Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

I love watching horror movies. Good, bad, it doesn't matter. It is rare indeed that you find a horror movie that is so bad you can't watch it through to the end. Don't worry, I'm not writing about one of those. Instead this review is for the Severin release of SHOCKING DARK, a movie made in Italy by folks that obviously went to the movies.Let's just say up front that this movie is a complete rip-off of ALIENS with a touch of THE TERMINATOR thrown in for good measure. More than that, it's a rip-off of those movies with a budget that may have matched a days' worth of catering on the real films. Yes, it is low low budget and it shows. Venice, Italy, has a waste problem in their canals. A company is called in with a method of cleaning the city up but something goes wrong and the city is laid to waste in waste. Worse yet a team of scientists who were there to start a new project cleaning the city have gone missing and all communications with them are down. The decision is made to send in the Marines. Not just any Marines but a group that call themselves Mega Force (no relation to the Megaforce group led by Barry Bostwick in the movie of the same name). The members of the Megaforce resemble the same team that was there in ALIENS, most notable Geretta Geretta as Koster who looks like Jenette Goldstein as Private Vasquez down to the near identical headband and Haven Tyler as Dr. Sara Drumbull who looks a lot like Sigourney Weaver as Ripley down to similar attire. The same blowhard camaraderie exists with this group as in the other film as well.The team is outfitted with the latest tech to help them do their job. Which while in the future looks exactly like the shotguns we have today. For protection they have what looks like plastic forearm covers held in place with elastic straps. They do have some fancy threads though with yellow puffed out pieces on their armpits. Once equipped they're sent in to find out what happened and to rescue the information found on site as well as any survivors. Going along for the ride is a humorless representative of the Tubular Corporation, the company responsible for the cleanup, named Fuller. The team doesn't want him along but has no choice. With all systems in the facility down, their only means of communication with the main base is radios. I did say this was in the future, right?Once in place things begin to go horribly wrong. It turns out those in the facility were exposed to a DNA agent that altered their physiology changing them into monstrous creatures that pop out of nowhere and begin killing off the Marines. Along the way they come across a young girl (can you say Newt ALIENS fan?), the daughter of the man left in charge who helps them access the computers. And eventually SPOILER ALERT we discover that Fuller is not there to do what he claimed and is actually a robotic agent working for Tubular. Shades of the Terminator!When released the movie came out in some places as TERMINATOR 2 and in others as ALIENATORS hoping to cash in on the success of those films the movie is not a tribute to either. Instead it is yet another movie made by director Bruno Mattei, the Italian director known for working in various exploitation genres and for basing many of his films on those already made. If you go in knowing this up front the odds of having fun with the movie greatly increase.So let me start with the good. To begin with Severin has done an amazing job with this movie, presenting it in the cleanest looking format possible, a hi-def blu-ray release scanned in 2k from the Director's cut negative discovered in a Rome lab vault that looks gorgeous for being such a low budget film. To be clear, the print is gorgeous not quite the movie itself. The use of locations and the monsters on view, what little we see of them, is pretty good considering this was before the days of CGI. And if you watch the film as more something worth laughing at than taking seriously it plays fairly well. The gore effects are small in quantity but not bad. Onto the bad and there is a lot of that. The acting here is some of the most horrendous you'll find. Lines are read as if they pulled people off the street to perform them. Even the leads are terrible here speaking lines like they're reading them from a page for the first time. When people yell excitedly you expect them to read that word as well like "Captain come here he said excitedly!" The sets, while looking good, look like someone had a friend who worked at a power plant who let them in the back door at night to shoot the movie. If someone told me these were sets made for the film I would demand they prove it. Scenes in the main base when they communicate via radio with the team sound like the man in charge saying his lines and someone off to the side yelling their responses back using a megaphone. Outdoor scenes have the Vaseline smeared lens look to them. The dialogue as written is lame. And the way they throw everything into the film from two others is hilarious. Another SPOILER ALERT. Near the end of the film Dr. Drumbull and