“Mommy always said monsters don’t exist, but it’s not true.”

Justin’s rating: And yet you never see clones of The Postman for some reason

Justin’s review: Like any red-blooded movie fan who grew up in the ’80s, I’ve harbored a deep reverence for James Cameron’s early scifi epics. Yet as great as they are, I almost wish they hadn’t been made due to all of the incredibly awful and lazy ripoffs that litter the dregs of IMDb. Terminator clones. Aliens clones. And, in 1989’s Shocking Dark, a Terminator AND Aliens clone.

Medieval monks would whip their backs in penance for their sins. This is my version.

Fans of the infamous so-bad-it’s-good movie Troll 2 should sit up and pay attention, for Shocking Dark is also written by Italian plagiarist Claudio Fragasso. The film studio even had the audacity to release this as Terminator 2 overseas, which should tell you how subtle they’re being with this one.

It’s the bleak future, and Venice has been killed by grumpy seaweed and toxic clouds. We have to take the film’s word for this, as the only sign we see is a literal “OFF LIMITS” one slapped in front of a cheery Venician facade. I think I saw a tour group go past in the background.

A group of scientists doing sciencey stuff in the tunnels underneath this famously waterlogged city start dying from an unknown threat. So it’s up to MEGA-FORCE to check that situation out while looking at butch as possible. We’ve got Alpha Male #1, Alpha Male #2, Angry Sergeant #1, My Grandfather Fought for Mussolini #1 and #2, and Ellen Ripley. Oh, she has a character name, but let’s strip away the facade and call a Ripley a Ripley when we see one.

Oh, and they are joined by Fuller from “The Tubular Corporation,” which I think may have been founded by Bill S. Preston Esq. and Ted Theodore Logan. He’s sort of a mash-up of Burke and Bishop (spoiler: He becomes our terminator).

MEGA-FORCE moves very slowly through the one tunnel this movie had the budget to afford until a vague creature that it couldn’t afford occasionally pops out to grab someone. Along the way, Ripley befriends and shelters a young girl — we’ll call her “Salamander,” even though the movie calls her “Samantha.”

So on one hand, MEGA-FORCE has to contend with a murderous creature that webs its victims, on the other hand it’s got an unstoppable cyborg going haywire, and in the middle is a whole lot of annoying yelling for Samantha.

When you’re not identifying the latest cloned beat from a James Cameron movie, you’ll probably get a grin or two from the over-the-top line deliveries that come fast and frantic. Absolutely nobody is calm for the duration of the adventures underneath the city, and that’s how it should be.

Shocking Dark is a whole lot of enthusiastic if misplaced acting thrashing about in hopes of finding enough of a plot to justify a fake sequel status. It’s the sort of disaster that can only be made if you’re intentionally trying to create a different kind of bomb, if that makes sense. Which it probably doesn’t, but that’s what this movie does to your head.

Intermission!

• Let’s start with a tourism video for Venice
• “The seaweed is killing the oxygen in the waters.” I’m not sure that’s how seaweed works.
• “Venice is now Dead City.”
• When in mortal peril, it’s best to run up to a video monitor and simply scream for help for about five minutes until death catches up with you
• “It’s only right that this lady comes with us, she’s a scientist!”
• Fuller’s an expert in martial arts, so I hear
• OPERATION DELTA VENICE
• Random nunchuk twirling as mission prep
• Put a shirt on, dude
• Weird Italian racism in an Italian movie (“a small case of racial tension”)
• “Yeah, but they didn’t have the marines from the MEGA-FORCE!” [fist pump]
• I love crazy guy’s crazy talk. He deserved an Oscar for this. “You’re going to DIE, DIE, DIE.”
• Oh hey, now we got a bit of Invasion of the Body Snatchers screaming in here as well
• Ripley has the worst monotone declarations
• Hey, it’s the motion tracker. And the cocooning.
• “It’s practically DNA!”
• That’s a spiffy chunky laptop
• I love that the monster’s go-to move is just to grab someone and body toss them four stories over the rail
• The fact they call it “the Tubular plant” makes me laugh every time it’s mentioned