Monday, January 3, 2011

Lady Terminator (H. Tjut Djalil, 1988)

Any thoughts you might have had about enjoying the perks of the fertilization process have long since passed, all you want to know is the exact location of your semi-precious wang. Your chances of reattaching it are pretty slim, you just want to know why a night of spontaneous intercourse has turned into a bloodstained nightmare. Such are the thoughts careening through the heads of those who have the misfortune of being straddled by the reincarnated Queen of the South Sea, the gun crazy, peckish pussy wielding protagonist in Lady Terminator, a giddy violence and sex-filled film from Indonesia. Yeah, that's right, Indo-fucking-nesia! Similar to Liquid Sky, in that a new wave woman kills men with her unruly cunt, the woman in this film uses both her damp privates and the mayhem-creating ferocity that only a fully loaded assault rifle can provide to dispatch the men in her life. Riddling the bodies of countless men and a handful of women with an inordinate amount of lead, while at the same time, causing men to spew torrents of crimson blood from their genitals (sorry ladies, this gal is strictly a shaft splitter), the chick doing the majority of the terminating throughout this mentally challenged romp will make lovers of possessed women in leather tremble with a partially misguided brand of off-kilter joy.

It's always been a dream of mine to be penetrated by bullets that have come from a gun fired by a woman. Now, you're thinking to yourself: "What's the difference? A bullet's a bullet. It doesn't matter who fires it." True, the wound it causes might be the same, but psychological intention of the person firing it is completely different. You see, a man is always penetrating stuff (your average man thinks about making or filling a hole every ten seconds), a woman, on the other hand, rarely gets the chance to penetrate anything. Sure, they pierce their ears, some of them play in the LPGA, and a precious few are allowed to wear strap-on dildos every other Saturday, but the opportunity for them to make a hole or fill an already existing one is sporadic at best. My point being, the erotic possibilities for bullet wound copulation are off the charts.

Female gun sex is the wave of the future, and in 1988, filmmaker H. Tjut Djalil (credited here as Jalil Jackson) was somehow able to see into this future. Using what he saw, his mind unleashed Lady Terminator (a.k.a. Nasty Hunter) onto the world. Enjoy the sounds of the ocean waves crashing onto the shore during the film's opening, because the sound of uncontrolled gunfire, men's torsos being bathed in crotch blood, and a cheeky jean skirt not being hiked up are the only things you'll be hearing for the next eighty-five minutes.

Underneath the crashing waves, they're used to live a mystical queen (the aforementioned Queen of the South Sea), a shapely regent with an insatiable hunger for cocks and grapes, and a real thing for emerald eye makeup and transparent clothing (the greener, the better). Swept away during a volcanic eruption a hundred or so years ago, the queen's legend lives on within the minds of the Indonesian people, and, apparently, in the mind of Tania Wilson (Barbara Anne Constable), an American student from Pasadena who is writing her thesis on the man-devouring monarch. Warned by a crusty librarian and a skittish boat captain to stay away from the queen's underwater domain, the curious young woman, bolstered, no doubt, by the uncompromising darkness of her black bikini, dives headfirst into the murky deep.

After some mild meteorological weirdness, Tania finds herself tied to a bed, her arms and legs fastened with green fabric. While struggling with her restraints, Tania notices something enter the space in-between her sweaty flesh-folds. It's in that moment we say goodbye to Tania, the inquisitive scholar, and say hello to the Lady Terminator, killer of everybody, particularly unarmed bystanders and jean skirt wrangling desk sergeants named Betty. Walking ashore in the semi-buff (all that stands between the tasty attractions dotted along her delicate undercarriage and the warm night air is a white thong), the reborn Tania acquires some clothes from some punks hanging out on the beach (the punks loose their penises) and an Uzi from a hotel security guard (an encounter that leaves him without a penis as well).

