Bruno Mattei’s Shocking Dark is a 1989 Italian rip-off of Aliens (and to a lesser extent The Terminator). In fact it was at one point released as Terminator II (a decision made by the producers without consulting the director or the writers).
There was nothing new about Italian film-makers ripping off popular movies. In the 70s they made lots of Exorcist rip-offs. And later some Star Wars rip-offs. But Shocking Dark is something new. It doesn’t just borrow ideas from other movies. Most of the movie is pretty much an exact copy of Aliens.
This movie doesn’t even pretend to be an homage to other movies. It’s more like grand larceny.
Of course the problem with exactly copying another movie is that once the audience figures out that that is what you are doing (and in this case it’s obvious by the time you’re a few minutes into the film) then they can pretty much predict everything that is going to happen. That is a problem here but it does get solved towards the end of the movie when the plot finally stops slavishly copying the plot of Aliens. This is the point at which one finally realises that this is also a rip-off of The Terminator, and also of the original Alien.
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The setting at least is different, and it’s interesting. It all takes place in a vast complex of tunnels beneath the city of Venice. This is some time in the future when the lagoon has become so toxic that the city is entirely a dead city and has been evacuated.
The complex beneath the city was constructed by the Tubular Corporation. It was part of a plan to restore the city to life.
There are still a few people alive in the city. There’s a small team of scientists under Dr Raphelson working in that underground complex. But something has gone very wrong. Garbled bizarre distress calls have been picked up from Dr Raphelson’s party.
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A team of crack soldiers from the Megaforce is dispatched on a rescue mission. They’re more or less like the Space Marines of Aliens. The team includes Private Koster, who is exactly like Private Vasquez in Aliens except she’s black rather than a Latina. But apart from that she’s a carbon copy of Vasquez.
Accompanying the Megaforce team is scientist Sara (this movie’s equivalent of Ripley) and a representative of the Tubular Corporation, Samuel Fuller (the equivalent of Burke in Aliens).
Naturally the Megaforce squad encounters monsters. They’re just like the monsters in Aliens, except they’re not aliens. But they operate the same way.
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And naturally there’s a little girl to be rescued, Samantha (the equivalent of Aliens’ Newt).
Of course the Megaforce squad gets badly mangled by the monsters. They do however discover where those monsters came from. At which point the movie starts to depart from the Aliens template, and the Terminator angle finally kicks in. Sara and Samantha face a race against time, rather as Ripley faced in Alien.
Of course the special effects are not on par with Aliens, but they’re not too bad apart from the monsters which are very cheesy. The movie looks more impressive than you might expect considering it would have made for a tiny fraction of the budget that James Cameron had.
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A lot of the scenes were shot underneath a railway station and in a semi-abandoned nuclear power plant. They’re good settings and they’re used well. The action scenes are exciting.
Severin’s DVD release (they’ve put it out on Blu-Ray as well) offers a good transfer with a few extras.
While it’s basically a stew composed of elements from three big-budget movies it all comes together in a reasonably entertaining way. Not a great movie by any means but if you have plenty of beer and popcorn on hand it’s recommended.