shyt already made the top 10 for action breh...you wasting a spot with that one.
Welcome to Prime Time, B*tch! The Official Top Ten Horror Movie List Voting Thread
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shyt already made the top 10 for action breh...you wasting a spot with that one.
EarlyMaridia
All Star
It's in my top ten in horror and action then. Cameron is a master of many genres.
It's an interesting conversation to have: what merits terminator as a horror flick? Not saying I agree or disagree but I'm curious for cats who feel strongly about it like you and @Ed MOTHERfukkING G to make the case
Ok why is that? Playing devil's advocate, the main villain is very similar to Michael Myers and spills more blood. He can't be reasoned with, can't be bargained with, and he will not stop. He has no morals, no scruples, and just wants to kill and he does so several times. It's shot mostly at night, and even features a character in an enclosed space trying to get away from the antagonist
terminator was heavy with horror elements IMO..scifi thriller is a nice way of putting it.
EarlyMaridia
All Star
The only difference between the T-800 and the likes of Jason and co is the T-800's intelligence being infinitely higher than theirs. He's a better stalker than they are, as durable as they are (minus the supernatural shyt), colder because the machines hate humanity in general and went back in time to end it (fukkery), and even more relentless. It plays out like every other slasher flick does.
Maybe since the protagonists fight back more, it causes the disconnect for some? It's not like it worked anymore than someone temporarily ducking Myers. The movie went out of it way to show how strong the killer was multiple times, throughout both timelines. The only reason it died in the present was due to random circumstance. For all intents and purposes, the protagonists should have lost harder than anyone in Halloween, Friday the 13th, Scream, and anyone in a movie not named Alien, Predator, or one with demons n shyt.
Even though guns are still weapons, they aren't viewed as methods of dispatching someone personally. They were still tools for carrying out mass murder and it's not like he needed it. Arnold starts the movie by ripping a dude's heart out of his chest with his bare hand. By the end of the film, the amount of people he killed was ridiculous. Even though machines have no feelings, the deaths might as well have been personal in nature.
You can see the difference in structure by comparing T1 and T2. While, yes, the motivations behind the machines was the same, T2 placed a bigger emphasis on bombastic action set pieces and less of the more intimate slasher moments of the first.
Maybe since the protagonists fight back more, it causes the disconnect for some? It's not like it worked anymore than someone temporarily ducking Myers. The movie went out of it way to show how strong the killer was multiple times, throughout both timelines. The only reason it died in the present was due to random circumstance. For all intents and purposes, the protagonists should have lost harder than anyone in Halloween, Friday the 13th, Scream, and anyone in a movie not named Alien, Predator, or one with demons n shyt.
Even though guns are still weapons, they aren't viewed as methods of dispatching someone personally. They were still tools for carrying out mass murder and it's not like he needed it. Arnold starts the movie by ripping a dude's heart out of his chest with his bare hand. By the end of the film, the amount of people he killed was ridiculous. Even though machines have no feelings, the deaths might as well have been personal in nature.
You can see the difference in structure by comparing T1 and T2. While, yes, the motivations behind the machines was the same, T2 placed a bigger emphasis on bombastic action set pieces and less of the more intimate slasher moments of the first.
A horror movie is more than just the villain. Its an atmosphere, a style, a tone...none of which point to horror in Terminator. It doesn't give me the sense of horror or create the scary world; I'm not scared of the Terminator nor am I scared for the people in that environment (especially since we already know many live to form a resistance int he future against the machines)...again, its not scary.
Ok ok good reasoning. I'm waiting for the counter arguments
EarlyMaridia
All Star
Billions of people live on planet Earth and the vast majority of them being wiped out (via nuclear hell), doesn't equate to a scary environment? 
The horror of the movie is two-fold: unbeatable stalker in the present and nuclear holocaust and human slavery in the future.
All I see is, "it's not scary therefore it's not horror."
If you break down the pacing, shot selection, use of color, up close shots of Arnold killing his victims (same as voorhees and them), the cramped spaces (alleyways, industrial building, narrow highway, night club, etc) in which the stalker chases his victims, Arnold's opening, the chases when they're disarmed, Cameron damn near saying he wanted to make a slasher film, etc...then it all points to a slasher movie. If you replace The T-800 with Myers, Jason, dude from Maniac, whomever then the only thing that changes is the motivation. Nobody would question it being a horror film.
I take that back. Reese would have merked them dudes on sight.
So, maybe it would have had to have been a Predator or Pinhead, or Dracula or something.
I know we aren't saying it needed jump scares.
The horror of the movie is two-fold: unbeatable stalker in the present and nuclear holocaust and human slavery in the future.All I see is, "it's not scary therefore it's not horror."
