Explodobook E-Book

John Rain

• Herausgeber: Polaris
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 451

Beschreibung

'The ultimate guide to every apocalypse movie ever made' - David Quantick The 1980s. A time of fear: fear of the unknown, fear of your neighbours, fear of drugs, fear of sex, fear of strangers, fear of videos, and the very real fear that the world would end at any moment in an awful, and very sudden, nuclear attack. However, in those times of turmoil and worry, there was a comfort that soothed the mind, and acted as a quiet balm: action movies. Video shops were bursting at the seams with rampant gunfire, sex, drugs, rock, roll, cars on fire, people on fire, guns, bombs, and people dressed in army fatigues (and that was just the staff). Heroes were born shrouded in fire and violent revenge, they were not only armed with guns, but also red-hot quips, that served as a muscly arm around the shoulder, and a wink that everything was going to be okay. So thank you Arnold, Sylvester, Sigourney, Bruce, Eddie, Charles, Patrick, Mel, Chuck and everyone else that made it happen. You saved the world, in your own inimitable way. Join John Rain, the author of the critically-acclaimed Thunderbook: The World of Bond According to Smersh Pod, as he examines a choice selection of the greatest action movies from the decade when the explosion was king.

Leseprobe

EXPLODOBOOK

THE WORLD OF 80s ACTION ACCORDING TO SMERSH POD

JOHN RAIN

First published in 2021 by

POLARIS PUBLISHING LTDc/o Aberdein Considine2nd Floor, Elder HouseMultrees WalkEdinburghEH1 3DX

www.polarispublishing.com

Text copyright © John Rain, 2021

Chapter opening graphics courtesy of Fanart.tv

ISBN: 9781913538187eBook ISBN: 9781913538194

The right of John Rain to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

The views expressed in this book do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions or policies of Polaris Publishing Ltd (Company No. SC401508) (Polaris), nor those of any persons, organisations or commercial partners connected with the same (Connected Persons). Any opinions, advice, statements, services, offers, or other information or content expressed by third parties are not those of Polaris or any Connected Persons but those of the third parties. For the avoidance of doubt, neither Polaris nor any Connected Persons assume any responsibility or duty of care whether contractual, delictual or on any other basis towards any person in respect of any such matter and accept no liability for any loss or damage caused by any such matter in this book.

This is an unofficial publication. All material contained within is for critical purposes.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.

Designed and typeset by Polaris Publishing, EdinburghPrinted in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

For James and Alex– and Ron from Tapes Video Shop, Carpenders Park,Watford, without whom none of this would be happening.

Thanks to:Paul Litchfield, Tom Neenan, Dan Thomas, Dean Burnett,Scott Innes, Tara Court, Peter Burns, Alison Rae, Sean Longmore,The JP Special crowd, Elly, and Mum, Dad and Chris, my classic family.

CONTENTS

Introduction

1: Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior

2: The Terminator

3: Rambo: First Blood Part II

4: Invasion U.S.A.

5: Commando

6: Death Wish 3

7: Top Gun

8: Cobra

9: Aliens

10: Lethal Weapon

11: Beverly Hills Cop II

12: Predator

13: RoboCop

14: The Running Man

15: Action Jackson

16: Red Heat

17: Die Hard

18: Road House

19: Lethal Weapon 2

20: Tango & Cash

Epilogue

List of Illustrations

Dystopian One Man (Mel Gibson) and his Dog vs the Post-Nuclear Chicken Run (Vernon Wells). Alamy

The T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) practices at Laser Quest (L), while Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) and Sarah Conner (Linda Hamilton) prepare to blow him up (R). Alamy

‘What mean “expendable”?’ Alamy

John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) flaunts his curves as he heads out for a spot of light mass-murder, before taking in a show. Alamy

Matt Hunter (Chuck Norris) dares you to question his double denim life. Alamy

John and Chenny, together again. Alamy

John Matrix (Arnold Schwarzenegger) asks you to remember to leave quietly, as this is a residential area. Alamy

An American weary wolf in London. Alamy

Shoot out to help out. Alamy

Maverick (Tom Cruise) offers Iceman (Val Kilmer) a bunch of fives, but this gesture is obviously taken out of context by the rest of the men. Alamy

‘Yes, Tom, keep your mouth closed, your teeth aren’t ready yet.’ Alamy

Mr and Mrs Cobra. Alamy

The Cobra-mobile, complete with the worst personalised number plates. Alamy

Mother and child reunion. Alamy

Ripley’s survive it or not. Alamy

Riggs (Mel Gibson) and Murtaugh (Danny Glover) show off their guns in the shop window of Harrods in 1987. Alamy

Riggs and a friend celebrate their perfect A-Level results. Alamy

Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) goes deep undercover to play a millionaire who’s heart just isn’t in the current project. Alamy

Taggart (John Ashton) and Rosewood (Judge Reinhold): the Little and Large of American policing. Alamy

A crack team of mercenaries pose for photos before heading to their eventual deaths. Alamy

Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) comes face to face with a Predator (Kevin Peter Hall), who demands to know his beauty regime immediately. Alamy

Part man, part machine, all recyclable. Alamy

‘You’re fired.’ Alamy

The Butcher of Bakersfield. Alamy

All hail and praise the Weathers man. Alamy

East meets West, and wears a tent. Alamy

Going to tell my kids this was Rod, Jane and Freddy. Alamy

‘DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY!’ Alamy

The magic is back, and the mullet is bigger. Alamy

Blind Date was becoming more violent, and was therefore axed from the schedules. Alamy

Getting some Cash out, before heading into town. Alamy

INTRODUCTION

THE EIGHTIES.

