Bad Movie Tuesday: Lady Terminator (1989), the Indonesian fantasy/action B-movie Terminator rip-off you’ve been looking for!

MY CALL:  This is exactly the Indonesian fantasy/action B-movie Terminator honorarium you’ve been waiting for!  Enjoy.  MORE MOVIES LIKE Lady Terminator:  For more Indonesian action/fantasy madness try The Devil’s Sword (1984).

Before we start, I think it’s critical that you understand just how classy this film is.  Because director H. Tjut Djalil (as Jalil Jackson; Mystics in Bali, Dangerous Seductress, Satan’s Bed) knows how to keep things classy.  Just listen to this IMDB synopsis: “The spirit of an ancient evil queen possesses the body of a young anthropology student, who then goes on a murderous rampage.”

Just to prove he means classy business, Djalil opens the film with a tastefully clothes-on sex scene culminating in the man dying because…well…something flesh-rending was evidently going on “down there” in her nether regions.  I’m reminded of movies like Teeth (2007), Evil Clutch (1988) and The Night of Something Strange (2016)…only this little Indonesian fantasy/Sci-Fi/action film turns out to be much more complicated. You see, her next lover “defeats” her by removing an eel from her—you know—which was evidently eating the penises of her past lovers in coitus.  He then magically turns her crotch eel into a dagger (don’t ask how, he just does it like he had been doing it for years) and she is furious about it!  So, she curses him: “In 100 years I’ll have my revenge on your great-granddaughter!”

Not much of a curse is it?  It seems to me that when you curse the descendant of a descendant of a descendant of the person who wronged you, the cursed person won’t live to see it. Not a significant punishment at all, if you ask me.  So, to prepare herself for this curse she wanders into the sea to join other evil forces or something.  Perhaps if I was more educated on Indonesian mythology, this all would have made perfect sense.

100 years later Tania (Barbara Anne Constable) finds a creepy book on the Southern Sea Queen from a creepy man in a library with a creepy taxidermy display.  She informs us of her credibility with such lines as “I’m not a lady. I’m an anthropologist.” During a routine anthropological scuba-diving expedition she is teleported to an unreasonably large bed and raped by an eel, resulting in her apparent possession. Things typically don’t go well for anthropologists in horror films (e.g., Cannibal Holocaust, The Serpent and the Rainbow) do they?

Based on the ensuing events, this film clearly becomes a cautionary tale for those who would engage in unprotected anonymous sex with strangers in the 80s.  Tania emerges from the water and does her best nude T-800 walk, even turning her head like Arnold and stiffly strolling around naked until she meets some local punks and “sexes them to death” with her intrauterine eel—FYI, that part was not stolen from Terminator.

It’s as campy as it gets. We see a lot of boobs, the blood spurts are silly, and she steals a punk’s leather jacket (just like Arnie).  Now she just needs to find Sarah Conner…errrr…that long dead cursed guy’s great-granddaughter.

I’m sure we’ve firmly established the badness of this film, but here are some additional ways we know this is a bad movie:

1. During an improvised gynecological exam, a man pulls an eel from a vagina and is, in no way, shocked.
2. With no disclaimed wizardry schooling, he straightens that eel into a dagger!
3. This film was based on the Indonesian legend/Goddess The Queen of the Southern Sea. If Terminator was also based on this, I had no idea.
4. The star actress also received top billing for make-up. Two pay checks, girl!
5. This film was also released as Nasty Hunter. Nasty Hunter = CLASSY!
6. Intrauterine eel rape and eel penis-eating.
7. Topless telekinetic mediation sessions in a sleazy hotel.
   
8. Apparently simply shooting a car in an 80s B-movie results in an explosion!
9. When killing men with sex just won’t do, Tania-nator gets an automatic weapon and shoots like 10 guys in the dick just like Kung Fury’s Triceracop!
   
10. She cuts out her eyeball with a pen knife…just to wash it off!
11. Eye lasers. She shoots laser beams from her eyes!
    
12. Oh, right! A woman kills men by having sex with them…to death!

This films begins about as original as they come, but then steers right into a Terminator copycat with a skewed premise.  Warlock (1989) was also a Terminator (1984) rip-off, although a bit less overtly so.  But you know what?  I’d highly recommend this to any B-movie fan, and this is clearly on the high end of B-movie quality.

All the way to the dumbly-dialogued action-packed finale, this movie tries really hard to give you a lot. A lot of nudity, a lot of bullets, a lot of eel bites to the dick, and a lot of zany nonsense.  This is a B-movie cult favorite for a reason.