Directed By: H. Tjut Djalil
Starring: Barbara Anne Constable, Christopher J. Hart, Claudia Angelique Rademaker
Tag line: "She Mates... Then She Terminates"
Trivia: On video in the U.S., this film was released as Shooting Star
Here’s an awesome bit of ‘80s Indonesian sleaze! A violent, nudity-packed action / fantasy flick that steals entire scenes from 1984’s The Terminator, Lady Terminator is cinematic insanity at its absolute best.
The story begins a hundred years in the past, when the evil Queen of the South Sea ruled her kingdom with an iron vagina (whenever a lover wasn’t satisfying her, the Queen would unleash a snake that lived inside her love nest, which would castrate the poor guy before he knew what hit him). The Queen met her match, however, when she made love to Elias, who managed to grab the snake before it could strike. In a fit of rage, the Queen vowed that, in 100 years, she would take her revenge on Elias’s great-granddaughter. Shortly after this, she disappeared into the sea.
Cut to modern day (otherwise known as the late ‘80s). Anthropology student Tania (Barbara Anne Constable) is writing her thesis on the legend of the Queen of the South Sea, and convinces a ship’s captain to take her to the spot where the Queen vanished all those years ago. Once she gets her scuba gear working, Tania dives to the bottom of the sea, where, instead of uncovering ancient artifacts, she is attacked and possessed by the Queen’s evil spirit.
Picking up where she left off a century ago, the Queen uses Tania’s body to kill three men (by having sex with them), then sets to work trying to locate Erica (Claudia Angelique Rademaker), a famous rock star and Elias’s only living descendant. The Queen eventually tracks Erica down, but her attempt to kill the unsuspecting girl are thwarted by Max (Christopher J. Hart), an American cop living and working in Indonesia.
Impervious to bullets and even fire, the Queen pursues Erica relentlessly, forcing Max and his police buddies to do whatever is necessary to stay one step ahead of this psychotic sovereign. Should they slow down, even for a second, Erica will surely die.
With gobs of gory violence (including one very disturbing scene involving an eyeball), a rocking ‘80s dance tune (performed by co-star Claudia Angelique Rademaker), and a villainess who kills men by having sex with them, Lady Terminator is a tasty slice of ‘80s cheese that only gets better with age. Sure, the dialog is outrageous (when the ship’s captain calls her “Lady”, an angry Tania replies “I’m no lady. I’m an anthropologist!”) and the special effects (which consist mostly of green lightning) are lame, but this only adds to the fun of it all.
As for the key performance in the film, Barbara Anne Constable overacts early on when she’s still Tania, but is a total bad-ass once the Queen takes control of her, shooting up everything from a dance club to a police precinct in her single-minded attempt to get Erica (the possessed Tania is merciless as well, executing every wounded cop she comes across during her attack on the police station). In addition to its ultra-violent shootouts, Lady Terminator features some intense car chases, almost all of which end with an explosion.
As its title would suggest, Lady Terminator owes a lot to The Terminator. Much like that film, it’s almost impossible to kill the main baddie (Tania/the Queen is shot about 200 times, but keeps on comin’); and the melee at the precinct kicks off with the Queen driving a car straight through the front door (like Arnold did in the 1984 film). But odds are you won’t mind the many scenes that blatantly rip off James Cameron’s sci-fi / action classic. You’ll be having too much fun with Lady Terminator to even care.
