Shocking Dark (1990)

Bruno Mattei, the great Italian shlock master extraordinaire and expert of the low budget rip off brought us this fantastic piece of work that finally came overseas.  Shocking Dark must be a love letter to James Cameron, as the movie is Aliens meets Terminator.  Without any of budget, lots of bad dubbing, bad stereo types, and scenes copied directly from the American counterparts, the movie has no shame in being a blatant rip off. The movie was so much of a rip off, that it's original title was Terminator 2, and it never got a US release for the obvious reasons.  This film didn't get it's first US release until 2018 and released under it's more current and safer title Shocking Dark.  James Cameron would put out his own Terminator 2 only two years later after Bruno.... maybe James got some ideas from Bruno?

State of the art ultimate bad asses right here!

The movie takes place in a future Venice setting, where most of the city is now under water and all messed up and shit for reasons.  It's the future so like it's polluted as hell or something, whatever.  So it's some kind of no man's land now that is full of complex tunnel systems and such that are doing something for a powerful mega corporation.  Nothing seems to be that important but anyways a crew working under Venice have gone missing mysteriously, so it's time to send in the Mega Force!  Our bright yellow highlighted array of  "marines" are introduced in a macho locker room scene that is taken complete right out of James Cameron's Alien intro of the colonial marines, including the lead female "marine" who misquotes Vasquez's lines to her unruly male counterparts in the Mega Force.  My favorite new "marine" is the surfer Texan cowboy... guy.  But yea they all are jerks and hate each other, but are stuck having to work with the smart female scientist lady who is tagging along on the mission as a consultant...... man this is familiar.

The world of the future!  TUBE TECHNOLOGY!  This is what you will see for 95% of the movie.

So the Mega Force team enters the underground tunnels of Venice all tactical like and wearing mostly sports protectors as armor and all carrying super futuristic weapons... like shotguns.  That's about it really, they all got shotguns.  Not even fancy lights on em or anything like they at least tried to do in The Wraith to make the shot gun seem sci-fi-ish.  Anyways doesn't take too long for the "marines" to get picked off one by one by some really goofy looking mutant creatures who come out of the dark and whisk you away!  This usually involves a soldier walking past a well lit hallway and not noticing the giant guy in a monster suit standing right there, but yea they like come out of the walls man!  Wait what is that?  It's a kid!  Yep they even copied the whole discovery of Newt with a young girl found down in the sewers as a lone survivor who quickly takes to our lead protag who we shall call "Ripley", cause hell if I remember her name.

RIPLEY!!!  Get behind me not-Newt!

The movie is just one scene after another lifted straight out of Aliens.  So what does this have to do with Terminator and why was this sold as a sequel?  Well you get to that eventually, cause yes we do get knock off T-800 action as a surprise twist and the movie suddenly goes from mutant blasting action flick, to a chase film as the not-terminator chases down our leads through tunnel world.  The movie also somehow fits in time travel at the last minute to check it off the list I guess.

The movie is pure cheese, the amount of copying done in this without the budget is kinda endearing and makes it worth a watch.  You got lots of mutant killing, bad acting, funny dubbed voices, questionable special effects, but really I was entertained.  It's a bad movie no doubt, but it's shlocky fun made better because of how blatant of a rip off it is.  Lot of Italian and foreign fake sequels were made, but often it was just in title alone, like in my previous review of the Italian Alien 2 movie which had nothing to do with Alien.  This one has no shame though and I love it for that reason.

HR Giger clearly was not consulted.

One of the original posters.....

Hasta la pasta baby