the young girl find another room in the Venice facility that has a time machine they use to escape Fuller. Except ala the Terminator he goes back in time as well. That time machine gizmo was a pretty convenient item to have on hand at a genetics lab eh?Now, with all the bad I've just listed I have to say this. The movie is fun. No it's not Oscar material and probably not even worth qualifying for the Razzies since they focus on movies meant to be good. This one is another in a long line of Italian exploitation films made to make a buck by hanging onto the coattails of more successful films. They're fun and sometimes silly and sometimes referred to as Euro-trash flicks. They're movies meant to be watched and enjoyed and not taken too seriously. And for many they're movies now to sit at home and create drinking games around.I've noted before that there have been a huge number of movies made over the years and many have been lost due to zero effort to retain them in safe storage or having been neglected and falling prey to vinegar syndrome where they simply deteriorate. ALL films should be preserved in one format or another to be enjoyed or looked at from an historical aspect, no matter what the subject matter, quality or the fact that they were exploitative in nature. There are people who long to see those films again remembering them from their childhood having seen them as second features at drive-ins, on pay cable stations or on late night TV. Judos to Severin for taking the time to make this one a decent release rather than a slapped together DVD offering. They've even gone so far as to include a few extra items like TERMINATOR IN VENICE an interview with co-director/co-screenwriters Claudio Fragasso and co-screenwriter Rosella Drudi, ONCE UPON A TIME IN ITALY an interview with actress Geretta Geretta (who some will remember from the movie DEMONS and alternate Italian titles for the film. If you're a fan of Italian horror films, Eurotrash films, the films of Bruno Mattei or just all around fun horror movies that shouldn't be taken too seriously then you need to see this one. The fact that Severin made it so watchable just adds to this release. Watch it, know what you're going into beforehand and have some fun with it.

In the grim near future Venice, Italy has been reduced to a toxic polluted wasteland. After a team of researchers in Venice die under mysterious circumstances, a team of rough'n'tumble soldiers along with two civilians are sent in to investigate only to run afoul of deadly mutant monsters. Boy, does this deliciously dreadful doozy cover all the essential Grade Z low-rent schlock cinema bases with positively jaw-dropping ineptitude: We've got clunky (mis)direction by the notorious Bruno Mattei, tin-eared profane dialogue, obnoxious macho meathead characters, clumsily staged action sequences, a meandering story which unfolds at a plodding pace, cheap sets (the main underground lab location looks like an old, leaky, rundown factory -- and probably was exactly that!), hokey monsters, laughably lousy dubbing, a ridiculous surprise ending that comes totally out of left field, and, best of all, a shamelessly derivative script that steals wholesale from "Aliens" with a dash of "The Terminator" tossed in for extra tacky measure. The hilariously horrendous hammy overacting further provides a wealth of unintentional guffaws, with Geretta Gerretta as strutting abrasive mama Koster, Dominica Coulson as scared little girl Samantha, and Clive Riche as the unhinged Drake standing out as the all-time worst offenders. A complete cruddy hoot and a half.

Say what you will about Bruno Mattei, but the dude knows how to grab you from the first frame of travelogue footage!The film starts in a control room, where a bunch of dudes in grey and yellow futuristic jumpsuits watch a research base and most of Venice fall into chaos, as one guy keeps screaming that there are mutants everywhere. There are no survivors, just chunks of videotape that they watch.Basically, if this feels more like Aliens than the Terminator rip-off you were expecting, buckle up. While this movie was released as Terminator 2, Mattei and his cohorts Claudio Fragasso and Rossella Drudi, who activated their Wonder Twin powers of insanity to create Troll 2, refuse to stop at covering one film. Oh no - this movie is too strange for that.They decide to assemble a team - the Mega Force! - to investigate and they bring Sara, a scientist, along to find the diary that has the answers to this breakout. Samuel Fuller from the Tubular Corporation asks to come along, just like Bishop. The fact that two of the members of the team are Geretta Geretta and Tony Lombardo from Rats: Nights of Terror are all the reason I needed to purchase this. The even more amazing fact that Geretta is playing a tribute version of Vasquez from Aliens is the icing on this slice of exploitation tiramisu.Geretta's first line is "Alright you bunch of pussies, I'm back and I'm kicking ass!" Then, we watch one of the kinda sorta Space Marines on Operation: Delta Venice practice his nunchakus with his back to the