Lady Terminator

James Cameron’s Terminator has inspired a lot of other films in the science fiction genre--some of them good, most of them bad. And Lady Terminator is one of the bad ones. Released in 1988, just four years after the Cameron classic, Lady Terminator deals with the same basic idea of an unstoppable, indestructible menace on the prowl--but instead of an Austrian weight-lifter playing a cyborg from the future, we have a woman possessed by the spirit of an evil Asian goddess. That’s right, there’s no time travel here, just a gal who’s become invincible thanks to the supernatural powers which gives her a powerful sex drive. And whenever she does get horny, it always ends badly. No, I don’t mean the guy doesn’t call her later--I mean she kills her sex partners like a human praying mantis. What, did you think this indestructibility of hers didn’t come with a price?

But while it deviates slightly from the plot of Terminator, make no mistake, Lady Terminator is still a shallow rip-off. From the moment she first emerges from the sea to the very bitter end, Lady Terminator’s plot will be all too familiar to fan’s of Cameron’s flick. The Lady Terminator has a scene where she plucks out and cleans her damaged eyeball, shamelessly aping the moment when Schwarzenegger fixed his cybernetic eye in the motel room. And there’s even a moment where, just when it appears she’s down for the count, a battle-ravaged Lady Terminator rises up from the flames much like the endoskeleton of the T-800 at the climax of Terminator. And much like how a newly-arrived Schwarzenegger takes the clothes from a group of punks near the beginning of Terminator, in Lady Terminator, she takes a leather jacket from one of two men whom she humped to death (death by humping...what a way to go).

A Yoda-type dude shows up mid-way through the film to insert some magical mumbo-jumbo into the proceedings. But he gets killed, along with more than a dozen police officers, when the Lady Terminator single-handedly wipes out their headquarters--once again, ripping off a major set piece from Cameron’s seminal film. But aside from the obvious rip-off factor, Lady Terminator is one of the "so bad, it’s good" flicks because it’s just so ineptly made. Barbra Anne Constable is fetching as the Lady Terminator, especially since she spends a good chunk of the film’s screen time scantily clad--which is just about the only thing I can recommend watching this flick for, aside from the unintentional humor. So if you’re looking for something different, try this with the Terminator for a really weird double feature. You’ll never look at indestructible babes--or evil goddesses--in the same light again. --SF

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