Terminator Forever!

The Terminator, Deliverance and In Cold Blood are among the 25 cinematic works bound for preservation

By Josh Grossberg Dec 30, 2008 5:35 PMTags
The Terminator20th Century Fox

When Arnold Schwarzenegger's cyborg assassin said his famous one-liner, "I'll be back," what he really meant was that he wasn't going anywhere.

And that couldn't be more true today now that James Cameron's sci-fi masterpiece The Terminator joins a list of 25 classics, among them John Boorman's Deliverance and Richard Brooks' big-screen version of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, that have been tapped for preservation by the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress.

Officially unveiled Tuesday morning, the class of 2008 culls together motion pictures deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant and reflects each movie's unique contribution to cinema history.

It was a low-budget science-fiction action flick that came out of nowhere at the time of its 1984 release, but The Terminator achieved fame not only for its pioneering stop-motion effects by the late Stan Winston, but also launched the Governator out of the swords-and-sorcerers genre of Conan the Barbarian B-flicks he was then known for on a path to Hollywood stardom and eventually his historic 2003 run for California's governorship.

1972's Deliverance, based on James Dickey's novel, not only gave moviegoers the rugged, handsome face of a young Burt Reynolds, but also made us rethink that camping trip we were planning as it told the harrowing tale of four city slickers ambushed in the Georgia wilderness by a group of psychopathic rednecks. Squeal like a pig, boy!

1967's adaptation of In Cold Blood, Capote's nonfiction account of a family's brutal murder, was nominated for four Academy Awards and nabbed one for Brooks for Best Director.

Other films bound for immortality include Hallelujah!, the 1929 musical drama helmed by King Vidor for MGM about a Southern sharecropper, which was one of the first flicks to transition from the silent era to sound and featured an all-black cast; James Whale's original 1933 version of H.G. Wells' sci-fi horror classic The Invisible Man, starring Claude Rains and Gloria Stuart; Howard Hawks' Sergeant York, the 1941 biopic that won Gary Cooper his first of two Best Actor Oscars for playing a Tennessee pacifist who ends up becoming a war hero; Robert Siodmak's suspense thriller The Killers, based on the Ernest Hemingway story and featuring Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner; John Huston's classic 1950 crime caper The Asphalt Jungle; Nicholas Ray's 1954 western noir Johnny Guitar, toplining Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden; 1958's The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, sporting the trailblazing special effects of the great Ray Harryhausen and largely considered to be a blockbuster before there was such a thing; and Sidney Lumet's 1964 drama The Pawnbroker, headlining Rod Steiger.

Two cinematic works not well-known to today's audiences but nevertheless deemed historically important enough to make the cut are George Stevens' World War II Footage (1943-1946) and 1956's Disneyland Dream, a family's home movie chronicling a trip to Walt Disney's newly opened theme park in Anaheim, Calif.

The honor of the oldest movie on the list goes to James Young Deer's White Fawn's Devotion, made in 1910 and considered to be the first helming effort by a Native American about a tribe of Indians on the Dakota plains.

"The registry helps this nation understand the diversity of America's film heritage and, just as importantly, the need for its preservation," Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said at the list's unveiling. "The nation has lost about half of the films produced before 1950 and as much as 90 percent of those made before 1920."

Here's a complete rundown of the 25 films destined for digitization so that they can be enjoyed by future generations:

1. The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
2. Deliverance (1972)
3. Disneyland Dream (1956)
4. A Face in the Crowd (1957)
5. Flower Drum Song (1961)
6. Foolish Wives (1922)
7. Free Radicals (1979)
8. Hallelujah (1929)
9. In Cold Blood (1967)
10. The Invisible Man (1933)
11. Johnny Guitar (1954)
12. The Killers (1946)
13. The March (1964)
14. No Lies (1973)
15. On the Bowery (1957)
16. One Week (1920)
17. The Pawnbroker (1965)
18. The Perils of Pauline (1914)
19. Sergeant York (1941)
20. The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)
21. So's Your Old Man (1926)
22. George Stevens' World War II Footage (1943-46)
23. The Terminator (1984)
24. Water and Power (1989)
25. White Fawn's Devotion (1910)