by Tom on 24 Mar 2010, 12:56
I still think T1 is his best. It's amazing what scale he got on such a small budget. Arnie's never been better, and Biehn is a badass. Linda Hamilton's hairdo is awesomely huge! There's a rawness about it, it was often guerilla film-making because of the low budget. It's one of those, like many great directors in the lower budget pasts, where Cameron shows his most ingenuity.
I just kinda love the fact that T1 is B-movie material, a bit of a horror-action flick almost in a way following Jason, Myers and whoever, at the time, with this unstoppable killing machine. The distributors would have been thinking this was just another film to ride the Jason/Freddy horror wave. But even though it was a B-pic, such care is taken over it, to make the film feel bigger than it is, to make the action big, and to light it as if it's a big budget star vehicle. I love the look of this film, the lighting, and it's mostly night shoot down to the budget, but it works very well.
I also think that slo-mo shot of Arnie working his way through the crowd at Tech-noir about to shoot Sarah Connor in the head, before Reese intervenes, is one of those "perfect" movie moments. The timing, the music, the extras doing "the 80's dance."