A time of fear – fear of the unknown, fear of your neighbours, fear of drugs, fear of sex, fear of strangers, fear of videos, and the very real fear that the world might end at any moment in an awful, and very sudden, nuclear attack.

However, in those times of turmoil and worry, there was a comfort that soothed the mind: action movies. Video shops were bursting at the seams with rampant gunfire, sex, drugs, rock, roll, cars on fire, people on fire, guns, bombs, and people dressed in army fatigues (and that was just the staff).

My personal nirvana was tucked away in a small cluster of shops, located in a tiny place called Carpenders Park – a leafy suburb of Watford. ‘Tapes’ was a temple of dreams; decked in wonderfully gaudy orange, from the exterior sign (where the logo had cleverly incorporated a spooling video tape), to the lush interior carpet, that also went part way up the walls to meet the shelves, in a satisfying act of interior design. The walls were floor to ceiling with video boxes, and there were more literally under the counter in a glass display case (mainly the more artistic foreign films, and certainly nothing untoward). The windows were covered in wire mesh, with a cacophony of posters competing for space, while also blocking out most of the daylight. Upon walking in, two things would immediately strike you: the strong smell of freshly made coffee, followed by the faint suggestion of cigarette smoke. Both blended together to form a satisfying aroma that when placed side-by-side formed an almost hypnotising scent that only enhanced your browsing experience. Tapes was run by a brilliant man by the name of Ron, and when we moved to the area in 1983, it became clear to my parents, who for some reason would sit me down with them when they watched everything (from cartoon to action, to horror film), that I loved being in that shop more than any other.

One day they told Ron that even though it was technically against the law, I had their blessing to be allowed to rent out anything I fancied, no matter the certification. With an untold tap of the nose, Ron had my back, and a good deal of my childhood (from 1983 to 1989, when we moved away), was spent in Tapes, endlessly browsing, chatting about movies, reserving future titles in his giant book, and renting everything I could get my stupid, tiny hands on.

He sold up in the early 1990s, and went on, as far as I understand, to open a florist in Watford. Tapes was taken over by an off-licence, that also pretended to be a video shop, and renamed ‘Hollywood Nights’, replacing walls of videos with a small corner of plastic jewel cases that you could leaf through in a fairly unsatisfying, noisy manner. It was the start of the slow death of the independent video shop, all eventually eaten up in Pac-Man-esque exuberance by Blockbuster, who themselves eventually were eaten up by the ghost of Netflix (a company they could have acquired), offering a stark reminder that nothing lasts forever.

But in the eye of the cyclone of eighties domestic video rentals, heroes were born shrouded in fire and violent revenge. They were not only armed with guns, but also red-hot quips, that served as a muscly arm around the shoulder, and a wink said that everything was going to be OK.

Together we would be OK, and together we got through it, with the help of a select band of freedom fighters, without whom the whole era would have been a truly miserable place.

Thank you Ron, Arnold, Sylvester, Sigourney, Bruce, Eddie, Charles, Patrick, Mel, Chuck and everyone else that made it happen. You saved the world, in your own inimitable way.

Join me as we go back and examine a choice selection from the decade where the explosion truly was king.

J.R.2021

ONE

1981

Just one man can make a difference

WE START OUR GREAT adventure through 1980s action in . . . the future. The world is a blighted wasteland of chaos and wasted dreams. War broke out, the cities exploded and society collapsed. Oil, the black fuel, is the most precious commodity, and the roads, ‘a white-line nightmare’ of gangs and looters. Basically, Watford. A narrator tells us it was a bit of a difficult time, to put it mildly, but one man stuck out in his mind more than others: the Road Warrior, the man they called ‘Max’ (Mel Gibson). As the narration gets us up to speed with Max’s desolate past and telling us how great he is, we cut to the man himself in his Pursuit Special, slightly tattered and less shiny and sexy than when last we saw it, but still one of the coolest cars ever seen onscreen.

Max and his dog (the very definition of a ‘good boy’) are being pursued by mad sods in beaten-up vehicles, who look like they’ve just ram-raided a leather daddy convention. They obviously don’t know who they’re dealing with. Within moments, all but one vehicle is written off, and as Max gets out to gather the petrol spoils from the fallen few, Wez (Vernon Wells), the last survivor of this surprise attack and a man who looks like a quarterback who’s pushed his head through a crow, watches. He and his backseat passenger, a blond slip of a Marc Almond impersonator named ‘The Golden Youth’, observe Max laying out pots, helmets and bowls to catch dripping petrol. Wez lets Max know that he’s slightly put out by what has just occurred via the medium of screeching like a pig on Haribo, before speeding off and doing a wheelie – the big show-off.

Max checks out the roadside wreckage, and among the broken cars, trucks and bug-eyed corpses, he finds a tiny music box: a delicate, sweet symbol of a lost world of beauty and innocence. He smiles fleetingly as it tinkles out ‘Happy Birthday’, and breathes in a moment of normality before pocketing it and driving away from this site of carnage. However, this being the world it is, it’s only a short drive before he encounters more carnage. This time, it’s in the shape of a vacant gyrocopter, which certainly catches Max’s attention. If he’d only known that anyone who owns an actual gyrocopter, or any kind of extreme sports vehicle or apparatus, should be avoided at all costs, he’d have been spared several annoying entanglements in the coming days. But Max lives in a world powered by scavenging, where mobility is key, and an abandoned vehicle, as anyone who’s played a Fallout game will tell you, could be a goldmine of treats.

