responds by telling the housekeeper to go fuck himself, but it also highlights the terminator has no regard or concern for trying to fit in and not drawing attention to itself by stinking out the place.  But wouldn't it make a bit more sense if it did, rather than walking round with stinky BO, ok that's a rather silly criticism, but thought I would just mention it! :-)  In the end the terminator is a killing machine and that's that.  And I always thought the line where Sarah finally kills off the terminator by crushing it in the hyrdaulic press, and saying "you're terminated, fucker!" was a bit unecessary, as I think it would be better if she just said "you're terminated!", or at least they could have made it funny by her saying "you're terminated, bitch!" or "you're terminated, shithead!".  OK I am being just silly now. ;-)  

But I can't leave the film without saying something about its excellent synthesized score by Brad Fidel, which is suspenseful, dark and atmospheric, and while it might sound a bit dated with its 80s synth sound, its a really memorable score.  The scenes where the terminator is always present are great with its low note synth and the synthesized heartbeat in the background, which always perfectly captures the tension of those moments when he is present.  

So that's it for the Terminator part 1, as the first film remains a great classic of 1980s cinema, and what followed would be its higher grossing, bigger budgeted brother, Terminator 2, but more on that soon.

Till then bye the now.