All she needs now is a pair of leather pants (preferably a pair with laces down the side), some pointy boots, an emerald tube-top, and she should be ready to carry out her mission in style. Which is to kill the ancestor of the man who stole the queen's magic eel dagger one hundred years ago (he yanked it out of her girly-box during forced congress). It turns out the ancestor is a young woman named Erica (Claudia Angelique Rademaker), a bourgeoning pop star with a sane love for lively sweater dresses and brightly coloured headbands.

Unfortunately, her less famous best friend just happened to wearing a necklace similar to hers when the Lady Terminator came looking for her at the mall and paid the ultimate price (trendiness can get you killed). Unaware of her of friend's fate, and still wearing the necklace (the Lady Terminator uses it to track her), Erica performs her non-threatening brand of synth-rock at a local club. Luckily, just as the Lady Terminator is about to embed many caps in her amazing ass, two cops in the audience intervene to save her. Even though they fire multiple rounds in her general direction, nothing seems to phase the tenacious assassin. It's almost as if she is impervious to bullets.

Begrudgingly excepting his offer to "come with me if you want to live," Erica grabs Max McNeil's hand and is ushered out of the club, which, by now, is filled with dead Australians, broken glass, and spent shell casings. The cocksure American (played by Christopher J. Hart), who, for some strange reason, is working as a homicide detective in Jakarta, takes Erica to police headquarters.

As expected, the determined terminator of living things with curly black hair (think Fran Lebowitz trapped at a haircare symposium for the visually impaired) shows up by plowing her car through the building's entrance. Emerging from her wrecked vehicle carrying an M-16, the lethal lady asks one of the wounded guards about Erica's whereabouts. Unhappy over that the fact that the guard's answer is slurred by the blood that has accumulated in his mouth, she unloads a bullet shower on him for what seemed like an eternity (after she's finished peppering him with bullets, she kicks his lifeless corpse for good measure).

This wanton display of ammo mismanagement is an excellent precursor for the type of havoc we are about to be privy to, as the amount gun-based violence that takes place over the next five minutes is an orgasmic, bullet-ridden free-for-all. An armada of hapless cops in urban camouflage, dozens of cowering lackeys, three lab technicians, and a smattering of secretaries all meet their demise at the hands of the Lady Terminator in this jean skirt jeopardizing melee.

An insincere moment of silence for the fifty-something police officers who died while trying to protect a pop singer, one who may or may not be wearing a garment made entirely out of denim.

In what is still her only film role to date, the stunning Barbara Anne Constable transforms herself into a cult movie icon the moment she grabs the leather jacket of an overconfident Jarkarta beach punk and casually tosses it over her shoulder. An unstoppable killing machine in the latter half of the movie, in the early going Barbara plays a less violent, but no-less determined version of her trigger happy alter ego. Playing another in a long line of head tilt enthusiasts named Tania, Miss Constable, sporting an orange tank top, glasses, and a long white skirt that had a tropical flourish on the front and back, and sounding like a cross between Dora the Explorer and Mae West, enters an Indonesian library in search of answers.

"I'm not a lady, I'm an anthropologist," and with that line, Barbara Anne Constable quickly establishes Tania as a woman not to be trifled with. Utilizing the smooth contours of her straightforward frame and the comprehensive splendour of uttered words simultaneously, Barbara has a short amount of time to prove that she is more than just a lady, I mean, an anthropologist, who excels at removing pricks with her vagina and filling people with holes they don't want, because after the Queen of the South Sea's eel dagger finds a new home, Tania does most of her talking with a gun and a sneer.

Now that Tania has been born-again as a relentless hit woman who doesn't say much beyond the sound of her eyeball plopping into a hotel sink (a hotel crawling with randy room-service waiters), the majority of the talking onus is placed on the shoulders of Max (Christopher J. Hart) and Erica (Claudia Angelique Rademaker). Unsurprisingly, the bulk of his dialogue revolves around hot dog-based small talk with his fellow J-town cops, while her chatter mainly centers around shopping, the price of fame, and conducting impromptu interviews with reporters with worthwhile eyebrows.

She's a dainty pop singer without parents, he's a rugged cop whose wife wanted him to quit the force–you know, so that they could open a restaurant in Minnesota–but instead she was raped and murdered by an ex-con, yet together they're able to put their pain in the past and fornicate under a large tree in the present.