He approaches the flying shit-heap, ready to strip it for fuel and treats, but it has a big snake on it, hissing menacingly as he approaches. Max, though, is not one to be scared by a snake, what with him being Australian and used to living among creatures who want to kill you. As he subdues the snake, a worse threat emerges from the ground, like a hyperactive gopher: the Gyro Captain (Bruce Spence), looking every inch like Stephen Merchant’s stunt double. He points a crossbow in Max’s confused face, disarms him, and is about to steal his gasoline when Max’s super-dog jumps to his rescue and downs him. As he begs for his life with Max’s knife to his throat, he reveals that, just 20 miles away, there’s an oil refinery with a limitless supply. The catch is that it is also heavily armed and patrolled. For mere mortals this place is a death zone, but it shouldn’t be hard for a man like Max to find a way in and help himself to as much as he wants.

As Max watches through binoculars, the Gyro Captain tells him more about the refinery. It’s a constant, pumping motherlode, with a tanker full of thousands of gallons and enough fuel to power Rod Stewart’s groin for a month. There’s only one small problem: it’s under constant attack from marauding gangs, led by the wonderfully named Humungus (Kjell Nilsson), a vast, muscle-bound, Guardian-reading hulk, with a hockey-masked face and neck brace – sort of a post-apocalyptic Dominic Littlewood with a hangover. Among the many marauders, Max spots Wez and his beautiful Golden Youth chatting with the boss, so he decides to set up camp on the top of a cliff, to watch and learn about the set-up below.

By sunrise, the marauders have dispersed, and Max is woken by some vehicles leaving the compound, in what seems, on the face of it, a bit of a dangerous move. But there is method in their madness, as these vehicles are merely serving as a distraction, so another can slip away in the opposite direction. A brilliant plan, eh? No. It fails dismally, and they are captured immediately, with one mortally wounded and the other sexually assaulted, then murdered, with Wez overseeing the whole sordid affair. This makes Max, well, mad, and he races to his car to go down there and rescue the survivor and take him back to the refinery.

Max’s car pulls up outside the fortified gate, and he emerges carrying the wounded man, with his hand in the air as he does so. He’s allowed in, and the medics get to work at once on the survivor. A man called Pappagallo (Michael Preston) approaches. He’s the leader of the refinery crowd, and he also happens to look a lot like Geoffrey Hayes from Rainbow, so it’s tempting to think that somewhere, out in that wasteland, Bungle, Zippy and George lie dead in a burnt-out Ford Capri, and this thirst for vengeance fuels his ambitions for survival. Max explains to Pappagallo that he had a deal with the survivor that if he brought him here safely, he could have some fuel, but the leader and all the people in the refinery are not interested in helping him out, especially as the survivor dies just as they tell him as much. They tell him to leave, but before he does so, a worried call is heard: the marauders are coming back. The compound erupts into chaos as men and women dressed like dystopian aerobics instructors rush into place to man guns, flamethrowers, pigs, rabbits and rocks.

The marauders have brought thoughtful house-warming gifts – all the people who tried to make a break for it earlier, strapped to the front of their vehicles. They pull up outside the gates and shut off their engines in unison. Toady, a man who looks like Don Estelle if he joined the Manson Family, makes an announcement. We will shortly be hearing from Humungus, who is introduced as ‘The Lord Humungus, the Warrior of the Wasteland, the Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla’, but, disappointingly, doesn’t give us a blast of ‘Whispering Grass’. Humungus has his own PA system, and he gets to his feet to tell the refinery gang that he’s disappointed that he’s had to unleash his Dogs of War again. He says he knows all about their puny plans to make a break for it with a tanker full of gas, and as the prisoners object and tell their fellow refinery friends to ignore what he’s saying, Wez steps in and headbutts one into silence, much to the enjoyment of the gang. Watching with disapproving eyes is the Feral Kid (Emil Minty) – think Nick Cave as a five-year-old. The little mite has seen enough. He unleashes his metal boomerang of death right into the Golden Youth’s skull, killing him instantly, which understandably causes Wez to have a bit of a meltdown, and results in him having to be put into a chokehold and restrained by Humungus. He tells him they will get revenge, but they will do it his way. ‘Just walk away, and there will be an end to the horror,’ Humungus tells the refinery gang, giving them a day to decide.

As the Dogs of War make their exit in a cloud of dust, some of the refinery folk begin to have rumblings of dissent and fear, feeling that maybe giving up and leaving will be the safest course of action. But Pappagallo has to remind them that these lads are a bit on the homicidal side and will probably murder them all, like they did to Rod, Jane and Freddy. As he tries to calm down the guys and explain that the tanker represents a lifeline for them to get away from the marauders, Max watches from the sidelines and notices the Feral Kid emerging from a hole in the ground with his boomerang, still covered in the blood of the Golden Youth. The kid is intrigued by Max, and who wouldn’t be? He’s cool as fuck, and looks like Johnny Cash’s stylist – I’d want to hang out with him all day long.

Max, being the bereaved father that he is, senses the innocence and lost childhood in the Feral Kid, and reaches into his pocket to retrieve the music box he found earlier. As he slowly turns the tiny handle and peals the delicate sounds of ‘Happy Birthday’, the boy becomes filled with excited wonder, and then runs off in honking glee when Max hands him it.

