Lady Terminator [1988]

After watching and being very disappointed by "Lady Exterminator," we had to seek out the actual genderbent namesake of the classic science fiction movie and see for ourselves what kind of a narrative would be constructed. And, unlike with "Lady Exterminator" we were not disappointed with what we found. "Lady Terminator" is part explotation-y remake and part shot-for-shot ripoff (so basically the lady plus the terminator) with a delightful overlay of Indonisian folklore as a contrast to the cyberpunk aspects of the original. Apparently there's a whole rich history of Indonisian horror and exploitation films that a bunch of the DVD extras wanted to tell us about so this seems like another bad movie subgenre we will be looking further into on future Mondays.

We start with a goddess-like queen in some past time screwing men to death. She meets her match in a man who extracts an eel from between her legs and turns it into a dagger, an act which pisses her off enough to say that she will get revenge on his great granddaughter. Highly specific threat but okay. We fast forward to modern times where a lady, who fiercely corrects anyone who calls her a lady with "I'm an anthropologist", goes to research the Queen of the South Seas in Indonisia after an old man in a library tells her not to. After her diving adventure goes array with some light S&M and an eel getting all up in her, she is possessed by the Queen and ready for murder. She uses the same technique of death sex at first with some drunk by the shore, but her real goal is to get that granddaughter, identifiable because of her necklace (so her great granddad gave her an ID for the Queen to get her eventually). She ends up offing some girls wearing immitations of the necklace or just being witnesses and then suddenly the movie just becomes "The Terminator." We have a club (not called Tech Noir), we have a chase, we have an eye gouging scene, and we have the granddaughter taking refuge under a bridge with some rando cop because the time travel element isn't in this movie. It all ends how you would expect, and then we went off to do more research on the Queen of the South Seas, an important figure in Indonisian myth.

This movie was pretty solid. There were a lot of super strange reads and the whole premise itself is ripe for riticule. Add it to your list!

Spoon Rating: 7