tali122

Watching Terminator 2 and the end scene of the villain screaming in the molten with his faces streched , twisted, pulled and wailing in agony -it dawned upon me that this big budget movie blatantly ripped off a small obscure brit movie , namely The Asphyx.
What do others think?

Aaryk Noctivagus

Aspects of movies are inspired by aspects of other movies all the time. It is a legitimate part of the creative process so long as it is treated in a sufficiently different way.

It also happens in drawing, painting, music, literature and science, etc...

tali122

i agree with what you're saying but it was so conspicuous and the fact that the movie that inspired the scene probably had a budget less than a days wages for arnie!

ChristineCB

Ahnold confessed that he'd heard the line, "Ah'll be bach" somewhere before, too, but mistakenly thought he'd have to learn piano for that role, so he refused. "Besides, those white powdered wigs never looked good on me," he said.

Then, someone said, "Try these sunglasses on instead..." and a whole new movie was inspired.

Well... that's what I heard.

Moor Larkin

That's odd. I thought that phrase stemmed from when he was competing for Mr. Universe, and he looked over his shoulder and said,
"Oil me back"......

S'funny how these things happen. I reckon Asphyx has got as much right to sue Terminator as Kings & Desperate Men had, to sue Die Hard

[code]http://www.flickr.com/photos/29487363@N02/sets/72157606700675506/code]

ChristineCB

(spitting out loud) TOO MUCH. In the grand Oirish tradition, I suppose.

christoph404

I thought it was more like the end scene in "Carry on Screaming" as Kenneth Williams is boiled in the large vat and surfaces with a grimace to say........."I'll be back....." or is it "frying tonight"

Pricey

Terminator films are based on a central premise (renegades from future come back to alter history) that first appeared in Dr Who in 1972 (as Day of the Daleks). And in 1976, the Dr Who story "The Deadly Assassin" had a sequence where the doctor and his enemy don headsets and fight to the death within a virtual world known as "the matrix". Perhaps he travelled into the future to borrow these plots from hollywood, or just maybe hollywood travelled into the past?

Aaryk Noctivagus

Its admitted by the makers of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' that the idea of the Borg came directly from the Cybermen of 'Dr. Who'.

It should be born in mind that NO fiction exists in a vacuum. All borrow to one extent or another from others.

JamesM

I am sorry Pricey but the premise of Terminator pre-dates 1972.

There was a Michael Rennie film that had a plot much closer to The Terminator than any Doctor Who story, it was Cyborg 2087 (1966):-

http://davidszondy.com/future/robot/cyborg2087.htm

Aaryk Noctivagus

Sorry JamesM... the premise of 'The Terminator' pre-dates 1966.

Harlan Ellison sued James Cameron after 'The Terminator' was released because it lifted directly from two episodes of 'The Outer Limits' he wrote for the second year of the series in 1964... 'Soldier' and 'Demon With a Glass Hand'. Cameron settled out of court. This is quite widely known.

JamesM

You don't have to be sorry Aaryk as I only claimed it pre-dated 1966. I did not claim Cyborg 2087 to be the earliest example.

Harlan Ellison sued over just one of these stories, Soldier, for it's relation to the beginning of Terminator. Demon with a Glass Hand does have its similarities. In Soldier, a soldiers is accidentaly transported into the past being pursued by another soldier. In Demon with a Glass Hand a being from the future endeavours to find a secret from the past to save the future but does not alter it. In terms of the premise of Terminator in which someone goes back in time to kill in ordr to prevent the birth or life of someone who would invent something to the future's detriment, another earlier episode of The Outer Limits, The Man Who Was Never Born (1963), resembles this plot:-

Scifilm -- TV Files, The Outer Limits: "The Man Who Was Never Born"

La Jetee (1962) has a man sent to our time from the future in order to save the future in some way, preceding all the above examples, none are as close as Cyborg 2087 to Terminator.

ChristineCB

La Jetee was a film I've only recently seen, and that was an interesting experience - I don't think I felt as 'subjected' to a 'movie' (and I'll use that term loosely) that I ended up liking quite as much. It's Hollywood successor is obvious, and its growth from La Jetee makes me wonder how many other Cash Back shorts get turned into such well-made full-length features.

Pricey

That's what I love about this site - you learn so much! Thanks all. Ok, accepting the terminator history, how about the matrix?
Also Dr Who himself seems spookily similar to a character in (rather bizarrely) the Tommy Handley comedy "Time Flies" (1944). In this film there is a eccentric aged professor in edwardian garb who travels through time in a strange globe that he can barely control. Does anyone know whether Sydney Newman or others at the beeb may have been influenced by this or is it just a wonderful coincidence?