Splendid low budget entertainment

Rating: 8/10 (30 July 2015)

Gale Anne Hurd and John Cameron really showed how to deliver a whole lot of movie on a shoestring budget. With a budget so tight that "bandit" re-shooting of scenes was necessary while evading the local sheriff, the producer/director team launched Schwarzenegger into his action career in a way that "Conan" had not quite been able to do.
It was a stroke of genius that Arnold insisted on playing not the hero but the bad robot, sent back from the future to kill the human heroine who might otherwise have a son who would vanquish the machines one day in the future. As a result, "The Terminator" had to be changed from a crowd-blender concept to the Arnold-size concept that "will be back" with big mayhem and does not try to hide or blend.
Linda Hamilton did an incredible job of morphing from pink-dressed diner waitress to steely woman of action whose progeny must save the world of the future. Schwarzenegger developed great affects, like the scanning eyes, to make his character seem less human. And Biehn was a good hero, although he was in the shadow of his monosyllabic adversary.
Some of the special effects have not aged well. Unlike Carpenter in "The Thing," Cameron could not afford to eliminate stop-motion sequences from the film entirely. There just was not a budget for large scale puppetry, the only alternative at the time. Many fans would stone me for saying this, but The Terminator is a good candidate for CGI-ing Stan Winston's vision, if it's done right: following the original shots exactly, without fooling around, while making all motions smooth, and rubbery prostheses more realistic. The cigarette smoke that was blown through the crushed exoskeleton in the closing scenes does not need to be redone!
The plot occasionally wanders a bit, and Cameron is not quite as good a composer as he might think he is, but this film is a true auteur work at the highest level, hampered to an "8" only by the tiny budget. Hurd and Cameron were a match made in heaven (and for a while, on Earth). Action film fans should be grateful to this duo for all eternity.