The Terminator [Blu-ray] [1984] [Region Free]

Cant believe I completely missed the release date on this classic film on Blu-ray , and only just received it nearly two weeks after it was available.
This was the film that kick started Cameron's career , and with the huge success with this and all his other films (where he and he alone can only outgross himself at the box office) he's been firmly placed with the big players in Hollywood...and rightly so!

This film has always been a firm favourite of mine and its still just as popular after nearly 30 years and have bought many versions throughout the decades.
Although this film already had a Blu-ray release for a while now (US import only) , I never bought it , as I find US imports to be tricky at best when playing them in the UK... Sometimes they work , sometimes they don't , but this newer UK version is a vast improvement from previous released formats , and I can quite honestly say that the picture quality is now just how it should be.
Though the film was mostly shot at night (..mostly) , the daytime scenes are the ones that impress the most with the overall quality.
Detail has to be seen to be believed and you'd be forgiven into thinking that this was filmed on anything other than a state of the art HD camera. Facial closeups are just astounding ! Being able to see the pours in peoples skin and count the individual hairs on their heads is pretty amazing , especially when you think just how low a budget this film was , it impresses me even more and can now hold its head up very highly indeed in the quality stakes.

The sound...Hmmm , tricky one this. Although its presented in 5.1 DTS master audio there are some good points and some bad.
The good points are that the sound is better than its ever been and the surround effects of ricocheting bullets , screams and explosions are fantastically transferred with a rich , crisp clarity...However!
The bad points are that certain sounds (not all , but mainly gunshots) have been replaced with different gunfire sound FX from its original theatrical and VHS release. Although this alteration was done a couple of years back on the remastered DVD to accommodate for the newly improved sound format of the time , it still sticks out like a sore thumb from someone who has watched this film over a tragazillion times , and was kind of hoping with new technology of today , it would have been possible to of enhanced the original sound and put it back.
Brad Fiedel's score (although brilliant) almost suffers with the new clarity. Apart from the iconic main theme , the new and improved clarity with the sound makes other parts of the music score just sound that more... "electronically 80's" if that makes any sense to you , and you can quite literally hear the cheapness of the keyboard that he's using.

Although , I really must stress that these "bad points" really are just my own personal discrepancies that I have with the sound , and in no way am I slating the excellent quality of the transfer , so this really shouldn't put you off upgrading this film at all.

Extras are a bit of a let down by getting slightly less than the remastered DVD. Most of the extras are here , but the "Other Voices" documentary has been omitted on this Blu-ray release and can't for the life of me think why they have done this , so don't get rid of your remastered DVD version just yet!
Its always a pet hate of mine when features are skimped on with Blu-ray , and its a shame that Cameron hasn't done a commentary or even add the old half hour "making of" that you got on VHS , along with everything else instead of giving you less when making a transfer.

The film itself really is worth a ten star rating , MINIMUM ! And the new picture and sound are a huge improvement over previous releases , and the awful cheap nasty subtitles they used for the Future War prologue on the remastered DVD , has now been replace back with its original text on this Blu-ray... Why anyone tampered with that in the first place , I'll never know ?
All in all , this is a very worthy upgrade , but have dropped one star purely for skimping on the documentaries and the lack of anything new on the extras , as I'll only ever review the product and not the film itself.

I bought this on import for my playstation 3 as i read it wasn't region coded, i received it within 3 days from a uk supplier who distributes imported blu ray dvds and needless to say i wasn't disappointed. The picture is amazing, the main menu well designed and the packaging was superb too, a nice 3D hologram cover, the special features are in standard definition but that dosen't really bother me. The question is why hasn't this film been released in the U.K. yet? sometimes i don't understand these marketing decisions made by 20th century fox etc. Oh well all i can say is BUY IT BUY IT BUY IT, a classic not to be missed and fully uncut, the film has never looked better, especially the technoir club scene in all it's retro glory :-)

I'm making this review as a way of differentiating the various DVD releases and informing people this "Ultimate Edition" is the must have. This review is not of the movie, since we all know this film is ground-breaking. This review is purely for fellow fans, like myself, struggling to find the best DVD edition to own. This really is the definitive DVD edition of The Terminator. As a massive fan of the first two movies, I own all of the DVD releases. This is easily the best release of the first film on DVD ever. Here is why:

#It has collectively, the same amount of extras as those found on the previous release, although, there are a couple of new clips added in one of the documentaries, as well as a whole new documentary for this release. There's also deleted scenes, interviews, photo galleries the list goes on. Those of you looking for the extras, you will not be disappointed, I sure as hell was not.

#In terms of picture quality, sound quality and everything else in between, this is the best of the lot. I'd advise you watch the film with headphones on a HD TV for the full impact!

#There is a lengthy booklet that goes deep into what the film has achieved, a few snippets of comments from those who worked on the film.

#The packaging is excellent, and definitely the best looking of the various editions.

I hope this helps anybody who were trying to figure out which was the best release. Lucky you, you've found it.