Compelling. Utterly.

Rating: 9/10 (6 February 2002)

The ultimate success of Terminator is based on the casting of Schwarzenegger. Everybody knows that; and just a quick glance through the comments of IMDB users is enough to convince anyone that that is the majority view. But why? Surely any hulking brute could have filled the role just as amply? Answer - no. Arnie wasn't just born to play a cyborg because he had a pneumatic physique. On the contrary, it's his robotic austrian grasp of English, his total physical stiffness, and his face redolent of a Barbie Doll "Ken" on anabolic steroids that do it. In 1986, the real Arnie was little more than an android himself - so unwieldy that he'd had to tone down his workout for 'Conan' simply so as to be able to swing a sword comfortably. It's one reason why the play's most grating 'special effect' (the moquette head used to conduct the eye operation) paradoxically doesn't grate that much: it may look like bad Harryhausen; but then again so does Schwarzenegger.
The film's other major selling-point is its gritty reality. Terminator had low production values; and the result is a city and characters that don't look like they've been made up to look normal, but just convince naturally. Lance Henirksen, Paul Winfield and Earl Boen do a great job as fatigued, bored, caffeine/nicotine dependent middle-rankers caught up in something which they simply do not understand until it's far too late. The fact that the film only depicts the future post-apocalypse in the odd isolated scene or two (which really don't do anything for the film apart from make the limitations of its budget that bit more noticeable) keeps it firmly seated in the 80s. Someone said that the 80s are now more alien to us than a mesolithic culture. I don't agree with that in the slightest; but I vaguely see what he's getting at when I see 80s LA in Terminator; though familiar, it's cold, unfriendly, and deeply threatening. The 'First Encounter' sequence in the night-club builds up an almost unbearable sense of tension with its muffled background acoustic rock, the blood-red disco lighting, and the slow-motion photography, which suddenly explodes into full-speed, frenetic action, and the audience's terror, pent up for a good twenty minutes or more, gets a chance to release itself as Michael Biehn blasts Arnie out through the window with his shotgun, each volley almost prompting a relieved scream of encouragement mixed with fear from the viewer.

Everything else slots into place very nicely: the music is brooding and, as someone else rightly puts it lower down, primitive in a mechanical way; reflecting the Terminator's quasi-primal relentlessness. Unlike T2, none of the action sequences look contrived; the sequel has a tendency to lose itself up its own sphincter with John-Woo style shots; cf Arnie's boot trampling the rose bouquet in slo-mo in the shopping mall. T1 has none of this. It is exciting, yet somehow faintly believable. There is no attempt to make the camera-work 'speak' in any way: the director is simply content to let the camera rest on the Terminator, who speaks well enough for himself. Add in the odd bit of black humour ("you're dead, honey", quips Sarah's work chum as they view the news of the Terminator's first strike on TV) and you have an extremely compelling film. I defy anyone to watch the first ten minutes and not sit through the rest. The whole premise of the Terminator's invincibility leaves us on tenterhooks throughout, wondering how the hell he CAN be stopped. The sense of relief when it eventually succumbs is overwhelming, and postively catharthic.