I'll be back...

Rating: 9/10 (7 May 2016)

The original "Terminator" is arguably the greatest sci-fi/action film ever, and the Special Edition DVD finally does this classic film justice. In the future, SkyNET, the supercomputer in control of all military power, decides that humans must be destroyed and begins a massive nuclear war that destroys most of the population. The survivors form a resistance against the computer and its mechanical army, and eventually defeat it, thanks to their leader John Connor. In a final effort to win, the computer sends a Terminator back in time to kill John's mother, Sarah, before he is born. The humans send back a lone soldier, Kyle Reese, to protect Sarah from the seemingly unstoppable cyborg. I think what's so great about this movie is how you're slowly revealed the true form of the Terminator. Piece by piece he loses a chunk here, a chunk there. You know he's a machine with flesh over his endo-skeleton, but the full force of this implication isn't really felt until you see the machine without the flesh emerge from burning wreckage. I find the scene where the endo-skeleton is lurching very quickly toward the door as Sarah is struggling to close it far more terrifying than the whole Terminator apocalypse scenes in the sequels. But then again, those are action movies.
Visually, the film is first rate. Fantasy II's future sequences and Stan Winston's make-up and Terminator endo-skeletons are some of the finest moments in Science Fiction film making. Even in this day and age of CG-everything, the rear projected, stop motion animated Terminator effects are still very good, standing up well in the light of eighteen years of technological innovation. Additionally, for the special edition DVD they redid some of the sound effects, like the Terminator's long-slide .45. There are lots of extras, including deleted scenes, still galleries, and two interview reels with Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Cameron, plus Biehn and Hamilton.
Overall rating: 9 out of 10.