Max is tired of the refinery lads panicking and their defeatist talk. He whistles to get their attention and says that two days ago he saw a vehicle that will pull the tanker, and he may be their best hope of survival. His offer is that he’ll go out and bring back the vehicle, if, in exchange, they give him as much fuel as he can carry. They accept his deal readily. As Max strides out into the darkness, with four cans of diesel on his shoulders, Pappagallo and the guys watch with faces of tense hope.

After a long walk into the morning sun, Max once again bumps into the Gyro Captain, who’s staggering around the desert, still chained to the log he left him with. The gyrocopter is still in place, protected by the Gyro Captain’s carefully placed snakes, so they fly the rest of the way. With the truck up and running, he gives the pilot his freedom by throwing him the keys to the lock, before starting the long drive back to the compound, but to Max’s surprise (and probable intense disappointment) the pilot announces that they are now partners. Thus, he joins this arduous trip, and, together, they plough their way through the Dogs of War before finally getting the truck inside and sending the gang running.

The bad news is that, during the battle, Pappagallo got an arrow in the thigh for his efforts, and he can’t even blame Zippy for it. As he struggles with his injury, he tells his guys to get ready to leave in the 12 hours it will take to fix the truck after the attack. Despite offering him the chance of living in paradise 2,000 miles away with everyone, Max has no interest in driving the rig. He’s a loner. He just wants to take his fuel and leave, much to the regret of everyone in the refinery. They were quite keen on the idea of him taking the wheel for their escape attempt. He jumps into the driver’s seat of his fully fuelled Pursuit Special, heads out into the wasteland, and leaves the cause behind, disappointing everyone as he does so, like a one-man personification of all our hopes and dreams.

It’s really not long before he encounters the Dogs of War and is quickly driven off of the road, into a twisted wreck of broken metal and glass. They set upon him, steal his gas, and murder his very good dog. Unfortunately, they fail to realise his gas tanks are booby-trapped, so they’re killed in a massive fireball. Max crawls away from the wreckage, thankfully being rescued by the Gyro Captain, who saw the explosion through his telescope. As Max is airlifted back to the haven of the compound, he’s forced to reflect on one of the truisms of life: when things seem too hard, just don’t bother trying.

He awakes, wounds treated and bandages applied, and staggers out to see Pappagallo briefing the team on how the tanker charge will go. He’s telling his team he will drive it, but Max breaks up the conference to say: ‘Can I shock you? I like driving tankers, despite what I previously said before I drove off and was nearly killed.’ Pappagallo attempts to make him work for it, but quickly realises that Max is their best shot of getting out of there in one piece, so hands him the keys and the shotgun, and everyone tools up for the harrowing journey that awaits them.

There are changes afoot outside, as Wez is now being held by Humungus via a chain, suggesting that he’s been reprimanded for losing the tanker, or it’s just something he’s into – both are possible at this point. Max’s truck, which is now heavily armoured and staffed with makeshift warriors, ploughs out of the compound and through some of the Dogs, with the rest giving chase as it motors away. Seeing the compound now abandoned, some of the gang drive inside to celebrate the seizure of a never-ending supply of oil. But it’s booby-trapped – will they never learn? – and kills them all in a raging, righteous explosion.

The truck bombs along the open road, flanked by many foul motorbikes, dune buggies and hot rods, all wanting to take it down for good. Humungus releases Wez, and the mad bastard sets about joining in with the rest of the Dogs to kill everyone they encounter. Extreme motor chaos breaks out, with one crash in particular giving cinema the greatest accidental spectacular stunt in history; a stuntman, who was meant to just go over a bonnet of a crashed vehicle, actually ended up somersaulting many times towards the camera, in a stunt that nearly killed him. Thankfully, he only broke his leg, and so it was kept in the film. As the (frankly useless) refinery gang are slowly picked up and thrown under wheels, and the gyrocopter is downed, it’s up to Max and the Feral Child in the cab of the truck to form any kind of resistance. As Wez has them pinned down, Max has the clever idea of turning the truck around and going back in the opposite direction, ploughing the super-rig right through Humungus’s oncoming vehicle, killing both him and a wailing Wez, who was hanging on to the truck for dear life.

Sadly, Max’s truck of death is also sent tumbling in the process, and as the wreckage settles in the fractured ground, the remaining Dogs of War – and Max, to his annoyance – discover that it was full of dirt, merely an elaborate decoy.

As he reflects on what just happened, and maybe how Geoffrey from Rainbow will be happier in heaven with the rest of the gang, the Gyro Captain arrives right on cue, offering Max an opportunity to crack his second smile in about fifteen years – an opportunity he takes up with pleasure, slumped by the side of the downed tanker.

As the Feral Child is loaded onto the compound school bus, which is packed full of oil drums, the narrator from earlier informs us that they will now begin their long journey to paradise, with a new hero – the man who fell from the sky – and it’s not Bowie, but the Gyro Captain. He has managed to get himself well-in with the refinery guys, and is somehow seen as a beacon of hope, though he’s sure to be ejected from their good graces swiftly when they discover that he is the pervert he clearly seems to be. I mean, that gyrocopter is plastered with porn. We also discover that the narrator is none other than the Feral Child, proof, if ever it were needed, that it’s never too late to follow your dreams and get a voice-over gig.

As for Max, we’re told that he was never seen again, but will live for ever in their memories, as the man in black, who barely said anything, had a grumpy personality, but was really, really good at driving, thus inventing the legend of Nigel Mansell.

