The Terminator represents one of those rare quantum leaps forward in filmmaking power. The director of Pirannha 2: The Spawning somehow figured out how to make one of the leanest, meanest, slickest, kickest action pictures of all time, raising the bar for science fiction filmmaking and plain old thrillmaking.

Terminator is hard in a way that most films just don't have the stones to be any more. Example:

"Sarah Connor?"
"Yes?"
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

In the role that would make him famous, Arnold Schwarzenegger cuts a swath across southern California with such a single-minded ferocity that he remains one of the great icons of film villainy. He's assisted in this by some absolutely superb Stan Winston makeup effects, and some not-so-great stop motion effects. Taken on the whole, the creation of the Terminator is believable enough (especially for its time) to make the final showdown between Sarah and half of her indomitable foe just plain icky for the chills it gives us.

As Sarah Connor, Linda Hamilton has a trickier road to travel; she's annoying as hell in the first half of the film, and if I'd been Reese, I would have questioned why I was even protecting her. Still, she pulls out all the stops as the reality of Sarah's situation sinks in, and becomes quite likeable by the time she's dragging Reese's ass all over town.

As the man the trilogy forgot, Michael Biehn kicks hard ass as Reese. It's a feral performance - a nicely convincing idea of what someone raised in a post-Judgment Day hell would actually be like. His love story with Sarah Connor has always felt strangely forced to me, one of the flaws in the picture, but Biehn sells Reese's creepy devotion well.

But it's Cameron's often smoke-and-mirrors creation of a believable world for these characters to inhabit that really makes Terminator memorable. I'm not necessarily talking about the future sequences - though competent, they are also where the holes in the production value begin to show through. No, rather, it is 1984 Los Angeles that Cameron successfully manages to turn into a surreal battlefield, a hazy jungle of light and concrete that threatens Sarah, disorients Reese, and seems to form a perfect environment for the Terminator. The dance club in which Sarah finds refuge is well named: Tech Noir is the mantra for The Terminator.

I remain staunchly impressed with how much Cameron manages to put together on the film's lean $6 million budget; it's on par with the original Star Wars ($11 million) in bang for buck. The Terminator is a successful fusion of style, intent and opportunity that kick-started the career of a filmmaker whose involvement with Pirannha 2 would soon be nothing more than the punchline of a seldom-remembered joke.

The Terminator mantains a gruesomely grim tone throughout, and in its final frames, achieves its full power as a kind of lament: for a future already known, a sacrifice already made, and a hell already swallowing mankind whole.