I think that the first recorded use of bullet time was in Kill and kill again in 1981.
Here is a link to the wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_and_Kill_Again
Here is a summary of what wiki says about it:
Kill and Kill Again is a 1981 South African/American action film notable for being the first live-action film to use the visual effects known as bullet-time. It is a sequel to Kill or Be Killed (1980). Filmed in Sun City, Bophuthatswana, the film has a more tongue in cheek comedy approach than its predecessor.
The bullet-time scene occurs at the end, when Marduk has died and his chief guard is about to kill Dr. Kane while Steve is climbing up the outside of the building they're in. The guard fires his gun (at 1:36:10) and the bullet comes out very slowly and moves across the screen in a recognizable (but low-budget) early version of the famous scene in the Matrix. After ten seconds of the bullet flying across the room, Steve Chase has gotten up the building, gets inside the room, and deflects the bullet with a metal ashtray.
This very low-budget "Bullet-Time-Slice" sequence was achieved very simply, in-camera, with no post-production effects. The first shot of the bullet exiting the barrel of the gun was shot in close-up, with the barrel removed from the frame of the gun locked-off pointing downwards but with the camera also turned on its side, framing the barrel horizontally, but pointing down toward the floor. (When viewed 'upright,' this would then appear to be pointing at the subject in a correct manner.) A bullet, smaller in diameter than the inside of the barrel, was then dropped down through the barrel along with a puff of smoke from a cigarette. The bullet-and-smoke shot was filmed at 120fps to create the desired effect.
