Terminator (5 Stars)

30 films to watch before you die, #10

I've already reviewed the 1984 film masterpiece "Terminator" a few times, so I thought I would do something different this time. I'll write a review without including any photos of Arnold Schwarzenegger. That means the hero in the title picture is Pugsey, the only survivor when the Terminator invaded Sarah Connor's apartment. Okay, if anyone says that we didn't see him survive, we didn't see him die either. Why would the Terminator have killed him anyway? Pugsey lives!

I would have posted a dozen photos of Pugsey, but unfortunately he didn't have much screen time in the film. Or is Pugsey a girl? I can't tell the difference. I'll fill the rest of this post with photos of Sarah Connor, played by Linda Hamilton. At least I can be sure that she's a girl.

Here's Sarah getting ready to go out with her flat mate Ginger. Wow! Did girls really have big hairdos like that in the 1980's? Ginger looks scary. Even Sarah's hair is fluffier than girls would wear it today.

I didn't completely forget about Pugsey. Here he is puckering his lips to get a kiss from Sarah, while Ginger looks on in disgust.

And here's Sarah with a dog. It was probably too risky to take Pugsey for a ride in the car. If he'd jumped out he would have been splattered on the highway. Poor Pugsey.

James Cameron directed a sequel to "Terminator" in 1991, which I find just as good as the first film, though different in style. The second film is a fully fledged science fiction epic, whereas the first film has many of the typical characteristics of a horror movie. He was asked to direct a third film, but he refused, claiming the story had run its course and nothing needed to be added. This was a case where making money was more important than the purely artistic merits, so the studios handed the third film to a new director. And the fourth. And the fifth. None of the subsequent films have lived up to the quality of the first two films.

After the original Terminator was shown in cinemas again in June this year a new Blu-ray version was released. I expected the Blu-ray to be a new remastering, but that isn't the case. It's just a repackaging of the same Blu-ray that was released in 2013.

James Cameron has made many first class films, some of which I would have put in this list if I hadn't restricted myself to one film per director. It was hard to choose just one. Also worth watching are

• Terminator 2 (1991)
• Titanic (1997)
• Avatar (2009)