Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Shocking Dark

In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the shameless 1989 “Aliens” knock-off “Shocking Dark,” directed by Bruno Mattei and written by “Troll 2” scribes Rossella Drudi and Claudio Fragasso. (originally published 8/2/2024)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is
Rob Lamb and today we are re airing our episode
from eight to twenty twenty four. It is Shocking Dark.
This is a nineteen eighty nine Aliens knockoff from the
director of Troll two. So you're in for a fun
ride with this film, and we have a pretty fun
discussion about it as well. So strap in here we go.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
This is Rob Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And
today on Weird House Cinema we're going to be talking
about the nineteen eighty nine Aliens ripoff Shocking Dark, which
has got to be a new favorite for me. I've
never seen this before and it is top tier schlock.
This movie is It was such a good time.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
That's right, I mean, this is bad movie. Caviare from
the screenwriters behind Troll two and the director of such
films as Zombie three and Robo Wars.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
Singular rob or singular by my.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Mistake, Yes, Robo War. There was only ever one Robo War, but.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
They didn't yet have James Cameron to come along and
write Robo War with a dollar sign after it.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yeah, Yeah, this this one. I have to say, this
is a film that I actually absolutely has to be
seen to be believed. We we don't talk about bad
movies so much on Weird House. We're generally, you know,
very I would say, we're pretty forgiving. We're we're here
to lean into films and find find what works and

(01:51):
celebrate what works in a movie. Uh So, it may
have been a while since we watched something this schlocky, this,
but in its own way, this perfect because I think,
you know, one would be tempted to cast a film
like Shocking Dark as the mere antithesis of great filmmaking.
But I think you could also argue that this is

(02:13):
the reflected reverse image, and as such it's that same greatness.
It's just reversed, you know. It's Shocking Dark is stupendous,
and as such, I would argue it's more captivating than
most motion pictures. There's no lukewarm movie here to be
spat out and forgotten half finished. The experience, no matter what,

(02:33):
is going to be absolutely memorable.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
I totally agree with that this is not a middle
of the road boring hack exercise. This is a jewel
of badness. It's the kind of badness that takes on
a form of genius. Like other other films of this
caliber we've talked about before, like troll To, like Plan
nine from Outer Space, like Highlander two. In many ways, yeah,

(02:59):
I think it's right up there. This movie is so pleasurable,
and I think there will be a bunch of reasons
that we can get into. Some are harder to describe
than others, but we'll try to sort of lay out
a roadmap of the pleasures on offer here. But first,
since this movie is widely acknowledged to be a shameless

(03:21):
ripoff of at least one James Cameron movie, actually two
two James Cameron movies, I thought we should try to
place it within a kind of taxonomy of different ways
a movie can be thought of as a copycat or
a ripoff. All right, So, the first way I want
to think of a movie being a knockoff is the

(03:41):
marketing clone. And in this case, the actual substance of
the movie may have nothing to do with the film
that's being copied, but the market facing information about the film,
such as title poster or trailer tries to make the
movie seem related we did two, or identical to another

(04:02):
more successful movie. And there are actually a few different
ways you can do this. One example is sequels in
name only. An instance here is Troll two, which is
connected to the very same creators of Shocking Dark. Troll
two had nothing to do with the movie called Troll.
Movies like this are in neither form nor function actual

(04:24):
sequels to the original. They just illicitly slap a title
on there, like Zombie two or Terminator two. In this case,
they put it on the poster without permission and they
opened the box office.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, and so like with this film, this film was
apparently shot as Shocking Dark, and it was a producer
level choice to then try and sell it as Terminator too.
So I think if everyone involved in making the film
realize like that was that was maybe even a step
step too far. You're not just not it's one thing

(04:58):
to call your film troll too, but to go after
to go in the wake of Terminators. They're like, hey,
here it is Terminator too. I know there's another Terminator
too coming out in a few months. I'm not going
to say anything about that one, But why don't you
buy this?

