Reviewed by Geno McGahee
“I’ll be back.” –The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger)
This is where it all began for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now I am a huge fan of Arnold’s movie career and I’m not angry with him at all for showing his prick to all of the women and possibly men that he works with. Think about it. He’s a freaking naked cyborg in this flick and this was really his first really popular movie outside of those Conan movies that he did. In my opinion, he didn’t make much of an impression in that loincloth, and with the invention of Blue Ray, I don’t think that I will ever watch them again. If your balls can fall out of 1980 style shorts, imagine how they can slip out in a loincloth? So, Blue Ray would be so clear that should they actually come out, you would see Conan’s balls very clearly and that would disturb me. I don’t want to see Conan’s balls. Do you? So the point is this. You start a guy off as a naked cyborg and prior to that, a guy in a loincloth, you are creating a sexual harasser. We should blame ourselves people.
THE TERMINATOR is an amazing movie with a really cool plot. To stop the good guys from winning in the future, the bad guys send back a robot to kill the mother of the leader of the resistance, therefore erasing the very existence of him altogether. Now the resistance sends back a man to warn and protect the mother and take out the Terminator if needed. Great plot and I’m glad they explained why the cyborg and good guy come back to the past naked. I thought that there were no clothes in the future, but I guess clothing cannot travel through the time machine, but robots can. Hmmm…sounds strange to me. You can send a naked robot but you can’t send a pair of BVDs? I would have loved to hear Reese (Michael Biehn), the good guy, say “There is a naked cyborg coming for you sporting a pair of BVDs. And believe me, this cyborg has skid marks.” No? Not a good idea?
The target is Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) and before killing her, The Terminator (Schwarzenegger) had gone through the phone book and killed two other Sarah Connors because he just didn’t know where she lived and which Sarah she was. The Terminator should have been better informed. If they can create a killer cyborg that they can send through time, they should be able to narrow down where the real Sarah Connor lived and also, how to send him through time with at least a loincloth on. If it was a budget deal, they could have just used the same loincloth from Conan.
Sarah Connor finally gets confronted by the Terminator in a bar, but Reese is there to bail her out with a shotgun. The duo runs for it but the Terminator is right on their trail and this film builds tension very well. An unstoppable monster is always fun.
As the duo tries to escape the cyborg, they get picked up by the fuzz and Connor is told that Reese is a nut job. Lt. Traxler (Paul Winfield) and Detective Vukovich (Lance Henriksen) assure her that she will be fine at the police station and if that “phone book killer” comes knocking on their door, he’d have his dick shot off. Reese is forced to speak with Dr. Silberman (Earl Boen), a psychologist that concludes that the cheese fell off of his cracker. Fools.
The famous line “I’ll be back” sprouted from this movie when the Terminator went to the police station to see his “friend” Sarah Connor. When refused entry, he said the line and then crashed his car right through the building and went on a killing spree, killing all of the police. (Spoiler) He takes out Winfield and Henriksen. Those two great actors were underused in this movie. They could have gotten away with just being injured and coming back to kick that cyborg’s ass. Picture this. At the end of the movie, the Terminator is about to kill Sarah Connor, Henriksen and Winfield show up with machine guns and say: “We were down but not out mother fucker,” and kill the Terminator. Then, if they really wanted to make this a film to remember, a foursome with Reese and Connor wouldn’t be a bad ending. Then you wouldn’t know who the father of Sarah’s son, John, was. The possibilities would be endless.
After Sarah and Reese lose the Terminator, they are in pretty good shape. Had Sarah not screwed up and called her mother, they could have easily gotten away. Sarah could change her name and they could leave the country. The Terminator would be somebody else’s problem and they could live happily ever after. But that wouldn’t make a good movie and now they have allowed this robot to find them again and they are on the run again, but not before they do the nasty, which is where this movie gets strange for me at least. First, they do not pull out in the future. That’s not the part that screws with my mind though.
OK, Reese knocks up Sarah, which creates John Connor, but Reese was sent from the future by John to protect his mother, and I sincerely doubt that he considers Reese nailing his mom “protection.” The fact that he does not wear protection while nailing his mother shows how selfish Reese is. OK, so if Reese is now the daddy of John, where is the real dad of the real John that sent Reese back to the past? Are you following me? If John sent Reese back, then Reese couldn’t be his father. Not a chance. So, where is this real dad of John Connor? Why did he get screwed out of the nookie? And why would Reese jeopardize mankind by changing the future like that?
The eventual showdown between Sarah Connor and the Terminator is fantastic. I know that this new generation that loves CGI would laugh at the cyborg skeleton and the animation that they used, but I liked it and it is still very neat.
THE TERMINATOR is a classic. It is an interesting story with great acting and a great monster. It is far darker and grittier than the movie that followed TERMINATOR II: JUDGEMENT DAY, although that’s a damn good movie too. I highly recommend this one.
Scared Stiff Rating: 8/10. Sperminator rules.