Arnold the Barbarian is back again this week. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the A-Man, the wildman that put the beef in the beefcake, drops buck-nekkid out of the sky and walks around sticking his arm through the stomachs of punk rockers. Arnold is The Terminator, and I'm gonna say it right now, we're talking drive-in heaven. A cross between The Road Warrior and Halloween, with some "Zombie" tossed in to make it disgusting. Straight to No. 1 on the Joe Bob Briggs Best of '84 list. Arnold is a cyborg (half man and helf Robotronic City) who gets zapped into El Lay from the future whose
mission is to wipe out Linda Hamilton so she can't give birth to the guy
who's gonna kill him in the year 2029. So the A-Man gets him some Hell's
Angels threads from a Hell's Angel and walks into a gun store and tells Dick Miller that he
wants a 12-gauge auto-loader shotgun, a .45 long-slide heavy-duty handgun
with laser sighting, a 9-millimeter pistol, and a Plasma rifle with a
40-watt range-finder and then Dick Miller says "Will there be anything
else?" and the A-Man blows Dick away in slow motion and walks out of the
store like a National Guard Armory with legs.
Now he's p.o.ed.
Four breasts.
Terminator availability from Amazon.com
James Cameron, the genius who made "The Terminator" and "Terminator 2," figured out the whole secret to the eighties and nineties, the ultimate fantasy for Americans, and it can be summed up like this:
"I have to blow you away now, because I feel strongly that it's in both our best interests."You see the beauty here? What happens in both movies? A bodybuilder guy drops buck nekkid out of the sky, sent from the future to waste our savior. So we have to KILL the Terminator before HE kills John Connor, the man who will save the world from nuclear destruction in 1997. (In part one he's trying to kill Linda Hamilton, but only because she's about to GIVE BIRTH to John Connor.)
Twenty dead bodies.
Predator
Badge of the Assassin (1985): This is one of the only made-for-TV movies deserving of a video release--James Woods in the true story of a New York assistant D.A., Robert K. Tanenbaum, who spent years criss-crossing the country until he had enough evidence to convict three cop killers who were members of a black revolutionary army. Yaphet Kotto is his cop sidekick. The Bronx-based revolutionaries include Pam Grier and Rae Dawn Chong. The great thing about this movie is that James Woods is the good guy, and he STILL comes across as a serial killer. Four stars.
A decade has passed since John Connor (NICK STAHL) helped prevent Judgment Day and save mankind from mass destruction. Now 22, Connor lives "off the grid" - no home, no credit cards, no cell phone and no job. No record of his existence. No way he can be traced by Skynet - the highly developed network of machines that once tried to kill him and wage war on humanity. Until... ...out of the shadows of the future steps the T-X (KRISTANNA LOKEN), Skynet's most sophisticated cyborg killing machine yet. Sent back through time to complete the job left unfinished by her predecessor, the T-1000, this machine is as relentless as her human guise is beautiful. Now Connor's only hope for survival is the Terminator (ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER), his mysterious former assassin. Together, they must triumph over the technologically superior T-X and forestall the looming threat of Judgment Day...or face the apocalypse and the fall of civilization as we know it.
The Pentagon has turned over missle control to a computer named Colossus, hidden deep in a blast-proof mountain. When the computer starts refusing commands, creator Dr. Forbin is sent for, and discovers that Colossus has ideas of its own and has linked up with its counterpart in Russia. In this audio clip, Colossus explains that Mankind can't be trusted to stay out of trouble. Based on the Colossus trilogy by D.F. Jones
Of course, the Terminator movies are in no way related to 1963's Outer Limits episode Soldier by Harlan Ellison
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