Terminus (1987)
Directed by
Pierre-William Glenn
Runtime: 81 min
Country: France / West Germany
Color: Color (Fujicolor)
Sound Mix: Dolby
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092070/
Review: http://www.moria.co.nz/sf/terminus.htm
This French-German production is one of the strangest oddities to emerge from the cycle of films inspired by Mad Max 2 (1981). It reminds of Quintet (1979) and The Salute of the Jugger/The Blood of Heroes (1990), which were both, like this, set around futuristic games. All three films deliberately leave detail about the rules of their game and the future surroundings unexplained. In all cases it results in a film of fascinating texture and equally frustrating enigma. Terminus is perhaps the most vague of the three. Everything from the details of its plot, to its future scenario to its almost overabundant accumulation of SF tropes - from genetically-engineered superkids to AIs to fragmented post-holocaust societies, fascist government troops and megalomaniacs desiring to take over the world - seems to have been written with a willful vagueness. The result is perhaps a more colourfully interesting film than it is an involving one.
It is more interesting to just sit and watch the weirdly colourful background detail than to try and make sense of the film. The background is fascinatingly bizarre - extras will have one side of their face painted blue, the other black or a painted strip shaved through the middle of their hair. There are some fabulous props and sets - the AI, Monster, is rather fascinatingly designed as a framework encasing a mouth which is painted in grey facepaint, has odd suckers attached and an inner glow of varying colours that comes as though lit by hot coals. The most bizarre of all is Jurgen Prochnow who plays three characters throughout - a truck driver; the mad scientist decked out in business suit, gold-rim glasses, white facepaint and black lip-liner; and most hilariously of all - the point where the film’s excess scenography reaches the heights of camp - the character of Sir as a drag queen garbed in luxuriant silk dressing gowns and a flaming red wig.
Terminus (1986) - rare - Johnny Hallyday, Karen Allen - DIVX VHS RIP - By FrFurax.avi 
(lots of sources.)