Speaker 3 (05:11):
Yeah. Another way you can have a marketing clone is mockbusters,
movies that you know, as far as I can tell,
are trying to confuse people into buying the wrong DVD.
These were very popular in the late two thousands and
the twenty tens. So imagine a movie called trans Morphers
with DVD box art that looks very similar to Michael

(05:32):
Bay's Transformers. You can think of other examples like Atlantic
Rim and The Da Vinci Treasure. These movies may or
may not be similar to the target blockbuster in terms
of plot, character, or style. The point is that they
can be hard to tell apart before you watch them.
They're hard to tell apart like at the store, especially

(05:54):
maybe to like a grandparent buying a DC for their
grandchild or something.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
So that's a kind of crass way you can approach
trying to steal the artistic or entertainment credibility of another film.
Another way you can have something that could be thought
of as a knockoff is the premise lifter. A lot
of copycat movies are like this, and I think it's
one of the most benign forms of copying in storytelling.

(06:22):
In this type of movie. You take the basic premise
or elevator pitch of a pre existing movie, but then
you take it in your own direction. So, for example,
a premise clone of the original Terminator might be a
movie about a killer robot that is transported from a
dystopian future back to the present to carry out a mission.
So you could have the same setup as the Terminator,

(06:44):
or at least the same setup as far as you know,
as far as it would sound in a sentence long pitch.
But then maybe the plot and the characters and execution
could be totally different. And there are even some quite
good movies in this category. I think a fresh take
on a familiar premise can be exciting and sometimes can
even be great art. Lots of examples of this category

(07:05):
don't even feel like copying. They might just be variations
on a theme or further exploring a new niche subgenre
in the example of Terminator. At this point, does Dangerous
Robot from the Future even really belong to James Cameron?
Or is that more just kind of a very specific
subgenre of sci fi?

Speaker 1 (07:25):
Yeah, yeah, I would agree.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
Now, another way a movie might be thought of as
a copycat is what I would call the vibe repeater.
A lot of Star Wars copycats are in this category.
They don't exactly lift all that much directly from Star
Wars in terms of semantic plot content, but instead they're
trying to copy, like the texture and the feeling of

(07:48):
Star Wars. So it's more the world, the ensemble, the
look and sound, the emotional range, and so forth. So
in the case of Star Wars vibe repeaters, you'd usually
get some kind of swashbuckling space adventure with a cast
of zany characters and morphologically diverse aliens, droids, bad guys

(08:08):
in scary helmets, rebels fighting against the odds, space battles, mysticism,
and things like that. So these movies try to copy
the texture and the feeling of another movie that's been successful,
more so than explicit details of the story or explicit
designs or anything like that.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
Yeah, and a lot of the times, a lot of
the time it falls flat. To be honest, I guess
it depends on what you're copying. Like I would say,
in general, I've never seen a Star Wars vibe repeater
that gets the job done. But if I were to
look at say the various conan the Barbarian inspired movies. Okay,
certainly none of them are on the level of Conan

(08:52):
in terms of cinematic quality, but like the general vibe
might be there. It's like, all right, you know, muscle
Barbarians and some of the similar or themes might be exploring.
It can work kind of like some of your better
mad macs of vibe repeaters can essentially get the job done.

Speaker 3 (09:08):
I agree, yeah, yeah, okay, And then the final category
I would talk about is just the all out ripoff,
and this is the territory we're in with Shocking Dark.
Shocking Dark is indeed a marketing clone of Terminator. Specifically,
it is a sequel in name only that uses a
poster that looks exactly like the poster for Terminator. It

(09:30):
is both a premise lifter and a vibe repeater of Aliens.
It's taking the basic plot pitch, and it's also trying
to copy a lot of the texture and feeling of Aliens.
But it goes beyond any of these categories into outright
reproducing whole characters, situations, and scenes from Aliens, but with

