Terminator 2: Shocking Dark (1990)

No, your eyes are not deceiving you and no, I have not finally gone off the deep end (though I very well could have after this); the title of my review today refers to a Terminator movie with a subtitle you've never heard of, released a full year before Terminator 2: Judgment Day came out...which was the actual sequel to the Terminator we all know and love (circa 1984, James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger...you know the one).

Alas, this movie has none of those three things. What it does have, though, is the main reason I'm devoting any time at all to my writing of it at present. And that thing is its director, Bruno Mattei.

Bruno, you see, was an Italian director of over fifty movies, all of which have at least one alternate name. For instance, Mattei's 1980 film Virus is also known as Apocalipsis caníbal, Hell of the Living Dead, Inferno dei morti viventi, Night of the Zombies, Zombi 5: Ultimate Nightmare, Zombie Creeping Flesh and Zombie Inferno.

...not that this has anything to do with our present movie, but it does give you an idea what to expect from a director of Mattei's stature. He was what we in the States call a hack; that is, a ripoff artist of the highest order. Bruno Mattei was to Italian cinema what Uwe Boll is to... whatever country's cinema Boll is from.

Anyway, back to Mattei: most of his films have been zombie films. Quite the popular genre in Italy and most of what Mattei's repetoire consists of. Again, this has nothing to do with Terminator 2: Shocking Dark, because this film deals with...aliens.

Yes, aliens.

In fact, it deals with Aliens, the 1986 James Cameron sequel to the classic 1979 film Alien. And once again, you've missed nothing - it just so happens that Mattei made a sequel to one movie while titling it and packaging it as an altogether different sequel, which it is not actually a sequel to but a ripoff of, and also goes by such names as Alienators and Contaminator.

Confused?

Oh, but I haven't even begun explaining the plot yet.

(deep breath)

In an undisclosed future time, Venice, Italy has become extremely polluted and uninhabitable, save for the underground catacombs of a huge scientific research facility based therein. The scientists and researchers in this facility have it worse than you may think, however, since they are being chased and killed by aliens.

In their underground base. On Earth.

Mmm-hmm.

Some of the people even shoot and kill each other, which just goes to prove why they are scientists and not soldiers. This does not sit well with the para-military types watching the carnage on monitors from somewhere else. Where? Who knows? They may even be in the room across from where all this is happening for all this stupid movie cares. Be that as it may, the key to finding out what went wrong is in the diary of one of the scientists at the lab, so one of the non-underground scientists, a lady named Sara (Haven Tyler) is set to go and retrieve said diary from across the hall...I mean, from Venice.

Sorry.

But she won't be alone, because helping her will be Sam "Not the Director" Fuller (Christopher Ahrens), a representative of the Tubular Corporation; which is some kind of partnership with the scientific....

I'm sorry, I had to stop the review a sec to comment on this: TUBULAR CORPORATION? So, in the future, Valley Girls are head of all facets of the corporate level of business? More reason than ever to drop the bomb, I suppose. Either that or celebrate the election of President Moon Unit Zappa.

Okay, let's continue - Sam is going along with Sara and so are a platoon of gung-ho space soldiers known as Megaforce. Sadly, Barry Bostwick is nowhere to be found (not that he was too busy at the time, I'm sure); these are this movie's version of space marines, save for the fact that they dress like extras from "Battlestar: Galactica", circa 1978 or backup dancers for Donna Summer around the same time. And their leader? A tough-as-nails woman named Koster (Geretta Giancarlo Field) who bugs her eyes out, yells at everyone, insults each member of her team in terms of masculinity and/or race and is generally an embarrassment to the name Megaforce - if such a thing can possibly be. If Barry couldn't do it....

So they reach Venice, they sneak into the catacombs of the lab and, aside from the smoke and sparks and aliens that look like guys in T-Rex masks and seaweed suits, the surroundings will remind the well-seasoned viewer (like me) of the spaceship interiors in Space Mutiny (any viewer of the late-lamented "Mystery Science Theater 3000" knows where I'm coming from - bless you).

