Shocking dark - Spectres à Venise

As far as I knew, "Carnosaur 2" carried the torch as the most blatant rip-off of "Aliens" to date. Then I saw "Shocking Dark" (aka "Terminator II" and "Aliennators"). While ol' Carny was happy to just steal the basic plot of "Aliens," "Shocking Dark" went even farther, lifting dialogue, shots, and whole scenes from Cameron's super sequel. It was sweet!

What can I say, I'm a big fan of movies that take someone else's good idea and run with it. I love the Italian zombie flicks that came after Romero's success with the subgenre, so I was happy to see another movie "borrowing" ideas from a classic. If you can accept the fact that "Shocking Dark" is a rip-off, if not downright plagiarism, you might have some fun with it.

Take "Aliens," throw in a little "Terminator," add creatures that are somewhere between "Humanoids From The Deep" and "Forbidden World," and you've got this effective monsterfest, featuring attributes such as awesome locations, cool costumes, and creepy cinematography. Plus your favorite scenes of Ripley and Newt! Oh, sorry. I mean "Sarah" and "Samantha."

Sure, it lacks originality, but you gotta respect a movie that brazenly combines the plots of two mainstream American films, and does it with style. It might not be up to snuff for the average movie-going public, but it does the job for me.

"SHOCKING DARK" (1989, Mattei) needs to be held accountable for a few things before it is applauded for anything.

1. It is a shameless rip-off of "ALIENS" (1986, Cameron), having look-alike actors, copied characters, and stolen scenarios, scenes, dialogue and themes. 2. Music is a blatant copy of John Williams' "JAWS" (1974, Spielberg), Jerry Goldsmith's and James Horner's scores for "ALIEN" (1979, Scott) and "ALIENS" respectively; other music is okay but not great. 3. The acting is really very bad and made worse when you realise the cast are often impersonating the cast of "ALIENS" but really badly. The little girl, our new Newt, is really irritating. 4. It was released as "TERMINATOR 2" and just when you settle into the "ALIENS" plot an element of "TERMINATOR" (1984, Cameron) is introduced. This Terminator is the most annoying Terminator imaginable. 5. The costumes worn by the protagonists are pathetic and the "mega force" is a childish sounding name. 6. There's virtually no gore whatsoever. 7. Awful final 20 minutes.

The good points: 1. It opens intriguingly. 2. The monsters are really very good. Not "ALIENS" good but good.

Terminator II (1989)

** (out of 4)

This here is a Bruno Mattei film so that right there tells you that it must be a rip-off of something much better. The title will make it seems as if this is trying to cash-in on the success of James Cameron's THE TERMINATOR but instead this is actually a rip on his film ALIENS. The story is pretty simple as the setting is a futuristic Venice where soldiers and civilians are living underground but soon there's a breach and people are getting attacked by a creature.

If you've seen ALIENS then you're pretty much going to recognize countless scenes here. Look, Mattei wasn't an original person and it's doubtful he could really make what most would call a "good" movie but at the same time his name has pretty much become a cult favorite and a sub-genre all its own. I mean, not only did this guy rip off ALIENS but there are also rips on PREDATOR, DAWN OF THE DEAD, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, ROBOCOP, JAWS and countless other movies. People can call him a hack and a no-talent freak but the man did carve out a rather interesting piece of history for himself.

TERMINATOR II, also known as SHOCKING DARK, ALIENS 2 and countless other titles, isn't nearly as bad as you might think but at the same time there's no question that there's not too much going on here. The biggest problem I had with the movie is the fact that the majority of the action takes place in the dark and more times than not it's really difficult to see what's going on. Also, the monster outfit looks decent considering the low-budget but at the same time he has got to be the biggest sissy in horror film history. There are countless times where he will grab someone yet the smallest thing makes him let go to where the body count is rather small.

The performances are pretty much what you'd expect in a movie like this. The dialgoue is downright awful at times including a bunch of racial fighting, which makes you wonder if DAY OF THE DEAD was another thing getting ripped off. TERMINATOR II came out two years before the official sequel and it remains an mildly entertaining rip-off.

One can glean some indication of the quality of Shocking Dark from the fact that it was the final collaboration of Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso, the latter having reached the end of his tether. That's right, the maker of classics like Troll 2 and Zombie 4: After Death finally found himself on a project he found an affront to his artistry. But to be honest, as far as plagiarism happy no budget Italian cack goes, Shocking Dark isn't all that bad, that is to say it might send you to sleep but it won't have you clawing your eyes out with frustration. Probably the earliest of Mattei's Aliens rip offs, its not quite as accomplished as his swansong Zombies: The Beginning, but as far as Aliens rip offs in general go its far from the worst of the pack, being certainly a whole lot more charming than the likes of the excremental Xtro 2. The plot has a bunch of Marines codenamed Megaforce delving beneath the remains of a post apocalyptic Venice to see why a colony there has lost all contact, and inevitably it turns out there are monsters afoot. The course of events is shameless in its pilfering from Aliens, scenes, characters are blatantly lifted as well as even the odd actual line. The audacity is amusing, and it also has the effect of giving the film a watchable structure and cosy familiarity, which is then pleasingly subverted in the finale when the film abruptly switches to ripping off a different science fiction favorite of the 80's. Of course the staging is nowhere near as effective and there are frequent spells of boredom, but things are frequently amusing and the second half musters some reasonable excitement. Most of the fun comes from the creatures popping up and dragging people off or throwing them around, the designs are typical rubber suit fare and suitably imposing, gnarly and slimy toothy beasts that spatter some pale ichor when shot, which in the latter half they frequently are. Lots of gunfire and running around, not enough explosions or physical interaction with the environment but enough gun blazing fun to keep amusement up. The cast, though possessed of little to no actual ability deliver their dialogue with gusto, frequent trash flier Geretta Giancarlo Field puts on a cool tough gal schtick, Haven Tyler is a reasonably appealing Ripley stand-in and Christopher Ahrens appropriately cold and crooked. Its all conducted with enough enthusiasm to keep the thing just about watchable even though currents of tedium snake through most of the runtime, and there's a depressing vibe to the smoky factory setting and lighting scheme of mostly blue, blueish green or on occasion deep red. The lack of any gore is a substantial minus as well, though after a while I got used to it. Altogether I can't possibly recommend this to anyone who isn't cursed to watch every available Bruno Mattei film, but for those that have to it's better than a poke in the eye with a wet stick. 4/10 from me, but a sympathetic 4/10