If you break down the pacing, shot selection, use of color, up close shots of Arnold killing his victims (same as voorhees and them), the cramped spaces (alleyways, industrial building, narrow highway, night club, etc) in which the stalker chases his victims, Arnold's opening, the chases when they're disarmed, Cameron damn near saying he wanted to make a slasher film, etc...then it all points to a slasher movie. If you replace The T-800 with Myers, Jason, dude from Maniac, whomever then the only thing that changes is the motivation. Nobody would question it being a horror film.I take that back. Reese would have merked them dudes on sight.
So, maybe it would have had to have been a Predator or Pinhead, or Dracula or something.I know we aren't saying it needed jump scares.
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Billions of people live on planet Earth and the vast majority of them being wiped out (via nuclear hell), doesn't equate to a scary environment?
All I see is, "it's not scary therefore it's not horror."
I take that back. Reese would have merked them dudes on sight.
I know we aren't saying it needed jump scares.
I agree with this too
Billions of people live on planet Earth and the vast majority of them being wiped out (via nuclear hell), doesn't equate to a scary environment?
All I see is, "it's not scary therefore it's not horror."
I take that back. Reese would have merked them dudes on sight.
I know we aren't saying it needed jump scares.
I didn't feel that type of atmosphere...it was a soldier coming back in time to save a woman...the soldier is from a human led group that fights machines and is somewhat successful, so he has skills of survival. The Terminator is not some unbeatable, invincible thing like Michael Myers (The Shape). he and others like him are defeated all the time in the future by humans...like I said, I don't see any horror in it.
EarlyMaridia
All Star
Soldiers can't be out of their league? Word to the Colonial Marines, being a soldier doesn't always matter and relying on futuristic tech isn't for the better (themes in T1, T2, Avatar, and Aliens).
Kyle didn't have those laser guns in the past and the majority of the "modern" weapons did jack shyt to the T-800. The dead cops would have wished they had the pew pew beams on deck as well as the mini-nukes n shyt. Hell, the soldier died in the end, so...
In the future timeline, the scene with the dogs after the scene with Kyle's squad getting wiped pointed out the desperation of humanity, and how hollow those victories were. When T2 and T3 came and fukked with the storyline even more, then the situation gets bleaker, because none of that shyt matters, people still die in an endless loop.
I'm not gonna change your mind on it, but yea.
Kyle didn't have those laser guns in the past and the majority of the "modern" weapons did jack shyt to the T-800. The dead cops would have wished they had the pew pew beams on deck as well as the mini-nukes n shyt. Hell, the soldier died in the end, so...
In the future timeline, the scene with the dogs after the scene with Kyle's squad getting wiped pointed out the desperation of humanity, and how hollow those victories were. When T2 and T3 came and fukked with the storyline even more, then the situation gets bleaker, because none of that shyt matters, people still die in an endless loop.
I'm not gonna change your mind on it, but yea.
The is part of the point I was making when it comes to horror: different things scare different people so there will always be debate. This movie is on Bravo's 100 scariest movie moments list so they look at it as a horror flick and I know Cameron has said he saw it as a horror film. Obviously not everyone will agree but horror is subjective :maybe:
More food for thought and just to add some fuel to the flames:
Why Terminator is a Horror Classic
Things were not going well for James Cameron in the spring of 1982. He was just five days into what is supposed to be his debut as a director, the low-budget horror sequel Piranha II: The Spawning, and the project had gone sour.
Producer Ovidio Assonitis had no intention of letting Cameron make the film his own way (Assonitis had a track record of firing directors and taking over projects himself), and before long the director found himself stuck in Rome, jobless, and struck down with a fever. It was then that Cameron had the nightmare which would change the course of his career.
He dreamt of a horrifying metal being, clawing its way towards out of a sheet of fire, clutching a pair of kitchen knives. It was the seed that would eventually become The Terminator - a low-budget hit which launched the career of both Cameron and title star Arnold Schwarzenegger, and marked the beginning of a franchise that is still going even 30 years later.
Although primarily a sci-fi action film, The Terminator is shot through with a wide streak of horror. Every frame of Cameron’s movie, it seems, is haunted by the dream which spawned it.
Cameron’s premise is very much a twist on the slasher genre established by such films as Halloween and Friday The 13th, and the director had those genre touchstones in mind when he conceived The Terminator's plot.
"My contemporaries were all doing slasher-horror movies," Cameron once said. "John Carpenter was the guy I idolised the most. He made Halloween for $30,000 or something. That was everyone's break-in dream, to do a stylish horror movie. It was a very slasher film type image. And it really was the launching pad for the story."
To the slasher genre, Cameron added a sci-fi twist: The Terminator isn’t a supernatural entity or a maniac in a mask, but a cyborg sent from the future to kill Sarah Connor - an ordinary young woman who will one day give birth to the leader of a human resistance movement.
ike Alien five years earlier, The Terminator is unusual in that it gives the killer top billing. Looking back at the finished film, it’s not hard to see why Cameron did this: like the robot in the director’s dream, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s cyborg is a singular creation. Slow-moving, unfeasibly strong and seemingly indestructible, he’s nothing less than a modern incarnation of the grim reaper, and there’s scarcely a character in the film who isn’t killed or injured by the T-800 in his pursuit of Linda Hamilton’s protagonist - criminal psychologist Dr Silberman (Earl Boen), a character akin to the know-it-all psychiatrist from the final act of Psycho, is one notable exception.