They also find one of the scientists, Drake (Clive Riche), who has gone bye-bye to Crazy Town and rants and raves about the aliens and how they're all doomed. He does this, however, in the most annoyingly loud way possible, suggesting a psychotic sing-songy 12 year-old...or Daffy Duck, maybe. He is only around a little while before disappearing without any explanation or reappearance later, which was fine by me, but just more than a little inconclusive, character-wise. Of course in a movie like Terminator 2: Shocking Dark, that's not just inattentive scripting, it's a literal film motif.

Right now, Aliens is being ripped off right and left in scenes involving motion detectors, cocooned humans, soldiers getting picked off one by one by marauding alien creatures, key Aliens speeches are practically ripped out of the original and placed, kicking and screaming, into this film..and there's even the eventual turncoat in their midst.

And Sara (remember her?) even picks up a small child named... no, not Newt... Samantha (Dominica Coulson). Of course, when I say small child, I mean late-age teenager. How cheap does a movie have to be when they can't even afford to get a small child for a movie? Were they afraid she would upstage the other "actors"? And Samantha exists solely to get lost, be imperiled and shout Sara's name roughly 80-100 times throughout the film.

At about the 2/3 mark, the average viewer will find themselves yelling at the screen something along the lines of...oh, I dunno:

Where the hell are the damn Terminators??!!

Never fear, dear viewer, because the terminator of the title does appear, in about the most arbitrary way possible, with dialogue that will clearly make his character a complete 180 of what he was originally but also about 5000 brain cells short of a human IQ. He chases Sara and Samantha through the steam and sparks, gets shot at and electrocuted then pops back for more fun.

And so it goes, leading to a conclusion (or two or three) that would be exciting if they had happened in a better movie.

Mattei and his writer and longtime collaborator Claudio Fragasso seem to have faked it as long as they possibly could, figuring ripping off from one James Cameron movie was just as good as ripping off from another completely different James Cameron movie. It was when they joined Part One to Part Two that everything went to hell in a hand basket.

The acting is something that must be commented on; in the fact that there is NO acting in this film. Not one competent actor emerges from this mess. Mattei apparently recruited all the aspiring actors hanging around a rehearsal hall for their umpteenth callback for that One Big Break when he decided to give them the break they were waiting for. Unfortunately, he cast them in parts that were far larger than they could handle (i.e. - larger than background players). There is an astounding amount of either overacting or non-acting on display here. More competent talent can be found at your child's preschool talent show.

The special effects are neither special nor are they effective. Slimy green seaweed monsters as aliens, green fiberglass insulation for alien cocoons, a Fisher Price My First Calculator for a futuristic hand-held ship control and clothing of the future straight from a Halloween closeout at Spencer Gifts.

Everyone involved with Terminator 2: Shocking Dark should be ashamed. But not for ripping off Terminator...or even Aliens, for that matter. What they need to feel shame for is the fact that they just didn't care. Films with far-smaller budgets and less FX are more exciting and feel like they come from people who were excited about what they did and why they were doing it. THIS movie feels like everyone involved couldn't wait to finish what they were doing and get outta Dodge, as it were.

Get the filming done quick, say your stupid dialogue, splice in the cheap effect and yell cut, Bruno. We gotta set up the next scene before lunch. And you; the guy in the alien outfit: open your mouth a little wider, we can't see the teeth under that slimy stuff hanging off your head. What...you can't open it wider? Oh forget it, then, just do your best; we'll fix it in post-production...ready? ACTION!!

I would recommend watching Terminator 2: Shocking Dark just for anyone who is ready to experience a film that is, in all honesty, a product of a pre-occupied mind. Neither writer Fragasso nor director Mattei seemed to be "all there" - this movie was filmed and produced and canned and sent to theaters...but there seemed to be no one steering this ship. They just let it sail headlong into the sandbar and crunch to a halt.

Of course, Mattei seems to be a man who's beached a lot of ships in his time.

In ending, I noticed that there's been a few more analogies in this review than in any of my others. Guess that's just my way of trying to explain to the layman an experience that is altogether inexplicable.

And I guess that is the best word to use to describe to the layman the experience that is Terminator 2: Shocking Dark.

Inexplicable.

(NOTE: In the process of looking it up out of morbid curiosity, I've noticed that there are actually eight or so Tubular Corporations in the United States and the Caribbean. EIGHT. On one search results page. Now, I think we'd better keep our eyes on Moon Unit Zappa.)