OK, so I'm not quite a full-time professional critic just yet, dabbled in a few tomes that I hope to peddle, worked as a Mac games journalist for a couple years & then did some freelance writing for a couple other computer geek oriented websites. You know, big deal. But I do pride myself at being able to maintain at least the appearance of having a professional demeanor when it comes to writing about movies or whatever, and one of the things I learned very quickly when reading other people's essays/comments was to avoid using expressions like THIS IS THE WORST MOVIE EVER MADE or EASILY THE WORST MOVIE EVER MADE. A good "THIS SUCKS" every once in a while is legit, since stuff either sucks or it rules.

Then I saw SHOCKING DARK (or ALIENATORS, as the version I saw was titled) and my view upon such things is shaken. There is an amazingly annoying movie called THE LEGEND OF BIGFOOT that is a fake documentary about a guy's search for Sasquatch that is actually a lot of idle nature photography edited together with vacation footage and then about ten minutes of staged Bigfoot related scenes, one or two of which actually show some schook dressed up like Bigfoot for about 8 seconds in total. At one point they use a rigid, posed, stuffed bear lying on it's side to simulate one of Bigfoot's victims. The most dramatic scene in the film is when a groundhog is hit by a car and it's frantic mate drags it into their hole before a hawk circling overhead can eat them.

THE LEGEND OF BIGFOOT is a better movie than SHOCKING DARK. JOHN Q. with Denzel Washington was a better movie than SHOCKING DARK. So was CROSSROADS with Britney Spears or even DOOM: THE MOVIE with The Rock, which bears a superficial resemblance to SHOCKING DARK. KID VENGEANCE is a better movie than SHOCKING DARK, and that is saying a lot. The science fiction films of Alfonso Brescia cannot even touch SHOCKING DARK's layers of utter awfulness. Larry Buchanan's ZONTAR - THING FROM VENUS is a cerebral masterpiece by comparison. MEGAFORCE is a better movie. GYMKATA is a better movie. They are silly, goofy, clumsy, cheesy, and hopelessly derivative, but they have the distinction of being watchable.

I will let others describe the plot: SHOCKING DARK is in many ways like Mattei's far superior (and highly equally stupid) ROBOWAR: It is a collage, a pastiche of moments, lines, specific incidents, plot ideas, individual shots and even the same title as other movies. They are turned on their side, mixed up, jumbled, re-arranged, given slightly different names, and re-assembled into a narrative that serves no point, tells no story, and exists as a collection of 90 second interludes that all segue into each other and are edited together to take on the appearance of a movie. I will admit that the *LOOK* of the film is pretty polished: they found some sort of a huge power plant, hung up a bunch of neon lights, dressed a mob of clowns up like the Power Rangers, and have them scuttling about pretending to be various cast members of ALIENS, PREDATOR, FULL METAL JACKET, ROBOCOP, PLATOON and THE TERMINATOR. If you watch the movie with the sound off it is actually rather impressive looking at times. But if you listen to what the people are saying it is so close to so many other movies we have seen so many times -- but just awkwardly different enough to avoid a lawsuit -- that it is disorienting and annoying. You want to fix it, or straighten the mess out so that it retains the original form Mattei was basing his film on. Sadly, art doesn't work like that and the result is a colossal annoyance.

The only analogy I can make is to sitting in the crowded waiting room of a doctor you don't particularly enjoy seeing, seated directly across from a really awful mail-order art print that has been framed, hung on the wall, and apparently brushed against by someone so that it's not hanging perfectly square. You sit in this chair and stare at this schwag art print and the only thing you can think of is how many other things you could be doing at that moment, and how pathetic that picture looks hanging there crooked. But since it isn't your picture in your office and there are other people present all you can do is sit there and suffer, waiting to be called for your turn. And then when you go back again the next month, the stupid picture is still hanging in the same crooked way, and it is time to sit and wait and stare at it all over again. The exasperation of futility.

That is what watching SHOCKING DARK is like when viewed the same way one would watch any other movie. My advice is to not do so, listen to some tunes or something, and that's why this is such a great party movie. It's awful, but if you need random cool looking images with violence and explosions while some Ozzy blares, this should be your first pick. Anyone else will need blood pressure medication before the thing is even half over: THE MOST ANNOYING MOVIE EVER MADE. There, I said it.

3/10