(09:52):
a much lower budget and less finesse in terms of acting, writing, sets,
costumes and effects, and so it's actually a a pretty
interesting question to me. Why would you want to do that?
I can understand, I think all of the other categories,
Like I understand the mercenary money making appeal of the
marketing clone that is a cash grab. I understand the

(10:15):
creative appeal of taking a crack at a story premise
that has been done before, but doing it your own way.
It can be fun to work out your own unique
version of an idea. I understand wanting to capture the
vibes of a movie that you liked in the past,
but just do something different with it, you know, so
create a similar feeling that you have enjoyed yourself. But

(10:36):
I don't quite understand what is the appeal of just
taking the scene from Aliens where Burke leaves the face
hugger in the room with Ripley and Newt and reproducing
it essentially the same but less well within another movie.
That is a head scratcher for me.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
Yeah, I mean, my only guess is that it basically
comes down to, like a producer level understand or misunderstanding
of what cinema is, you know, where it's just about
the cash grap It's not about what emotions the movie
can summon. It's not about the stories they can tell.
It's just like, how much money can we make tomorrow

(11:13):
using the limited resources we have today?

Speaker 3 (11:16):
But I don't even understand, So, like, what kind of
appeal do you think you're gonna sell more movie tickets
if you have a scene in your movie it's the
same as a scene from the other movie that made money,
do you know what I mean? Like, I don't even
know how that you think that translates into getting people
into the theaters or getting people to rented?

Speaker 1 (11:37):
Yeah, I mean, I can only assume it was just
kind of a product of the time, right. It must
have worked, right because they did it all the time
in B and C budget tali in cinema.

Speaker 3 (11:49):
Yeah, I guess so. But by the way, I don't
mean to say any of this to detegrate the experience
of Shocking Dark, because despite what you might regard as
it's creator of failures or crimes, it is an absolutely
brain melting good time. I can't recommend this movie enough
to people who like schlock movies.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
Absolutely, this is definitely so bad it's good territory. I
couldn't I couldn't get my wife to watch it. She
was like, she kind of scratched her head with why
I would watch this in full. But if you enjoy bad,
schlocky movies, movies that are very rough around the edges,
then Shocking Dark is the film for you.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
It feels like a movie built entirely out of first takes.
There are parts where actors literally screw up their lines
and then correct themselves, or they like miss a cue
and leave a long awkward pause before responding to someone
and just leave it in. That's in the movie.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
Yeah. We'll get into some specific examples of this too,
where it's just kind of like the camera's rolling, we're
gonna get what we're gonna get, and yeah, it's in
the movie.

Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yeah, I love it. And then there are otherwise where
it's just hard to describe what is so funny and
pleasing about it. You just have to see it for yourself.
It's a lot of little details about timing, editing, framing,
line delivery that are difficult to translate into words, but
you should see this once again. It is top shelf
shlock all.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
Right, I have a quick elevator pitch, and I think
you have a longer one, but mine is simply we
have Aliens at Home. This movie of Aliens at Home.

Speaker 3 (13:22):
Yes, it's like what if aliens? But instead of a
terraforming colony on LV four twenty six, it's tunnels allegedly
underneath Venus. Does that even make sense to have tunnels
underneath Venics sounds like a flooding risk, But okay, So
it's tunnels underneath Venice, the city of Venice in Italy.
And then instead of colonial marines, you've got the Mega Force.

(13:46):
More on them later. And then instead of xenomorphs, you've
got bug eyed ooze hippos. And then instead of Whale
and you Tawni, you have the Tubular Corporation. And instead
of James Cameron, you have the guys who troll to
and robo war.

Speaker 1 (14:03):
All right, let's go ahead and just listen to a
little bit of the trailer audio for Shocking Dark.

Speaker 4 (14:12):
They thought they were fighting only against aliens. They were
sure that they had won their battle, but they were mistaken.

(14:37):
Shocking Dark ferocious, indestructible, ruthless terminator, shocking starm.