camera. Come on dude - work the hard cam. Also: the Mega Force's base looks like a high school locker room. Also also: they are not Megaforce.There's a member of the Mega Force that has long blonde hair and wears Oakley glasses and a red bandana. I love him already. Geretta's character, Koster, then starts to yell about Italians being allowed on the mission and gets into a racially motivated fight with another crew member. Mega Force! Get it together!If you haven't picked it up yet, I love this movie. This is why I watch Italian low budget genre films all wrapped up in one messy package. The acting is either way too intense or has stilted line readings, sometimes within the same sentence. The costumes are laughable. And the action is everything you wish there was more of in other films without pesky things like character development and a plot to get in the way.Every time I worry that I'll never find a film like 2019: After the Fall of New York or 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Italian filmmakers surprise me with something wonderful. All you need are some vests, bike helmets and soccer pads and a fancy synth score and you have a futuristic army ready to do battle with whatever the hell the bad guys in this movie are.The Mega Force finds a bunch of people inside the alien eggs, but those people beg to be killed before grabbing and choking Koster. Soon, the aliens or mutants or whatever they are decide to throw people around and kill everything in their path. If you love movies where people fall to their deaths, this should be in your collection.If you thought there wouldn't be a Newt character, you aren't watching much Italian cinema. Yep - in the midst of all this craziness, a small child has survived.The best scene in the film has the soldiers all trapped in a room and the scientist vainly trying to open the door by pushing the left button. Clearly, there is a button on the right, too. She ignores this and keeps jamming the left button like someone trying to make the elevator get there faster. Finally, after screaming, monsters blowing up and much death, someone finally tells this brilliant scientist to just push the button on the right. This movie is awesome.I have learned many things from this movie. No matter what language you speak, your scream sounds pretty much universal. You can fire a Franchi SPAS-12 one-handed and accurately hit a target. And while I previously was taught that seaweed is really algae and algae helps provide much of the Earth's oxygen, in the world of this film this is not true. Basically - screw science!I wonder - was Samuel Fuller named for the director? Why is Venice the center of the world? And why, when I knew this was also called Terminator 2, was I so surprised and elated that the Bishop character was also a Terminator?Finally, the ending - if you think that they're not gonna get time travel somewhere in this wedding soup...just wow.If you come to a party at my house in the next few months, chances are that you will be forced to watch this movie while I scream like a maniac and laugh my ass off. You have no choice but to comply.

This movie is not actually a sequel to the 1984 James Cameron movie, but more or less a remake of Cameron's 1986 movie ALIENS. The major difference between this movie and Aliens is... well, almost nothing actually.The plot, lines of dialog, situations, etc. are all completely identical to those seen in ALIENS, such as the mischievous android who more or less plays the "Burke" role up until he gets damaged a bit, then he goes on a TERMINATOR-style rampage chasing after the woman and the young girl.The actual Aliens here are more like genetic mutations, and they don't really look that bad considering they're just guys in monster suits. Whatever they have to do with the plot is negligible since the movie seems to be more of a post-nuke film having to do with soldiers unlocking some government conspiracy deep in the bowels of a futuristic ruined Venice.The cast is uniformly awful, with several Americans (some with South African accents) in the cast who appear to have little or no prior acting experience, sort of the same situation with TROLL 2 or CRUEL JAWS where I think the production company just wheeled through K-mart asking people if they wanted to act in a film. Only Fausto Lombardi comes across as anything resembling good, though Chris Ahrens and Janna Ryan are pretty amusing bad movie veterans.The musical score for this picture I believe was liberated from a number of other 80's films, including Blade Runner and Miami Cops. Much of the footage (with the explosions, etc.) is taken from Mattei's earlier DOUBLE TARGET too.So bad is this film, in fact, that writer/co-director Claudio Fragasso refused to make any more movies with Mattei afterward - and that's saying a lot. I have to say that I enjoyed it to a certain extent, though it's more fun to wonder how they managed to avoid a lawsuit than it is to actually sit down and watch the movie in one sitting. A little too depressing and dull to be unintentionally funny - though it does certainly have its moments.