Running from lady terminators all day is exhausting work, and so is writing about them, that's why I always drink Wink™ On top of being a cool and refreshing beverage, I find it that gives me that extra oomph I need, especially when I'm trying to allude the clutches of a properly motivated foe, or searching for a word that rhymes with discombobulate.

Special mention has to go out to Snake (Adam Stardust), one of Max's crime fighting buds. Everything from his hair (a reddish blonde mullet) to his blunt disposition (his favourite pastime is punching ponytailed strangers in the stomach) was, like the majority of the stuff in this film, a rich and frothy pile of pure awesome.


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14 comments:

  1. Your blog changed my life. Thank you.

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  2. It's possible I love this review almost as much as I love this movie. And that's saying something.

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  3. Hey, great review as always! Just so you know, the title of the movie as per that japanese trailer is "Snake Terminator". How about that

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  4. LPGA shoutout! Woot!

    The opening paragraph of this review is a Yum-Yum classic.

    By the way, I wrote about CFNY in my last blog post.

    We are all caught up with Jeopardys! Double woot.

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  5. I rented this on VHS back in 1989 and watched it three times in a row. There was a brief run in Times Sqyare around the same time...wish I would trekked up to see it on the big screen.

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  6. I did five years of Indonesian in High School and yet the few phrases I still recall I am not really certain of their meaning – ‘apa kabar’ is either a greeting or something about fruit. Mercifully, LADY TERMINATOR is dubbed into English, a language I have a reasonably stronger grasp of. And what a delicious review, I downloaded it immediately. I will watch it while I swallow some Rambutan, holding the bitter overgrown almond nut for the finale.

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  7. @eloise: Excellent.

    @Alex: Thanks, Alex. :)

    @boukensha: Snake Terminator, eh? Actually, that makes a lot of sense.

    @Karim Amir: If I'd known the LPGA was woot worthy, I would have referenced it a long time ago. ;)

    Thanks, K.A. I'm glad you likey.

    The final 10-15 minutes of Black Swan knocked me on my ass. That's some top drawer crazy.

    Damn, what's with all the blog updates? :D

    You're caught up? That's a relief. I wanted to comment on the cuteness of a recent contestant's belt, but wasn't sure if that constituted as a "spoiler" or not, so I held off praising it.

    @Nick Cato: Three times in a row?!? Yeah, I can see that. It breezes by a pretty rapid pace and Barbara Anne Constable is freaking gorgeous.

    @filmisnothing: Apa kabar, filmisnothing, thanks for dropping by.

    Rambutan fruit looks tasty.

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  8. You had me at "unruly cunt."

    *adds to queue*

    Ser gut, Mr. Yum.

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  9. I loved this post, Yum! I found your cogitations on the glaring disparity in the man/woman penetration ratio most illuminating. And I'm with Karim -the LPGA reference was certainly woot-worthy.

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  10. @Russ: The c-word is used quite liberally in Liquid Sky, so I thought it only appropriate for me to do the same.

    @Jerry: All right, more woots for the LPGA.

    I love Man/Woman Penetration Ratio, especially their early stuff.

    Oh, and don't worry, Wet Wilderness, Water Power and Vice Squad are still on my radar.

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  11. I admire your movie taste I have no idea your music taste I think such like new wave style I send you Lady Terminator main theme 320 kb and very rare Enjoy!

    http://hotfile.com/dl/96067092/50f0672/01_lady_terminator-http80ssoundtracksaor.blogspot.com.rar.html

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  12. I can't even deal with how important this movie is -- culturally and emotionally.

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  13. I just the director's earlier culturally important masterwork Mystics in Bali.

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  14. Wel Yum Yum, I reviewed the EOLM Blu-ray and I must say that Dave Dunaway's leggy legs out of that three slit skirt never looked better on Home Theater. This Blu is a must for any fan of this film, Faye Dunaway or Rene Auberjonois (Odo from Star Trek, Deep Space Nine).

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