Iconic, suspenseful action / sci-fi / horror film.

Rating: 8/10 (26 August 2014)

"The machines rose from the ashes of the nuclear fire. Their war to exterminate mankind had raged for decades, but the final battle would not be fought in the future. It would be fought here, in our present. Tonight..."
Earth's future is a grim one where the landscape is a wasteland and our own technology has backfired and created super-intelligent cyborgs and machines capable of thinking on their own and who've all but taken over the planet. In fact, by 2027 the world looks like one huge junkyard where aircraft fire purple and blue lasers into the night sky and large tanks roll around crushing scrap metal and skulls. The last surviving humans on the planet are in the midst of a losing war, but find a savior in John Connor, who will eventually save mankind. Unfortunately, the machinery have also managed to master the form of time travel and thus have another trick up their sleeve to prevent John from even coming into this world.
A naked, muscular man (Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his star-making role) suddenly appears out of nowhere in a flash of lightning somewhere in Los Angeles, present day. First things first, he needs some clothes and gets them from a trio of punks after sending his fist all the way through one of them. Then it's off to pawn shop to load up on shotguns, Uzis and ammo. No need to pay: just shoot the clerk. From there, a quick glance at the phone book reveals there are three Sarah Connor's living in the city and, since this man isn't actually a man at all but an emotionless humanoid cyborg sent there with one goal in mind, he gets to work hunting each of the ladies down and exterminating them, for one is the future mother of John Connor. Appearing somewhere else in L.A. is Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn); a flesh-and-blood human this time, and a good guy, who's there to try to prevent the Terminator from accomplishing his goal.
After quickly dispatching the first two Sarah's and numerous other people who get in the way, the terminator finally manages to track down the third - and correct - Sarah (Linda Hamilton) in a club at about the same time as Kyle. Kyle manages to get her out of there in one piece (can't say the same for many of the other patrons) and from then on out it's an action-packed, fast-paced pursuit through the city with car chases, shootouts and explosions aplenty as our heroes try to think of a way to kill an unstoppable killing machine that seems impervious to most kinds of conventional weaponry. One of the best sequences is when the terminator shoots up dozens of cops at a police station, which also happens to contain the famous line "I'll be back." Seeing this movie first as a kid in the late 80s and now again as an adult, I can say it's held up well over the years thanks to strong storytelling and despite any advances in fx technology.
Made on a budget of just 6.4 million dollars, the film became one of the year's surprise hits; grossing 38 million in the U.S. alone (nearly 80 million worldwide). Though that doesn't seem like a whole lot nowadays, the film's reputation grew throughout the decade and by the time Cameron returned with T2 in 1991, the budget had skyrocketed to 100+ million and the film grossed double that, making it the #1 box office draw of its year. TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES (2003) boasted a price tag somewhere between 170 and 200 million dollars and did better overseas than in the U.S. Ditto for the Schwarzenegger-free, 200-million-budgeted TERMINATOR SALVATION (2009). There was also the TV series "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," which lasted two seasons, and an upcoming fifth film in the franchise is coming in 2015.
Because the screenplay shared numerous ideas from several Harlan Ellison stories, the author ended up suing. It was settled out of court and Ellison received a special thanks acknowledgment in the end credits.