Speaker 3 (15:10):
Hey, there, this is Joe with an insert from the future.
After we finished recording the episode, just thought back about
how Shocking Dark has a pretty unbelievable plot twist in
the last fifteen minutes or so, and we end up
talking about it without much warning in the episode. So
if you want to see the movie without having a
pretty bizarre surprise spoiled for you, you should watch it before

(15:31):
listening further. That's all.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
All right. So at this point in the podcast, you
might be wondering, all right, how can I see Shocking Dark? Then? Well,
Shocking Dark did not receive a proper release in the
US for a very long time, I think, for some
obvious reasons. But in twenty eighteen, the excellent Severn Films
put out the definitive Blu Ray edition, scanned in two
K from the director's cut negative discovered in a Rome

(15:57):
Lab vault. Plus, there are there a couple of fun
extras on the disc that I'll reference later. You can
buy this in most places, but you can also get
it off their website severin dot com. They do great releases.
In general, Shocking Dark is probably a film where you
can get by seeing it in a grungy format, but
I still think it's worth seeing in the best quality available.

(16:18):
I know that some of the streams you'll find out
there are on the official services that offer them. These
are also the Severin restoration, or at least you know,
the restoration that Severin films used in their release. Okay,
this is what I watched. I rented it from Video
Drum here in Atlanta.

Speaker 3 (16:35):
I am soon to own a disc of this, but
I watched a stream of it that was available through
I think scream Box, and it looked good.

Speaker 1 (16:42):
Yeah, I bet it's the same restoration, because it is
worth stressing that it's a film with some things that
I think are worth seeing in high detail. The locations
they used and the I think one set that they
utilized late in the film. I think these are great.
I enjoyed seeing them, these performances, you know, respect the

(17:04):
actors involved here and see them in the highest format possible.
All right, let's talk about the people who made it.
The director's chair occupied by Bruno matte who of nineteen

(17:24):
thirty one through two thousand and seven Italian director of
B movies, exploitation films, and yes, shameless knockoffs. His story
is pretty endearing in a number of ways. Though his
father owned a film editing studio, so he grew up,
you know, in and around the business, and he has
various technical credits to go all the way back to
the Night to the early fifties. In sixty nine and seventy,

(17:48):
he worked as an editor on two Jess Franco films,
ninety nine Women and Count Dracula. That's the one that
had Christopher Lee in it with a mustache, and he
apparently did some uncredited directing on ninety nine Women. After this,
he directed a string of Italian sex comedies and exploitation
films leading up to nineteen eighties Hell of the Living Dead,

(18:09):
a Dawn of the Dead inspired zombie film featuring a
score by Goblin. Oh wow, Yeah, Now, don't be mistaken.
All of the exploitation projects continued in the background here.
But he also followed this up with eighty three's The
Seven Magnificent Gladiators, which starred Luf Forigno and Sybil Danning,
who guests were also in a Hercules movie that we watched,

(18:31):
and Brad Harris so I think was also in that
Hercules movie.

Speaker 3 (18:34):
Wait, they're trying to get some Magnificent seven juice into
the title of this gladiator. Is this a future Gladiators movie?

Speaker 1 (18:43):
Ooh, that's a great question, I would say, given the timeframe.
There's like a seventy five percent chance that it takes
place in a post apocalyptic future. But I don't know.
This could be This could be a Sword and Sandals picture.
I mean, he does have Luf Rigno in it, so
come the Hercules connection.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
He could be a Roman gladiator or he could be
a cyber gladiator. Both makes sense.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
There's also eighty four's Rats Night of Terror that is
a post apocalyptic film with like Rats overrunning a post
apocalyptic city. Great and I think they used decaying sets
from more exterior sets from Once upon a Time in
America for that one. And then there's eighty seven's Double Target.

(19:29):
This had Miles O'Keefe in it, and Donald Pleasants.

Speaker 3 (19:31):
Is Miles O'Keefe the guy from Atour.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
Yes, okay? Eighty seven Scalps and Strike Commandos starring Reb Brown,
eighty eight Zombie three, the nineteen eighty eight Predator ripoff
Robo War starring Reb Brown.

