By Jim Mcleod 
Should We Count The Terminator Among the All-Time Great Horror Movies?
In 1984, the supposed B-movie The Terminator stormed into cinemas around the world. On a meagre $6.4 million budget and little by way of marketing, it went for over $78 million at the box office. Such was its popularity that the sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, went for $515 million worldwide seven years later.
A true titan of film, The Terminator launched the career of James Cameron and cemented Arnold Schwarzenegger as action’s leading man for well over a decade. In most listings, The Terminator is listed as an action sci-fi or even a thriller. However, it’s also widely considered as a horror or slasher film.
A Character Focus Strong Enough to Forge a Franchise
The Terminator runs a very tight narrative, enabling a focus on character to truly reflect the horrors in play. The origins of the story, which are fairly lightly showcased in the film, are in the sci-fi hellscape of the future, but moment-to-moment, all that matters is Sarah Conner learning how to protect her son from an unstoppable foe.
It’s the tight writing, excellent character work, and depiction of the T-800 that enabled The Terminator to become a hit and, over the decades, a sprawling franchise. There are now six Terminator films that have all turned a profit on production budgets at the box office, even if the writing has diminished with each addition since 1991.
A huge media franchise has been built around this, from video games on just about every form of home or handheld console since the early 90s to TV shows and spin-off comics. Terminator even holds an ever-present place among the most popular slot games to this day.
At one online casino, in its selection of branded slots, there are 38 officially-licensed games, from cult classics like Robocop to Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen. Even so, the most prominent brand is The Terminator with three games. The Terminator Win & Spin is the first film’s entry into the scene, while the other two draw from T2.
It speaks to the incredible impact of the first film that its popularity is drawn from in just about every corner of entertainment. Now, while low-budget sci-fi action can make for a great film, the seriousness and threat presented in The Terminator, which made it such an iconic story and popular franchise, is all down to horror tropes.
The Final Girl versus an Unstoppable Killing Machine
Just the premise of The Terminator is enough to evoke a sense of horror: one woman is forced to hide and flee from an unstoppable killing machine. Horrors like Halloween and Friday the 13th all leverage this angle, only in those films, the hunter is human. In The Terminator, the hunter’s revealed to be a seemingly unkillable machine.
This ramps up the horror elements just as it looks like the protagonist has been able to get one up on this sudden threat. Throw in the filthy, dark alleyways, the blue hue put to shots, and footstep-thudding, synth-style music, and you’ve certainly got the atmosphere for a horror flick.
From the outset, Sarah Connor is thrust into the classic role of the Final Girl, who the killer either gets or is foiled by in the last minutes of a slasher. Still, The Terminator does take time to showcase this perfect killing machine in action, targeting Connor’s best friend and boyfriend post coitus in a distinctly horror-inspired sequence.
Given the quality of the film’s writing, its place in the history of cinema, and its continued impact on entertainment, The Terminator should certainly be considered among the greatest horror films of all time.
