The Terminator is one of the most influential sci-fi movies ever made, so of course it inspired a ton of knock-offs that rate low on IMDb.

James Cameron's classic sci-fi thriller The Terminator has become a cultural touchstone among mainstream American cinema. The story of a relentless cyborg sent back in time to murder to the mother of an unborn revolutionary leader has spawned a number of franchise sequels, prequels, reboots, and offshoots over the past three and a half decades.

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In addition to the multi-media franchise that launched the careers of Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Linda Hamilton, The Terminator inspired countless imitators and blatant ripoffs around the time of its release in 1984. While many are downright forgettable, several of them have garnered decent IMDB ratings over the years. Here is the cream of the crop!

In Duncan Gibbon's Eve of Destruction, The Terminator template is given a gender-reversal when a terrorist tracker is tasked with finding her android doppelganger. Dutch actress Renee Soutendjik stars as both Dr. Eve Simmons and her cyborg counterpart, Eve VIII.

When the good doctor is recruited by a scientist to disarm her robotic double, a vicious killing machine without a conscience, she goes to great lengths to stop her evil twin from inflicting as much harm as possible. WhileEve of Destructionis unique here for having a female Terminator-imitation, it wasn't the first to do so as the likes of the Indonesian knock-offLady Terminator (1988)predate it.

In Phillip J. Roth's overt Terminator/RoboCop knockoff, Digital Man, a belligerent killer robot is unleashed (Matthias Hues) in a small town after going haywire. When a band of soldiers is dispatched to quell Digital Man's violent onslaught, some are discovered to be robots in hiding.

Aside from the iconography and costuming, one of the obvious nods to The Terminator canon is Digital Man's trusty Gatling gun, which the T-800 model used prolifically in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Also known as Frankenstein 88, Jean-Claude Lord's The Vindicator is an obscure Canadian Terminator ripoff in which a workplace mishap results in a lethal robotic murderer going on an indiscriminate killing spree.

Carl Lehman (David McIlwraith) is an employee at a top-secret weapons facility. After suffering a major accident during an experiment, Carl is morphed into a sinister cybernetic serial killer that, according to its programming, must annihilate anything in its path.

Legendary B-movie director/producer Charles Band helmed Crash and Burn, a bald Terminator imitator starring Bill Moseley and Eva LaRue.

Following a global economic meltdown in the year 2030, the world is controlled by the powerful Unicom Corporation. To ensure humanity's survival, all computerized devices and robots have been outlawed. However, a rogue Unicom Synth robot murders a TV manager in rebellion, prompting a war between man and machine.

Albert Pyun is responsible for several Terminator ripoffs, two of which are included on this list. The firstfilm is thisJean-Claude Van Damme sci-fi action filmthat's simply titledCyborg.

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Set in a futuristic American wasteland in which a pandemic has ravaged most of the world's population, paid fighter Gibson (Van Damme) meets a female cyborg named Pearl Prophet (Dayle Haddon). Pearl informs Gibson that she harbors data to cure the pandemic before she's kidnapped by a band of pirates. Gibson sets out to rescue Pearl before gang leader Fender Tremelo obtains the cure for his own benefit.

One of the better European Terminator copiers belongs to Sergio Martino's Hands of Steel, an unabashed Italian knockoff starring the recently deceased John Saxon.

Saxon plays the malevolent Frank Turner, a corporate industrialist who creates a half-man-half-machine hybrid called Paco Queruak (Daniel Greene) for the sole purpose of assassinating an ecological revolutionary. When failing to meet his objective, Paco heads for Arizona where he is stalked and attacked his adversaries.

The second film Albert Pyun clearly made in response to his adoration of The Terminator is Nemesis, a futuristic cyborg action-thriller set in a dystopian Los Angeles.

The story follows Alex (Olivier Gruner), a cyborg LAPD officer who is coerced by his boss to locate his former lover and police partner, Jared (Marjorie Monaghan). Alex must do so before Jared can deliver sensitive intel to a terrorist sect relating to the future of humanity. While on the hunt, Alex questions his true nature every step of the way.

In addition to The Terminator, Class of 1999 cribs tropes and various imagery from RoboCop and several other techno-thrillers of the day. It's also a loose sequel to Class of 1984, also directed by Mark L. Lester.

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In crime-ridden future Seattle, a high-school agrees to hire three ex-military cyborgs to serve as undercover teachers. Unfortunately for the unruly students, the violent androids also work as deadly disciplinarians who have a zero-tolerance for teenage shenanigans and impugn the students with brutality.

Iggy Pop and Dylan McDermott star in Hardware, Richard Stanley's hyper-violent action extravaganza in which a sentient cyborg rebuilds itself with indestructible reinforcements before going on a vicious death march.

When a robotic head is scavenged from a scrap heap in the Earthly wasteland of the future, it is eventually given to an art student as a Christmas gift. The robotic head activates, pulls metallic materials from its surroundings, and builds itself back up to a fully functioning robot. Once operational, the Mark 13 military bot goes on a violent revenge tour.

Jack Sholder's 1987 sci-fi horror film The Hidden is perfectly named for its obscurity. Still, the movie takes many elements that worked so well in both James Cameron's The Terminator and Aliens while reusing them in exciting new ways.

The Hidden follows a parasitic alien that can replicate human form upon possessing their bodies. As crime escalates in a Los Angeles wasteland, a local cop teams with an FBI agent to solve a rash of grisly murders perpetrated by the shapeshifting alien. The film fuses the aesthetic iconography of The Terminator with the bio-organic horror of Aliens.

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The 10 Best Terminator Rip-Offs, Ranked According To IMDB - Screen Rant