Speaker 3 (19:45):
Oh, that's one of my favorites. I used to put
Robo War on when I was like hanging out with
my D and D friends. I'd put it on on
mute because something often silly looking was happening on screen.
But if you watch that one, I don't know if
that's fun to sit through the entire time, because it
gets rather monotonous. There's just a lot of like running
around in the jungle and stuff, but there are some
quite funny dialogue moments in it.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
The alien does not look as good as the predator
in our Predator franchise.

Speaker 3 (20:14):
I have to say, no, it does not. I would
say that the the monster costumes in Shocking Dark are
much better than the monster monster suits and designs in
the other Bruno Matte and Claudio Fergoso movies I've seen.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
Agreed, Agreed, We'll come back to those monsters in a bit.
But let's say, following Robo War, there's eighty eight Strike
Commando two, which has Richard Harris in it, and then
there's the nineteen ninety five Jaws knockoff, cruel Jaws and
much more.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
No nice jaws around here.

Speaker 1 (20:50):
Yeah, I guess by ninety five you got to come
up with new angles on your jaws knockoff. Anyway, what
your angle is that the shark is mean? Yeah, yeah,
he wouldn't mean enough. Further, it's just an animal now,
he's mean, Okay, so Mittea continued working in low budget
horror until his death in two thousand and seven, and
I've read that he was, you know, working pretty much
extensively in the Philippines by that time.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
I think Robo War was shot in the Philippines from what.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
It is a jungle movie, right, yeah, all right, Now
onto the screenwriters. It is the husband and wife duo
of Rosella Drudi and Claudio Fragasso. He was born in
fifty one. They also wrote nineteen nineties, often exceeded but
never equaled, Troll two, which was our second selection ever
for Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (21:35):
A classic for a reason.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
For Gaso's credited screenplays go back to around seventy four
and hers to nineteen eighty, but they frequently worked with
Bruno on such films as Hell as the Living Dead, Rats,
Night of Terror, Zombie three Strike, Commando two, and Robo War.
Now of their pictures, I've mainly just seen Troll two
and The Night Killer, as well as some behind the
scenes interviews with them, and it's always very interesting and

(22:02):
it always strikes me that they take their films very seriously.
So Troll two had aspirations of being a sort of cutting.
Critique of vegetarianism got them, and night Killer aspired to
be some sort of like serious psycho sexual thriller.

Speaker 3 (22:17):
In some respects, night Killer is very funny but also gross.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
Yeah, yeah, I can't. I can't recommend. I can't recommend
night Killer to the average film viewer. It's more of
it's a deeper cut. Yeah, But I was curious, Okay,
there's going to be an interview on this disc from Severn,
and I was like, what's their take going to be
on it? Are they going to be, you know, very
serious about it or are they going to be upfront
about it being a knockoff? It's more of the latter.

(22:43):
They stressed. The producers put a put some very strict
parameters on this project. It needed to be a combination
of Aliens and the Terminator, and it needed to use
character names from those films. So you have a Sarah,
for instance, in this.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
Picture, except she's the Ripley, right right, yeah, yeah, So
the Sarah Connor is the Ripley. And then there's a
Drake in it. Drake is one of the colonial marines
in Aliens, but instead they make him like a scientist
who has been driven insane by the monsters and like
has a scream from beyond space and time.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yeah, and they said that they actually pushed back as
much as they could, trying to inject some originality into
the script, but that neither they nor Bruno had any
control over the switch to the title Terminator too, when
the producer turned around and tried to sell it.

Speaker 3 (23:36):
Okay, I think maybe the direct copying of scenes from
Aliens makes more sense if like, these are just hired
guns and they are doing what the producers tell them
they have to do. Yeah, that makes sense. It's like
an order that is executed unthinkingly or maybe not unthinkingly
by the people executing it, but is given unthinkingly.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
Right, But then part of the creative exercise here becomes Okay,
it's one thing to say, rip off Aliens and Terminator,
but then how do you do it with such a
limited budget. You can't, So you have to make up
new stuff. Even if you didn't want to, even if
you wanted to save all of your creative juices for

(24:18):
the next project that you have more investment in, You're
gonna have to come up with something because you cannot.
You cannot reproduce Alien scene for scene, like you just
cannot do it.