In the rush of action Cameron flings at the screen, it’s easy to overlook the nightmarish nature of Sarah Connor’s situation. Initially an unassuming waitress at a Los Angeles diner, she finds her life torn apart in the space of a single evening. While still at work, she learns that a murderer is going around the city, killing everyone in the phone book who goes by the name of Sarah Connor. A few hours later, she realises that she’s next on the list.
It’s worth pausing here to note how powerfully Cameron captures downtown Los Angeles circa 1984. Coldly lit and seemingly on the path to ruin, it’s a tough, beaten-down place, full of world-weary cops and homeless people bewildered by bright lights. The Terminator - and Kyle Reese, sent into the past by resistance leader John Connor to protect his mother - drift through this world of seedy clubs and tatty flop houses; the city’s malaise is such that they’re both able to get away with all sorts of crimes without anybody noticing. While the Terminator goes around killing everyone he meets (starting with a gang of punks, from whom he gets his immediately-recognisable get-up), Kyle Reese steals a homeless man’s trousers, a pair of Nike trainers from a department store, and even a shotgun from a careless policeman’s squad car.
The opening act shrewdly leaves Kyle and the T-800‘s agendas unclear. Cinemagoers in 1984 who’d read or seen little of The Terminator before its release would have probably been unaware of who these characters were or what they were up to. Like Sarah Connor, who sees Reese lurking on a street corner and shudders at the sight of him, we could assume that he’s just as much of a maniac as the T-800 is.
The Terminator, meanwhile, is going around slaughtering people in true slasher movie style. Sarah’s Walkman-obsessed flatmate Ginger (Bess Motta) is a murder victim straight out of a Friday The 13th sequel; distracted by her music and her randy boyfriend, she doesn’t even realise the T-800 is in her apartment until it’s far, far too late. (Interestingly, Cameron has fun subverting the slasher movie template later, where the Final Girl gets to sleep with the leading man and lives to tell the tale.)
It’s only at the (superbly staged) confrontation in a night club called Tech Noir that the truth is revealed. Kyle prevents the Terminator from executing Sarah Connor with a superbly timed shotgun blast or five, thus revealing the T-800‘s indestructible nature and providing the first indication of his own true agenda: he's Sarah's protector.
That nightclub shootout marks the start of a relentless pursuit through Los Angeles which barely lets up until the closing credits. Cameron shows us time and again that the police are helpless in the face of the Terminator’s armoured chassis and accuracy with a machine gun. This demolition of a societal pillar like the police is a common tactic among horror writers and filmmakers, and it’s something Cameron would do again in Terminator 2, where its killer machine disguises itself as an ordinary Californian beat cop.
Fittingly, for a film inspired by a nightmare, The Terminator uses dream sequences to expand the scope of its story. The amount of ambition Cameron shows, given his low budget, is worth noting here. The director could have saved money by only mentioning the future war in conversation, but instead, he goes a step further and shows us what it actually looks like.
Both Kyle and Sarah have nightmares about the future, where an artificially intelligent computer called Skynet has taken over and humans are hunted down by machines. These sequences do much to heighten the film’s oppressive tone, and also establish what the stakes are for Kyle and Sarah: if the latter’s killed, then the fate of humanity is sealed.
In The Terminator’s final act, Cameron wrings every last ounce of tension from his merciless cyborg. Denuded of its fleshy disguise, the T-800 reveals itself as a gleaming metal skeleton, brilliantly designed by Stan Winston. Even some admittedly dated stop-motion effects don’t detract from the power of this image - by now, the T-800 really does look like the grim reaper, albeit without the hooded cloak or the scythe.
Even when its abdomen is blown to smithereens by Kyle Reese’s improvised explosive - a detonation powerful enough to snuff out poor, long-suffering Kyle in the process - the Terminator carries on trying to get to Sarah, and it’s here, as the T-800 drags the remains across a factory floor towards its wounded target, that the film catches up with the nightmare image which inspired it.
The Terminator might be an action movie first and foremost, and also a compellingly-told science fiction story about a future where machines have turned the tables on their masters, but it’s also a horror story at its heart. The evidence is all there in that sequence of the Terminator clawing its way towards a helpless woman: the T-800's lack of compassion, pity and pain; a will to ceaselessly carry out its mission, no matter how much it’s damaged. He is, as Cameron once put it, "death rendered in steel."
Read more: http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the...-terminator-is-a-horror-classic#ixzz3G5ZKJx6t
