Lady Terminator is a 1989 Indonesian film turned cult classic
It has a dedicated followings
From fans who watch terrible movies for entertainment
Yes, we exist
"Oh Hi Mark"
Whenever we find out there is a weird foreign film
We are beside ourselves
To us foreign cinema is like an uncharted lawless territory
You don't know what to expect
Other than it often being weird
A Terminator woman with a vagina thet can cut off your penis
Shameless recreations of scenes from The Terminator
So weird
So foreign
Yeah...
Stop saying that
Lady Terminator is the 1989 Indonesian action flick
The film begins by introducing the South Sea Queen
An ocean goddess seductress
Who have sex with men and kills them in the process
But she was betrayed by her husband
Who strips her of her power
A power that takes the form of a snake inside of a vagina
"You are my wife now, I want you to stop the killings"
"Give me that!"
Angered by this, the queen vows for revenge
"You tricked me!"
"In one hundred years, I will have my revenge on your great granddaughter"
I guess that one hundred years is for her to regain her godly power
And sure enough, one hundred years later
The goddess possessed a young anthropologist
And begins hunting down the granddaughter
"I'm an anthropologist, huh!??"
"Okay?"
"Okay, wish me luck"
What follows is a series of direct rip-offs
Of action scenes from the original Terminator film
Mugging some skinhead punks
Eyeball repairs
Police station shootout
Everything good is taken directly
Just with a lot more sex
Weird. Right?
Well...
No.
While the original Terminator was a big hit when it came out
Its impact outside of the West was limited
Remember, Arnold was still at the early days of his fame
Imagine, if you are an Indonesian casual film goer
Would you go to see this film?
With the American fashion
The low-budget action
And old school special effects?
What I'm saying is...
The original Indonesian title is not Lady Terminator
It's Revenge of the South Sea Queen
It wasn't meant to be a Terminator film
The mock mockbuster aspect was retro actively added
When the film was brought to home media in the West
Knowing that
I suspect Lady Terminator was just a simple case of plagiarism
Copying the good stuff from a film your target audience doesn't know exists
But, that's a weird things that foreign films do, right?
Not exactly
Within the film industry
Plagiarism and mockbusters are almost the name of the game
No, you are not watching The Lion King
While Disney repeatedly denies it
The similarity between The Lion King
And the Japanese anime Kimba the White Lion is so striking
A lot of people find this denial hard to swallow
Christopher Nolan's Inception
Also copies some thematic and visual elements
From Satoshi Kon's animation Paprika
The Hunger Games, both the novel and the film
Share a lot of similarities with Japanese novel turned him classic
Battle Royale
But the most blatant ones has to be A Fistful of Dollars
Which is a beat-by-beat remake
Of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo
Both films are about a wanderer
Who arrives in a town terrorized by two rival gangs
Both the plot and the visual are so similar
Leone had to settle out of court with Kurosawa
Now, I'm not trying to justify plagiarism
But all around the world, including in Hollywood
It is the industry norm
And Lady Terminator is just a product of this industry
An extreme example to be sure but as little
But it has little to do with is foreign origin
And it's not weird
It's just kind of sad
That was about the production
But what about the content?
The idea of a woman cutting off your penis with her vagina sounds weird
It must be a foreign thing, right?
But if I rephrase it like this:
A goddess that castrates you during sex
Suddenly, it sounds a lot less strange
Because now, you are in the mindset of a myth
Remember, it's not Lady Terminator
It's Revenge of the South Sea Queen
It's a mythical story brought to the modern day
Beside, there's already a myth of Vagina Dentata in the West
You know, vagina with teeth
There's even an American horror comedy made about it
If you want to go weirder
There's a 1977 exploitation film called Chatterbox
And it's about a talking vagina
"I'm under you, not over you."
Lady Terminator is one of millions of other films
Reflecting people's fear toward sex and women
Its weirdness is not a cultural thing
Humans are weird
It's important to understand that Hollywood films are not the default position
And they are not the standard for "normal"
Hollywood film is part of our collective identity
So what I'm going to say may cause your instinct to fight back
But remember, when I say Hollywood cinema is also weird
It is not an attack on your taste
Please, be open the discussion
We often subconsciously perceive our upbringing
As the absence of "exotic influence"
For example, accents
(Mexican Accent)
There is no such thing as "accentless English"
(Queens Accent)
Much like how you can't type without a font
You can't speak without an accent
Be it southern
(Southern American Accent)
Cockney
(Cockney Accent)
Or Chinese
(Cantonese Accent)
On a more racist level
Take the Nazis for example
They saw the white race as the "absence of race"
It can be contaminated
This perception still exists within our culture
Former US President Barack Obama has an African father
And a Caucasian mother
But Obama is a black president
You can't go out and call him a white president
His whiteness only diminishes
That's what I mean by “exotic influence”
In the same fashion
We may subconsciously perceive Hollywood films
As the way films should default to be
When things happen in a foreign film
We assume it's part of the cultural differences
But when similar things happen in a Hollywood film
We can suspend our disbelief much easier
We don't judge our own culture
We tend to accept it without question
Because it's part of our identity
But when face with a foreign film
Our assumptions changes
We go into Lady Terminator
Expect it to be weird and foreign
And our confirmation bias how has find things that stand out
But if you look past the thin layer of cultural barrier
Underneath, we are all just human
"Why is he having sex with her belly button?"
"He knows where her vagina is, right?"
Have you watched the film "Get Out?"
"Get out!!"
In that film, there's this lady who touches the protagonist's arm
And comments on how in shape he is
"How handsome is he"
She shows admiration for the young and strong black man
But the subtext is
If he were a young and strong white man
He would just be a regular Joe in this crowd
There is this expectation that because he's black
Therefore, he should be in shape strong, sexy and exotic
"With your frame and genetic makeup"
"if you really push your body"
"No pussyfooting around, you'd be a fucking beast"
Don't get me wrong
I'm very happy the foreign films are getting so much love
Most critics seem to love Lady Terminator
Despite how trashy it really
But maybe we shouldn't go into the film expecting it to be weird because it's foreign
See the film for what it is
The man from Get Out is fit not because he's black
Lady Terminator is trashy and weird
Not because it's foreign