TWO

1984

It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, remorse, or fear.

LOS ANGELES, 2029. A terrifying future where humans are hunted to the point of extinction by robot versions of the skeleton from the Scotch videotape adverts. Humankind’s puny firepower is no match for their red-hot lasers and flying hoover planes. Something must be done. The opening caption tells us that the ‘machines rose from the ashes of nuclear fire’, which reads like it was written by Matt Bellamy for a long-abandoned Muse album. After witnessing this future dread and the hopeless scramble for life of our future cousins, we then arrive in the Los Angeles of 1984, naïvely busying itself for the arrival en masse of performance-enhanced Olympians. On the dark streets of the city, a yellow dumpster is trying to empty its load. But there’s a sudden burst of cartoon electricity, and out of it rises a very large, naked body builder, one who isn’t on his way to the shot put quarter-finals. It’s a T-800 Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), and it’s here on a mission to stop the future. It wanders out to Griffith Observatory, completely billy-bollocks, and bumps into some street punks (including a young blue Mohican-toting Bill Paxton and Brian Thompson), who, justifiably, ask if everything is alright and proceed to give him a light ribbing about the fact that he’s wandering around in the nude. These days, of course, they would have filmed the entire encounter, and ‘Confused Nude Body Builder’ would very much be a meme for the ages. Rather than humouring them and laughing along with their banter, though, he murders them and steals their clothes.

Across town, in a dark, litter-strewn alley a drunk homeless man curses the world by saying the word ‘bullshit’ over and over again, and, brother, I hear you. His TED talk is disturbed by some more cartoon lightning and the landing of a very naked Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) onto the pavement in front of him. Moments later, some police arrive to find Reese stealing the homeless man’s trousers, so he does the decent, albeit undignified, thing and runs away. A policeman pursues, but he is accosted from the shadows by Reese, who takes his gun and asks him what day it is (it’s the twelfth of May, a Thursday, if you’re interested), and then confuses the man by asking what year it is, clearly hoping he doesn’t say 2020. As a patrol car approaches, Reese again hotfoots it, but this time creeps around inside a department store, where he picks up a nice coat and a natty pair of Nike trainers – but doesn’t think about swapping his piss-soaked trousers, which he will surely regret later. As the cops conduct a half-arsed search of the store, Reese is off down a fire escape and out into the night, stopping briefly to steal a shotgun from the patrol car and then look up a name in a phonebox directory.

The next morning, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) parks her moped outside the burger joint where she works, securing it with a chain that, if you ask me, will offer no protection from theft whatsoever. She asks the giant burger-wielding mascot outside to guard it for her, and then makes her way inside to begin her shift. It’s one of those days. She mixes up orders, spills drinks on laps, gets hassled for coffee, and then a small child plants a scoop of ice cream in her pocket. They say animals and children can sense trouble, and perhaps this ice cream was a warning that the world is in very real danger. We will never know.

Across town, the Terminator, now sporting some natty LA punk gear, has stolen a car and found a gun shop owned by Dick Miller in which to arm himself to the teeth. He puts together a massive order of weaponry, including a gun with a laser sight. He then gives himself away a bit by asking for a plasma rifle, which confuses Mr Miller, as he’s just a simple gun-shop owner from 1984. After stacking the counter with nearly everything he sells, Miller asks what he’ll be buying, and he says he’ll take it all. Dick is excited by this news but warns him that there’s a 15-day wait for the handguns. He can take the rifles now, though – ah, America, never change your mad gun rules. While he’s prepping the paperwork, the Terminator begins to load the shotgun. ‘You can’t do that,’ suggests Miller, but his mind is quickly changed when he is shot to death. The Terminator then grabs a page from the phonebook and heads for the first stop on his mission.

On arriving in suburbia, having crushed a kid’s toy truck with his front wheel, he knocks on a door and asks the lady who answers if she is Sarah Connor. She says yes, and he shoots her many times. (He was subsequently fired by Avon.)

At work, the real Sarah is grabbed by her colleague who excitedly shows her the TV news broadcast. It would appear another Sarah Connor was murdered in her home. ‘You’re dead, honey,’ her friend lovingly tells her, and with colleagues like these, it’s no wonder a pocketful of ice cream isn’t a problem.

Reese, meanwhile, has found himself a car in a scrapyard, and as he finishes hotwiring it, he watches the diggers and machines at work around him. This sends him into a flashback/forward showing us the very real war against the machines. Reese and his men are clearly up against it, having a terrible time fighting the very right-wing robots from the future while lying in piles of crushed skulls. At the point of this memory where he’s about to burn to death, he awakes back in good old 1984 and drives away into the night, probably wishing he could just stay there and have a nice time eating crisps and watching Ghostbusters, which is what I would do. But this is why I haven’t, as yet, been asked to go back into the past and stop something from happening.

The real Sarah and her flatmate Ginger are getting ready to go out, which means lots of awkward dancing in knee socks and really long T-shirts and massive hair. It’s 1984, so there’s rubbish battery-powered hairdryers and Walkmans to get into the groove. They check the answer machine and Sarah receives more bad news: her date for the evening has cancelled on her, so she’s going to have to change back into her old, stonewashed jeans and go and see a movie instead. Ginger’s staying put, as her pervert of a boyfriend, Matt, is coming over. As Sarah leaves on her moped, Reese starts his car, and follows on behind.

