Bruno Mattei’s Illegal Terminator II and Aliens Clone
Prepare to inhale the toxic, putrid vapors of a flooded post-apocalyptic Venice and descend into the glorious, shameless plagiaristic depths of Bruno Mattei’s Shocking Dark (1989). In a crumbling future where a lethal, yellow-hued chemical cloud has forced humanity underground, survival is governed by a singular, wet-and-grimy tagline: “Deep under the dead canals of Venice, the ultimate terror is waiting!” The narrative engine is ignited when the multi-national Tubular Corporation sends a heavily-armed “Mega-Force” unit of space-marine knock-offs into the Venice tunnels to investigate a biological disaster and retrieve a lost scientific team. Accompanied by a civilian specialist named Sara and a mute, traumatized orphan girl they find in the tunnels, the soldiers soon discover they are being hunted by flesh-melting, acid-spitting aquatic monsters. The story arc takes a manic, whiplash-inducing turn in the third act when the film abruptly abandons its carbon-copy imitation of James Cameron’s Aliens (1986) to transform into a carbon-copy imitation of James Cameron’s The Terminator (1984), revealing that one of their corporate companions is actually a homicidal cyborg.
The steering wheel of this magnificent, copyright-defying monstrosity is manned by director Bruno Mattei, operating under his favorite pseudonym Vincent Dawn, a legendary Italian schlock-maestro who specialized in rapidly assembling low-budget exploitation features like Hell of the Living Dead (1980) and Rats: Night of Terror (1984). Cristiana Liguori stars as the Ripley-esque heroine Sara, bringing a look of persistent, sweat-shined exhaustion to her role before appearing in other late-stage Italian genre efforts. She is flanked by the charismatic cult favorite Geretta Geretta, credited as Geretta Fields, who delivers a wonderfully aggressive, cigar-chomping performance as the tough marine Koster after her standout roles in Lamberto Bava‘s Demons (1985) and the sci-fi actioner Rats: Night of Terror (1984). Tony Lombardo plays the corporate antagonist Drake, while Clive Riche rounds out the cast as the frantic, double-crossing Samuel Fuller. Behind the lens, the script by Claudio Fragasso—the notorious mastermind behind Troll 2 (1990)—keeps the dialogue as delightfully clunky as humanly possible, while a bombastic, synthesizer-heavy score by Al Fiesta tries to inject blockbuster energy into a Rome warehouse dressed up as a Venetian sewer.
Nearly four decades since it first confused European video rental customers—frequently masquerading under the highly illegal title Terminator II—Shocking Dark holds an absolute, iron-clad legendary status in the pantheon of Italian exploitation cinema. Far from a lazy cash-in, this film is celebrated by midnight-movie purists as a magnificent, almost avant-garde exercise in cinematic audacity, famously lifting entire blocks of James Cameron’s screenplay, dialogue, and character archetypes word-for-word. It remains an essential cult classic for its sheer, uncompromising lack of shame, translating massive big-budget Hollywood set-pieces into low-rent corridor chases filled with bubble-wrap monsters and flashing red emergency lights. Today, it stands as a spectacular, hilarious, and adrenaline-fueled monument to the wild-west era of international video store shelves, proving that with enough cheek, a smoke machine, and a complete disregard for copyright law, you can build a sci-fi double-feature clone that is utterly impossible to forget.
