“We may have to kill a few chickens along the way, but we’ll be OK.”

Justin’s rating: Toasted ham and cheese from a truck, yum

Justin’s review: I’m pretty late to the party in realizing this, but there are a lot of post-apocalyptic films featuring people driving a big ol’ modified truck across the wasteland. There’s Mad Max Fury Road, Neon City, Damnation Alley, Battletruck, and more besides. For the life of me, I don’t understand how this became a thing, but if there was ever a Big Trucks in the Dark Future movie, it’d have to be Terminus.

This film, a joint venture between forever friends France and Germany, throws a wrench into the typical format and gives us a weird “sport” where hulked-out vans go on a cross-country demolition derby race to win first place by reaching a place called Terminus. If they have to run over animals, kill opponents, and create thruways in people’s living rooms, so be it.

The lead contender in the current race is a girl named Gus (Karen Allen) and a truck/artificial intelligence named Monster, the latter of which was designed by some little whiz kid (played by the same child actor from Robocop 2) who’s sitting in a control room somewhere and being monitored by some very suspicious German scientists.

The plan — and the van — go off the road when Monster ends up in dangerous territory and Gus actually gets killed (rather early on, I should note) by these outlanders or raiders or whatever they’re called. But this development puts a new plan into motion when a one-handed prisoner named Stump (Johnny Hallyday) and an orphan girl called Princess reappropriate the vehicle to stage a breakout in defiance of both the government and the outlaws. There’s even an evil stealth truck that’s sent after them, a mystery involving clones, and some light cyberpunk elements.

I’m no stranger to French scifi movies, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned from them, it’s that they have a mind and style all their own. Terminus may be a bit of a Mad Max clone, but it’s also its own beast that tosses viewers right into the middle of this bizarre situation and trusts that we can keep up. It’s also stylistically weird, so don’t blink twice when you see that the truck has an actual mouth on the dashboard for the computer to talk through.

The language and cultural barrier keeps Terminus from making sense all the time while bombarding us with some awkward line readings. Yet it’s also a pretty interesting ride, if you’ll pardon the pun. There’s a lot of early computer graphics and some great vehicle stunt work to go along with all the weirdness.

Sometimes movies are more curiosities than actual story delivery services, and that’s probably what we need to label Terminus. It’s a gangly, awkward thing with half-baked ideas and a truck that never, ever shuts up. Its main protagonist changes abruptly a third of the way in, and the writing doesn’t let characters be more than exposition machines for the most part.

What I couldn’t get past is how laid-back and casual Monster’s computer is in its speech. We’re all familiar with how movie computers are supposed to speak, right? This disembodied mouth sounds nothing like that. It’s like trying to be a comedic sidekick and everyone’s best pal who also makes popcorn and toasted ham and cheese sandwiches. Like much of the rest of this film, it’s odd and discombobulated in a French sort of way.

Perhaps if the overall quest was more defined and easier to track, these other flaws wouldn’t be so apparent. But as it is, Terminus can’t shake the appearance of a truck movie driving to nowhere in particular.

Intermission!

• There’s an extended director’s cut with 32 more minutes than the standard edition
• Wireframe graphics were really big in 1987
• Goth hacker in minute 3!
• “I’m the doctor’s monster!”
• Creepy mouths come attached to trucks in the future as the AI voice module
• AI likes to sing along to records
• Random anime video signals
• Man, don’t ever get out of the truck. Even I know that.
• Everyone seems to love picking up Gus for some reason. Like, literally picking her up.
• “Gag me with a spoon!”
• Raspberry-flavored popcorn… ew
• Jürgen Prochnow plays three roles here
• “Those slimy soldiers are still on our tail!”
• KITT vs KARR: The truck edition
• And now we get to the “oiled up half-naked motorcyclists” part of the film
• Also, giant snake dude
• Creepy clone truck with all of these nightmare fuel puppets