At the police station there’s concern: reports have come in that two Sarah Connors have been horribly killed, and it would appear they have a serial killer on their hands. This is particularly annoying as the police hate paperwork, and copy-and-paste hasn’t been invented. The press have arrived, and they want comment, but Lieutenant Traxler (Paul Winfield) and Vukovich (Lance Henriksen, who Cameron initially wanted to play the Terminator, fact fans) are keeping schtum. They’re trying to reach the last Sarah Connor in the phonebook to warn her, but as we know, she’s at the movies and Ginger and Matt are in the next room listening to music and having it off, so they get the answer machine. The pill-popping, chain-smoking Traxler decides to make a statement to the assembled press, and the statement may well be on his appearance, because, as Vukovich tells him, he looks like shit.

While sitting on her own in a pizza restaurant, Sarah sees a TV news report about the two dead Sarahs and is rightly worried. She tries to use the phone, but it’s out of order, so she leaves to find another. As she gets outside, she notices – undoubtedly owing to the stench of old piss – Reese following her. So, she ducks into Tech-Noir, a happening neon bar down the street. Reese knows he’s been spotted and kicks himself about wearing those trousers, so he walks past to avoid suspicion. Sarah runs to a phone to call the police, but all the lines are busy, and the message tells her to stay on the line if she needs a police car, which is reassuring.

Ginger comes out of the bedroom, still wearing her headphones, to make a much-needed midnight snack after hours of rumpy-pumpy. Matt is sleeping, clearly spent, and doesn’t notice the sliding door open and the Terminator wandering in. His dreams of ice cubes on his knackers are quickly ended when a knife narrowly misses his head and stabs the pillow next to him. He gamely tells the Terminator he will ‘mess him up’, and if the Terminator were capable of laughs, I am sure he would have been chuckling as he tosses Matt around the room like a rag doll in a tumble dryer. Ginger is oblivious to the racket, though, as she’s still plugged in to her music while making a gigantic post-sex sandwich with celery and peanut butter. It’s only when poor Matt’s bloodied corpse flies through the door that she notices something is wrong, and before she can do anything about it, she’s shot dead. Just as the Terminator is about to examine her questionable post-sex snack, the phone rings. It’s Sarah leaving a message for Ginger and Matt, telling them she’s scared; she thinks someone is following her, she’s at Tech-Noir, and she wants them to pick her up. This should lead to a comedy moment where the Terminator looks down at their dead bodies and then breaks the fourth wall and says, ‘Well, that’s awkward’, but in this unjust world, it doesn’t. He grabs a photo of Sarah and heads out to find her.

Sarah finally gets through to the police, and Traxler picks up. She tells him she’s in a bar called Tech-Noir, and he says, with whole-hearted confidence, that he knows it. He reminds her that she’s in a public place so she should be safe, but don’t leave or go to toilet or anything; he’ll arrange for a car to pick her up in a minute. She returns to her seat to panic quietly over a drink. Meanwhile, the Terminator has arrived at Tech-Noir. He marches past the front desk without paying, which leads to his being accosted by a giant bouncer with a splendid moustache, whose hand he breaks. He spots Sarah sitting at the table on her own and approaches through a group of dancers with his dead eyes fixed on her. As he reaches her table, he pulls out his pistol, loads it, and aims the laser sight directly at her forehead. However, before he can end the future, Reese appears from the bar, having just finished a much-needed pint and some crisps, and unloads his shotgun into him, sending him sprawling to the ground like a big post-sex sandwich. But, as this is a Terminator, he stands up again and begins to spray his Uzi 9mm around the bar, sending panicked Lycra-clad patrons flying in a hail of gunfire. Reese sends him flying through a window with further shotgun blasts and then grabs Sarah’s arm, uttering the immortal line: ‘Come with me if you want to live.’ Which is the best offer she’s had all night. As the Terminator gets to his feet once again, they run for it, stealing a car and speeding off into the night. The Terminator takes out a policeman and steals his car in order to pursue the pair.

As they drive away, Reese tells Sarah that she must do exactly what he says, that he’s here to protect her, and that she’s been targeted for termination. She says she didn’t do anything, and he tells her she will. The man hunting her is not a man, but a machine – a Terminator, a cyborg assassin. They pull over, and he tells her that these machines are so advanced they sweat and have bad breath – this coming from a heavily perspiring man with the foulest of trousers. She tells him she’s not stupid and that such a thing doesn’t exist, but he informs her that it won’t for about forty years. She doesn’t believe him, and he makes her feel better by telling her that the cyborg will never stop until she is dead. She asks if he can stop it, and he eases her mind by saying, hmm, he doesn’t know. He goes on to explain that in the future there will be a nuclear war and everything will be gone. The computers and machines got smart and took over the world, exterminating everything that was left. He grew up in the ruins, starving and fighting against the ‘hunter-killers’ to stay alive, and one man taught them how to survive and started a rebellion. His name was John Connor, her unborn son.

The Terminator enters the car park in his stolen police car, and it has to be said that he’s doing a better job of looking for them than the police are. Instead of driving up and down occasionally shining a torch, the T-800 is using his super-robot eyes and looking for them in every car. Reese, meanwhile, has hotwired a new one and is about to speed off when the Terminator spots him, and so a new car chase begins, this time with them taking shots at each other between cars on the street while driving at very high speeds. Sadly, for our robot chum, it culminates with him driving headlong into a wall. The real police arrive quickly on the scene and arrest Sarah and Reese, but the Terminator has already fled the scene.

