The Terminator(1984)

1h 47m

Release Date: Oct 26, 1984 | Wide

100%
89%
8.1

A cyborg assassin from the future attempts to find and kill a young woman who is destined to give birth to a warrior that will lead a resistance to save humankind from extinction.

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(U.S. Only)

Director & Top Cast

James Cameron
Director

Arnold Schwarzenegger
Terminator

Linda Hamilton
Sarah Connor

Michael Biehn
Kyle Reese

Paul Winfield
Traxler

Lance Henriksen
Vukovich

Rick Rossovich

Matt

Bess Motta

Ginger

Earl Boen

Silberman

Dick Miller

Pawn Shop Clerk

Shawn Schepps

Nancy

Bruce M. Kerner

Desk Sergeant

Franco Columbu

Future Terminator

Bill Paxton

Punk Leader

Brad Rearden

Punk

Brian Thompson

Punk

William Wisher

Policeman

Ken Fritz

Policeman

Technical Specifications

Sound Mix: Mono,(original release)

Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1

Other Details

Country of Origin: United Kingdom,United States

Language: English,Spanish

Summaries

Plot Summary

Over an apocalyptic battlefield dominated by robotic war machines, in the future, humans will wage a long war against an enemy known as the Machines. The "final battle" however, will not be fought in this future world, but in the past, specifically our present. The year switches to 1984. An object is transported through a high-intensity energy field. The object is a man (Arnold Schwarzenegger). The man swats two punks aside, the third stabs him, but the giant tears open the punk's body and kills him. The one man left alive is terrified enough to hand the hulking killer his clothes. He later kills the owner of a sports gun store and takes a small arsenal of weapons, hot-wires a station wagon and finds a phone booth, throwing it's occupant aside. He checks the phone book and looks up a name "Sarah Connor" finding three listings.In a downtown alley, a scarred, naked man, muscular but much smaller in size than the other man who arrived in a similar fashion, is forced through the portal and lands in the alley, in obvious pain. He takes a pair of pants from a homeless drunk in the alley just as a police car pulls up and two cops yell at him to freeze. The man is able to surprise and attack one of the cops, taking his pistol. The cop becomes puzzled by the man's question of the date (May 12th) and year, which is not given. The unidentified man breaks into a department store and steals a coat and a pair of Nike sneakers. Slipping out of the store, he steals a shotgun from the police cruiser. Finding a phone book in a nearby booth, he also looks up the name "Sarah Connor."Elsewhere a young woman, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), lives the life of a lonely waitress. Sharing an apartment with her friend Ginger (Bess Motta), Sarah is living out a boring life that seems to go nowhere. The Terminator steals a car and goes to a local sporting goods store & steals a gun. The hulking man goes to the address of the first listing of "Sarah Connor"; as he walks to the front door, a small dog barks at him. When Sarah Connor opens the door, the man forces his way inside and brutally murders her with the pistol he'd acquired. Not long after, Sarah's coworker drags her to the television where Sarah sees that a woman sharing her name has been murdered by an unidentified assailant.Sarah and her roommate, Ginger, prepare for separate dates. Ginger's boyfriend, Matt (Rick Rossovich), will be coming over to spend the night. Sarah decides to go out for pizza and sees a news report where the police announce the death of another woman sharing her name. Sarah becomes worried. She tries to call Ginger from a small club called Tech Noir; however, Ginger and Matt do not hear the phone while having sex. Matt and Ginger are both attacked by the killer, who mercilessly slays them both before hearing Sarah's voice on a message machine saying where she is. Sarah then phones the police department and is connected to Lt. Traxler (Paul Winfield), the detective investigating the Sarah Connor killings. He tells Sarah to stay put until he can get a squad car to her. The murderer arrives at the club, dispatches a bouncer, and works his way inside.Sarah is spotted in the club by the killer and is immediately targeted. The second man, who'd snuck into the club, opens fire on the larger man with little effect. After firing an burst from his UZI, the man advances on Sarah, ready to kill her. The man wielding the shotgun fires several blasts, throwing the larger man through the club's front window where he lands on the street. The smaller man picks up Sarah saying "Come with me if you want to live!". Sarah watches horrified as her would-be killer rises from the street and runs after them. Sarah and her protector escape through the back door of the club, with killer chasing them, his vision revealing that he's not human. Sarah's new companion shoves her into his stolen car and speeds off while the killer subdues a cop (a cameo by the film's writer, William Wisher) and takes his car.During the chase, her rescuer explains that that he is Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), a soldier from the future sent back through time to protect her and that she's "been targeted for termination." Her assassin is actually a cybernetic organism or "cyborg" a sophisticated robot, covered in human flesh. This "Terminator" is designed to infiltrate human groups mostly undetected and wipe them out. Reese further explains that Sarah is destined to give birth to the humans' future leader John Connor and that a nuclear war that killed most of humanity was initiated by a new, powerful computer system (referred to as "Skynet") that was tasked with controlling all defense systems. Reese grew up in the ruins, was enslaved and marked with a bar-code. The remainder of the human race, he says, was on the verge of extinction when Sarah's son, John, was able to organize them into an effective resistance movement that, by the time Reese was sent back to the present day by Connor himself, had defeated Skynet. In desperation, Skynet sent the Terminator to the present day to murder Sarah and eliminate John Connor's existence.Reese hides them temporarily in a parking garaged, looking for another vehicle. The Terminator