Are we sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.
Lady Terminator opens with The Queen Of The South Sea, an all-powerful sex goddess, luring some poor unfortunate into her boudoir and devouring the bloke’s penis with her vagina dwelling serpent – just out of shot – in a slice of horror erotica that’s neither horrific nor erotic. Next up, a savvier guy enters the soft-focus bedroom of death and manages to grab the serpent in a surprise pre-coitus move. The serpent transforms into a dagger and the Queen retreats to the sea, vowing to curse the man’s descendants.
Okay so far? No? I’m going to continue anyway. Apologies.
Fast forward to the late 1980s where we meet Tania (Barbara Anne Constable), a helium-voiced anthropologist who is studying the Queen Of The South Sea. Following a visit to a library, complete with dusty reference book discovery, Tania takes a boat to the resting place of the Queen, where she is attacked and possessed by the vengeful aquatic spirit, showing up on a nearby beach with no clothing on her person and murder on her mind. The target is aspiring pop princess Erica (Claudia Angelique Rademaker) who is the descendant of aforementioned savvy, pre-coitus move bloke. Can square jawed, hard of thinking police officer Max McNeil (Christopher J. Hart) save her?
From the above description, it won’t come as much of a surprise to learn that, by the normal standards employed when judging a movie’s quality, Lady Terminator is not good. However, for connoisseurs of this kind of clag, it’s an absolute riot, chock full of hilariously clunky dialogue, terrible acting and entire sequences lifted almost shot for shot from James Cameron’s breakthrough sci-fi flick. What was the title of that again?
To be fair, there’s the odd positive which can be taken. As the world’s least convincing academic, Constable’s performance in the opening act is shaky, to say the least. However, once she’s called upon to be a silent assassin, she’s actually far more impressive than those around her and proves to be a capable action star, clearly doing the bulk of her own stunts as she blows away all and sundry after typing in the infinite ammo cheat for her guns offscreen.
After establishing the mythology of its central villain, Lady Terminator all but junks that in favour of piling up the action set-pieces and the bodies, sporadically remembering that there is some supernatural business to be deal with by the inclusion of Erica’s uncle, a mystical type whom we know is in touch with the spiritual world because he meditates on a cliff side and spouts dialogue about how his niece should believe in the dagger above all else. If only she’d believed in it before the kill count reached astronomical levels.
In the midst of such chaos, the police investigation is nothing short of astonishing, for example: Max and a mate heading to the pub instead of looking into the murders of the three dickless guys they’ve just seen in the morgue. Well, it is midnight, they do have a more conscientious colleague who will happily work well into the early hours while his team knock back the bevvies, take in a musical number from Erica and stumble on a killing machine while they’re enjoying themselves in a club which is categorically not Tech Noir, honest.
Lovers of, ahem, proper cinema are going to weep for the artform after about ten minutes of this, but for exploitation aficionados there’s enough to satisfy, be it the plentiful car chases, endless supply of folks for target practice and the introduction of Max’s very own A-Team knock off, manned by walking 80s action clichés including one member (in all senses of the word) called Snake. Our hero even has a tragic backstory involving his murdered wife, although that subplot is so clumsily handled that it’s a while before it’s actually made clear and I initially suspected that she’d just left him because of him being a dick.
It all builds to Max and the Ay-Ay-Ay-Team luring Tania to a kill zone and the ensuing showdown consists of more vehicular mayhem, thousands of expended rounds, the de rigeur exploding helicopter, eyes which shoot laser beams, lots of things on fire and absolutely no nods at all – sorry, absolutely loads of nods – to the “it’s dead now, oh no it isn’t” flip flopping of the Arnie classic. The post-battle, pre-credits wind down redefines the word ‘perfunctory’ but it’s worth seeing just to play a game of “Who is that bloke and why the hell is he there?”
The rational, critical, reviewing side of me can not recommend this film in good faith. The screenplay is rubbish, the acting leaves a tremendous amount to be desired and the movie doesn’t so much pay homage to The Terminator as re-film large chunks of it with the film crew keeping their fingers crossed that the lawsuits don’t fly in. It even restages the eye removal sequence, complete with the sudden appearance of a handy scalpel. Why? As with a lot of stuff that happens in Lady Terminator I think I know, but I’m not sure.
Anyway, enough about what the rational, critical, reviewing side of me thinks. The side of me that loves bad films was revelling in straight to video nirvana for eighty-odd minutes. Except this was on a cinema screen. In 35mm. With an audience of like-minded folks. It’s an experience I urge you all to try, if you ever get the chance.
Lady Terminator (1989) was the Secret Grindhouse Screening as part of the Celluloid Screams Film Festival 2023.