Traxler hands Sarah a Styrofoam cup and tells her to drink it. Though we don’t really know for sure what’s in it, I will assume it’s Tizer until someone tells me different. He breaks the bad news to her that Ginger has gone to sex heaven, and Sarah doesn’t take it very well. As she’s crying about the loss of her best friend, he introduces her to psychologist Dr Silberman (Earl Boen) and asks her to tell him everything Reese told her. She asks him if he thinks Reese is crazy, and Silberman assures her he will find out, through the medium of a big yawn.

The Terminator arrives back home to his squalid bedsit a bit worse for wear. How he has managed to rent this living space, negotiate the lease, and pay a deposit with his limited use of the English language and money is anyone’s guess. Putting the fate of the world to one side for a moment, one thing’s for sure: London estate agents would kill to rent places like this to Terminators. He sits himself down at a table, and begins to assess his damage and repair what he can. He has a mild bad arm that he tinkers with before approaching the mirror to remove his dodgy eye with a scalpel, revealing his sinister red laser robot eye. To hide the damage, he puts on a cool pair of shades, then checks his hair briefly, grabs two machine guns he’s stashed under his mattress, and heads out the window.

Dr Silberman gets the lowdown on the future from Reese. To say he is not convinced is an understatement, though he may be more convinced than Vukovich and Traxler, who roll their eyes and cackle from behind the two-way mirror. Reese explains that Skynet, the creators of the Terminator, have to kill Sarah in 1984. It is the only way to win the war and stop John Connor ever existing. He explains that he was sent through a time machine to follow the Terminator, and the machine was then destroyed, meaning there is no way he can get home. They then show the footage to Sarah, and Silberman is so excited at meeting someone so utterly off-the-scale bonkers, he forgets to pause the video at the part when Reese begins screaming that the Terminator will pull her fucking heart out and will never stop looking for her. Silberman tells Sarah that his diagnosis is that Reese is a ‘loon’ and that she shouldn’t worry about what he says. Which begs the question as to why no one has asked her about the other guy who has been shooting at her and who has been killed at least three times, but I guess they’ll get to that in a bit. Traxler gives her a bulletproof vest and says it will stop ‘most’ bullets. So that’s a comfort. He then tells her to go and have a snooze on his couch, reassuring her that she’ll be very safe as there are 30 cops in the building. And I am sure nothing will go wrong at all.

As Silberman leaves for the night, he passes a visitor at reception. The Terminator is asking the policeman on the front desk if he can see Sarah Connor; he’s a friend. ‘Did she not mention her giant Austrian friend who looks like death? Oh, weird?’ The desk man tells him she’s making a statement and he can wait if he wants. The Terminator gives the room a once-over before leaning ominously into the glass and growling those infamous words: ‘I’ll be back.’ A line that has served Schwarzenegger so well you can be sure it will be on his gravestone. Seconds later, a car bursts through the front of the police station and runs the desk man over. There then begins a large-scale killing spree, with the Terminator wandering through the building machine-gunning anyone who crosses his path, including poor Traxler and Vukovich. In the chaos, Reese manages to unlock his own handcuffs (always impressive), find Sarah, grab a car, and escape the carnage.

They dump the car and hide under a bridge while Sarah bandages Reese’s bullet wound. He tells Sarah how he volunteered for this mission so he could meet her, as in the future she’s something of a legend, and I suspect he definitely fancied her. He gives her a message from John: basically, thanks for being a great mum, that the future is not set, and she must survive, or he won’t exist. Nothing emotional or nice, as you can’t show emotion in front of your men, though a quick ‘Love you, Mum’ wouldn’t have gone amiss, John. She asks Reese where he’s from, and he tells her all about how harrowing the future is, and how they’re hunted day and night, and we get another flashback/ forward where everything looks utterly dreadful and awful and smoky, and grubby little waifs eat rats. But in the midst of all this horror, he has a pretty photo of Sarah that he clings to, and I am guessing that it’s laminated.

Back in his bedsit, the Terminator is scanning the address book he stole from Sarah’s apartment with his robot eyes. He’s interrupted by a janitor outside who asks if he has a dead cat in there, thus giving credence to the earlier statement from Reese that these things can really stink if they feel like it. He runs a list of appropriate responses through his robot brain, and settles on ‘Fuck you, asshole’ (which I believe was taken from a Judith Chalmers remark in an episode of Wish You Were Here ’84, when she was asked by a fellow holidaymaker if her hotel room was nice). He finds an address, ‘Mom’s cabin’, and once again tools up and heads out.

Sarah and Reese have found themselves a motel room. While he heads out for supplies, Sarah calls her mother at the cabin to tell her she’s alright but that she can’t tell her where they are. Eventually her mum talks her into it, but what Sarah doesn’t realise is that it’s not her mum on the other end of the line. It’s the Terminator, using her mum’s voice to fool her, finally confirming my theory that Rory Bremner has been sent from the future to kill us all. Reese returns with a couple of giant brown bags full of common household supplies in order to build explosives. ‘Moth balls, corn syrup, ammonia – what’s for dinner?’ jokes Sarah. He explains sternly that he learned how to make bombs when he was a kid (I could barely make toast), and they then build pipe bombs and fuses together, before it’s established that Reese is a virgin and he loves her, and they retire to bed for some retro nookie.

