ARRIVAL OF THE "TERMINATOR"

The Terminator, which is just reaching theatres, is a revelation on a number of levels, most of which stem from the fact that it seems to have caught everyone by surprise. To begin with, there's Arnold tongue-twister Schwarzenegger in the title role, proving that he is much more than a body-builder or Robert E. Howard's Conan (the success of which could have been either a fluke or the height of the relatively new actor's reach, but which has proven to be neither). Then there's writer/director James Cameron, who has somehow managed to transcend Piranha II: The Spawning to offer audiences this instant genre classic. Finally, there are the critics, who seem to have almost unanimously embraced the film and its unrelenting pace as the Terminator from the future attempts to assassinate Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), who is destined to give birth to the son who will ultimately lead humanity in a future war against the machine.
   "Move over Darth Vader," proclaims the Washington Post. "Here comes Conan the Exterminator... Schwarzenegger creates an inimitable villain, an unstoppable killing machine, part metal and part man... When Terminator is not taking itself seriously -- and sometimes even when it is -- it's lots of fun. And filmmakers James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd don't drown us in blood, though it's not for the squeamish."
   Offers the San Diego Union-Tribune, "With makeup that makes him look progressively more like a futuristic Frankenstein, Schwarzenegger swaggers around the city dishing out death, and as pieces of him are blown off, the cold, lethal insides keep ticking... The Terminator isn't art. it works on the nerves, not the emotions. but in a ruthless, slammingly effective way, it's probably a hard action classic."
   "The casting of bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger as a Cyborg Terminator is brilliant. With is various bulbosities and proturberances shoved into leather and tied off, his diction chopped off, his eyebrows blistered off, his hair hacked off and his attitude ticked off, Arnie is a walking punchline -- a joke that kills," says Canada's Globe and Mail. "And the Terminator, in which Arnie does his Heavy Metal ting, is an efficient, cold-blooded sci-fi splatter movie that never makes the mistake of forgetting that on some level it is deeply ridiculous."
   Opines the Washington Post, "The Terminator brings film violence into the realm of the surreal. A slickly made, shoot-'em-up sci-fi fantasia, it stands for the proposition that, inside the most staid local theater, there is a drive-in yearning to be free... As a robot, Arnold Schwarzenegger has finally found a role appropriate to his talents. Schwarzenegger never foudn the right style for the Conan movies -- he was too busy striving for actorish effects to have any fun. But here, shot in low anges to make him seem even larger, peering down over the great prognathous slab of his jaw, his face sealed in a permanent grimace, Schwarzenegger's every appearance is a howl. As wittily created by Cameron and cowriter Gale Anne Hurd, he's not just a remorseless killer -- he's the Thing That Won't Go Away."