finds them there and the chase resumes. Reese has Sarah take over driving and is able to hit the Terminator with a few blasts from his shotgun. Sarah stops their car and the Terminator crashes into a wall. When she and Reese are arrested, she sees that the Terminator has escaped the scene.At Traxler's police precinct, Sarah is told that Ginger is dead and that Reese has been turned over to a criminal psychiatrist, Peter Silberman (Earl Boen). His story about the Terminator and the future he'd come from is treated as the babbling of a psychopath. During the interview, Silberman asks Reese why he didn't bring weaponry from the future with him, to which Reese replies that only living material will go through the time portal. Frustrated and impatient over Silberman's line of questioning, Reese becomes enraged, shouting about how the Terminator is programmed for ruthless efficiency and will not stop it's pursuit until it's destroyed or it can kill Sarah.The Terminator goes back to a shoddy hotel room where it is hiding out. It removes one of it's eyes that had been damaged when it was shot by Reese. Under the eye is a sophisticated robotic eye that glows red. It dons a set of sunglasses and marches out to resume the hunt for Sarah, taking a SPAS shotgun and an AR-15 rifle.At the police precinct, the Terminator arrives in the foyer and asks to see Sarah. When the desk officer refuses it entry, it drives a police cruiser through the lobby, killing the officer. It marches through the precinct ruthlessly slaughtering every officer it finds. In the battle, Traxler and his partner Vukovich (Lance Henriksen) are both killed and Reese escapes confinement. He finds Sarah and the two escape the precinct. Realizing Kyle's story is true, Sarah is told about the future where humans barely survive amid the wreckage of cities and the dominance of the Terminators, which were produced by Skynet late in the war to find hidden human settlements. In Kyle's vision of his own time, he has returned to an underground bunker after finishing a patrol with his unit. He finds a quiet corner to rest among the starving occupants, looking fondly at an old Polaroid of Sarah herself. At the door to the bunker, a Terminator bursts in and begins to slaughter the occupants. Reese tries valiantly to destroy the intruder but an explosion knocks him to the floor. As the Terminator advances, the Polaroid of Sarah burns. Sarah wakes up from the same dream, saying she remembers dogs; Reese tells her that the Resistance uses them to detect Terminators.Later the two reach a roadside motel, where Kyle goes to purchase chemicals needed to make explosives. While he is shopping (using "borrowed" money), Sarah showers and phones her mother, telling her the phone number where she is - unaware that her "mother" is actually the Terminator recreating the voice of her real - and now dead - mother.The two make a stockpile of explosives, Reese teaching her how to make plastique from household items and small lengths of steel pipe. When Sarah asks Kyle if he has ever had a lover, he replies he has not, a fact that touches Sarah. Kyle then mentions having a photo of Sarah and how he has fallen in love with her. Sarah has sex with Reese & results in the conception of Sarah's (and Kyle's) son, John.The Terminator tracks them to the hotel on a motorcycle and the two flee again in a stolen pickup truck. Reese makes a valiant effort to destroy the Terminator with the pipe bombs he and Sarah made, however, he is hit by gunfire and Sarah loses control of their truck, flipping it over. The Terminator recovers and is immediately struck by a semi-tanker truck. After the driver stops, the Terminator kills him and takes control of the truck, attempting to run down Sarah. Near a factory, Kyle uses his last pipe bomb to detonate the truck's tank trailer, which explodes. As Reese and Sarah embrace, the Terminator emerges from the wreckage, it's flesh completely burned off. Reese and Sarah retreat into the factory, which is automated. Reese switches on as many of the machines as he can, making tracking more difficult for the Terminator. They are finally cornered, and Reese places his last bomb in the endoskeleton of the Terminator, which explodes, scattering pieces of the cyborg. Sarah, nursing a severely injured leg, finds Reese, but he's dead.She is suddenly attacked by the top half of the Terminator's skeleton. She desperately crawls away, finally luring the Terminator into a giant hydraulic press. She traps it there and, as it mindlessly tries to break her neck, pushes the button activating the press. The Terminator is crushed until it's red glowing eye fades.Sarah is taken to an ambulance and sees the paramedics put Kyle's body into a body bag. Later, she is driving a Jeep in the desert, seemingly towards Mexico, stopping at a gas station. She has been recording herself using a cassette player; the tapes are for her son. One of the questions she poses is whether or not she should tell John about Reese being his father and if that will affect his decision to send the warrior back in time to meet and save Sarah. While the Jeep's tank is filled, a young boy takes her picture with a Polaroid camera (it is the same picture Reese admires in Sarah's dream of his future). She and the boy bargain over the price and she buys it. The boy says something in Spanish, and the gas station owner tells her he said that a storm is coming. Sarah sees the storm approaching and says that she knows. She drives off into an unknown future.

Storyline

Sent back from a dystopian 2029--where the ruthless machines have conquered the entire world--to 1984 Los Angeles, the indestructible cyborg-assassin known as the Terminator commences his deadly mission to kill mankind's most important woman: the unsuspecting Sarah Connor. However, from the same war-torn post-apocalyptic future comes a battle-scarred defender--Kyle Reese, a brave soldier of the human Resistance Army--bent on stopping the cybernetic killer from eliminating the world's last hope. But the Terminator has no feelings, he doesn't sleep, and above all, he won't stop until he carries out his grim mission. The Terminator uses his exceptional intelligence and strength to find Sarah, but is there any way to stop the cyborg? — Nick Riganas