However, as they are getting dressed and awkwardly exchanging small talk, they hear a dog barking outside, and as Kyle told Sarah earlier, they are very good at spotting Terminators. They make a break for it in a pick-up truck, and the Terminator gives chase on his motorbike, taking shots at them as he follows. Kyle responds with pipe bombs, but misses every single time, ultimately getting shot as he hangs out of the window like a doofus. Sarah runs over the Terminator in retaliation, but in doing so flips the truck. They are sitting targets now, but luckily a massive speeding truck runs over the recovering cyborg. It’s just not his day. As the driver stops to investigate, the Terminator emerges and murders him. He is now visibly worse for wear, with his leg buckled and his face mostly removed, exposing his spooky robot features. He climbs into the big truck and hits the gas, chasing Sarah and Reese as they try to hobble away. Always the tactician, Reese lets the truck chase Sarah while he slides a pipe bomb into the back of the truck, before jumping in a bin as it explodes in a ball of flames. They watch as the scary robot from the future falls to his death in the inferno. Phew. Definitely this time . . .

No. Just as Sarah and Reese are celebrating their victory with big cuddles, this unstoppable killing machine from the future emerges from the fire. And now he’s a full-blown robot with a full set of teeth, red evil eyes and a bad leg. They race into a nearby factory, and the thing hobbles after them. Reese turns on all the machines in the factory to distract it, while he and Sarah skulk in the shadows trying not to be discovered. But it’s too late. It’s found them. Reese tells Sarah to RUN while he engages in hand-to-hand combat with the robot – well, he hits it with a metal pole – and as he’s getting beaten up, he reveals the plan he had up his sleeve, another pipe bomb, which he slides into the robot’s chest. It explodes, regrettably sending a large piece of shrapnel right into Sarah’s leg, which she bravely removes. Legend. She crawls over to check on Reese, but he is sadly dead, killed in the explosion. She doesn’t have too much time to mourn, though, as the robot, much like the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, is still ready to fight, despite having no actual legs. Sarah crawls through the factory to get away, and eventually leads the annoyingly persistent Terminator into a crushing machine, where she traps it behind a grille, presses the button, and proclaims, ‘You’re terminated, fucker,’ as the crusher swiftly descends. Cartoon electricity shoots out as the industrial machine flattens the T-800 in one smooth go – for good.

We next see Reese being zipped into a body bag and Sarah being stretchered from the scene.

Sarah’s driving a jeep along a long deserted Mexican highway, a big Terminator-aware dog sitting beside her. She’s dictating into a tape machine, recording her story for John, who, judging by the flowing smock she’s in, she is clearly carrying – that or she’s been downing too many midnight snacks to recover from her trauma. She pulls in at a petrol station, and as she’s being refilled, she starts to talk about Kyle Reese, and how it’s a bit weird that he has to send his own dad back from the future (I smell a sitcom!). She goes on to say that in the few hours they had together, they loved a lifetime’s worth of time. Eeuwww, Mum?! As she’s finishing up telling John way too much information, a small boy appears and takes a Polaroid snap of her, asking if she wants to buy it. She does, knocking him down from five dollars to four, and we see that it’s the same picture of Sarah that Reese had in the future – before it was laminated. She pays for the petrol and then hears from the kid that a storm is coming. Sarah agrees and drives away into the scenery, full to the brim with trepidation about the horrifying future that is yet to come. While she’s thinking of the incoming nuclear destruction and robot apocalypse, we, the audience, are left to contemplate how this franchise just refuses to die and will keep coming back and back until we are all dead.

THREE

1985

They sent him on a mission and set him up to fail.But they made one mistake.They forgot they were dealing with Rambo.

A MASSIVE EXPLOSION. THAT’S how you set your stall out early. The quarry underneath is draped in a blanket of dust as the prisoners doing hard time break rocks in the hot sun. They fought the law, and the law very much won. Among the sweaty criminals is one sad-eyed man who very much did just that, and blew up the town in the process: John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone). He’s three years into a prison sentence, and looks to be not enjoying himself very much. His work in this hellhole is stopped when a visitor wants to speak with him. It’s his old commanding officer, Colonel Trautman (Richard Crenna). They meet at the mesh gate, and Trautman breaks the ice by asking how he’s doing. ‘Good,’ says Rambo. After exchanging further pleasantries, Trautman gets to the point. He has a proposition for Rambo: stay breaking rocks for another five years or go on a covert mission to the Far East to do some recon for a bunch of US POWs who are still in Vietnam – in the same camp Rambo escaped from in 1971. No one knows the terrain better than he does, though the risk factor is very high. Rambo stares into space for an hour. At least when he’s breaking rocks he knows where he stands (by a rock), but Trautman tells him he’ll be reinstated in the Special Forces and, if successful, there may be a presidential pardon in it for him. This convinces our man, and as Trautman leaves, he asks if they get to win this time, to which Trautman replies that it’s up to him – it’s his film.

After soaring over paddy fields and Buddhist shrines, with Jerry Goldsmith’s theme being epic in the background, Rambo’s chopper lands in Thailand. He’s greeted by Ericson (Martin Kove), who takes him to see Major Murdock (Charles Napier) and Trautman in an office that looks like a branch of Kwik Fit with a handy, and prominent, Coca-Cola vending machine for guests. Murdock reads through Rambo’s file, listing his many honours and murders, and then tells him they need conclusive proof that there are still men at the POW camp. Rambo is a bit surprised when he’s handed a camera and told he’s only to take pictures, and even more so when they tell him that he must chop down the tallest tree with a pickled herring, but he’s informed in no uncertain terms that he must not engage the enemy. Trautman will return to perform the Phase Two extraction later.