108 Sound Studio, 1988
starring: Barbara Anne Constable, Christopher J. Hart and Claudia Angelique Rademaker
written and directed by: H. Tjut Djalil (Jalil Jackson)

the plot: In Indonesia, legend tells of the South Sea Queen, an alluring yet vicious woman who murders her lovers while in the throes of passion. That is, until a young man robs the queen of her hidden source of power (a mystical snake hiding inside her vagina)—an act that causes a tsunami to drag the queen’s seaside castle beneath the waves and condemn her to death. But before she dies, she curses the young man and vows vengeance on his descendants. Hundreds of years later, anthropology student Tania Wilson (Constable) awakens the spirit of the queen while on a deep sea dive. The queen possesses Tania, who becomes an unstoppable killing machine. Her target: pop star Erica (Rademaker), a distant descendant of the young man who caused the queen’s downfall. Tania pursues Erica relentlessly, and Erica’s only hopes are Max McNeil (Hart), a cop charged with protecting her, and her uncle, an old mystic who may know how to defeat the spirit of the South Sea Queen.

why it’s good: Yes, “Lady Terminator” is nearly a shot-for-shot low-budget Indonesian remake of “The Terminator,” but it has one important element that James Cameron’s killer-robot epic lacks: killer magical vagina snakes. Otherwise, all those memorable sequences in “Terminator”—the shootout at the police station, the gunfight in the nightclub, the eyeball surgery scene—yeah, they’re all in “Lady Terminator.” A rip-off is one thing, but a rip-off spiced up with bizarre ancient sex legends is a heady combination too rich to pass up. Arnold Schwarzenegger is indeed badass, but all he has going for him are a lot of guns and an unstoppable robot body. “Lady Terminator” star Barbara Anne Constable, on the other hand, looks way better naked and has the added benefit of packing a deadly magic serpent inside her, as well as laser beams that shoot out of her eyes and an arsenal of weapons that never run out of bullets. Luckily, no one else runs out of bullets, tanks, rocket launchers and helicopters equipped with missiles. Excess upon excess piles up in “Lady Terminator,” until the movie bursts in a climax of non-stop explosions and multiple shots of a soldier named Snake. Snake’s ape-drape mullet is righteous, a sight only slightly less entrancing than Barbara Anne Constable dispatching dudes with machine guns and her lady parts. Some sort of mystical dagger saves the day at the end, and the resolution makes about as much sense as the patriarchal time travel paradox that wraps up the other “Terminator” flick. If only some enterprising producer could get Christian Bale to star in a “Lady Terminator” remake.

why you should own it: If the prospect of naked ladies, ridiculous violence and unadulterated cinematic cheese has not convinced you that “Lady Terminator” is a must-own, then nothing will. Perhaps not even the fact that Mondo Macabro’s DVD features a bevy of extras, including some alternate scenes and a documentary on the exploitation film boom that hit Indonesia in the 1980s.