Speaker 3 (24:27):
Absolutely not, though I've sort of already alluded to this,
but I think that the normally, when you're dealing with
the small budget, what you would expect to be the
weakest link in the movie is the technical realization, like
the you know, the special effects and the monster costumes
and the sets. But I don't think that is the
weakest link here. I think that is, you know, some

(24:48):
of the monster costumes kind of look okay, they're kind
of they're they're not as scary and realistic looking as
the xenomorph costumes, but they're fun, They're they're pretty good.
I mean, clearly we link here is like the script
and the acting and the human elements.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
I agree. Fergaso thought that the monster costumes were the
worst part, you know, like some of the atmosphere they created.
But yeah, I thought the monsters were fine. There are
other glaring problems here. Drew, for her part, said that
she didn't like the film, was slightly mystified that people
did like it, but was generally like glad that the
film made people happy, and she commented that there was

(25:25):
too much dialogue patting in the film, like they just
they had to they had to fill up a certain
amount of runtime, and you know, you can't just do
effects and shotgun blasts the whole time. You've got to
have some dialogue, and that there's too much of it.

Speaker 3 (25:39):
That's some of my favorite stuff in the movie, when
it feels like the actors are just ad libbing to
stretch out a scene. And yeah, oh, that's some of
the best stuff, especially costers stuff in that regard.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
Oh goodness, yes, I guess we'll get to hurt in
a minute. So anyway, the writers here, they seem to
have no illusions about the film. They're glad people liked it,
and they didn't disown it or anything, you know. So
it's a fun little interview. All right. Now, let's get
into the cast here. I'm going to start with really
our central protagonist here, our ripley, if you will. It

(26:14):
is the character Sarah, and she is played by Haven Tyler.

Speaker 3 (26:19):
You know she is I don't think anybody could say
she is a good actress in this movie, but she
is likably bad. Like I found her bad performance was endearing.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
This is Tyler's only acting credit. She was an American
college student studying abroad at the time and since she'd
done a little bit of modeling and she had in
the past done some school stage performances, she signed up
with a talent agency in Rome, which led to her
casting in this production. According to a twenty twenty one
interview with Fangoria magazine, this one was conducted by Michael Gengold.

(26:56):
Her audition was apparently just her screaming in a room,
and it's a really good interview. It's certainly worth worth
checking out for anyone interested in this picture. But she
reflects positively on the experience of making it, saying that
like most everyone was nice. The guy who oversaw the
munitions was really professional, which is something I have to
Amit is often on my mind these days when I

(27:17):
watch these older films with a bunch of guns in them,
I'm like, geez, I hope nobody was hurt or killed
making this. I hope they were. They were careful, So
it's always refreshing to hear something like that. I showed
my wife part of the movie and she observed that
Tyler bears a certain resemblance to contemporary actress Kate McKinnon. Ye,
she looks like yes, And of course the whole idea

(27:40):
was I think she was cass because she at least
vaguely to some degree, resembles Ripley. It looks like Sigourney Weaver.
I don't know sure why not.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
I'm trying to get there, but I don't quite see it.
But I respect that they tried, And you know what,
I feel like my judgment is going to continue because
now that I'm looking down the list of the other
actors we have to talk about, in almost every case,
I actually feel have the same judgment, which is likably bad,
not a good actor giving a very stiff, wooden performance.

(28:10):
But I like them a lot.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
Yeah, I mean really, you know, someone like Tyler. This
is her only film. Yeah, she've had very little experience.
This is a very green performance, but it's great, like
she gives it her all. It is perfect for this
film totally.

Speaker 3 (28:25):
And another person on that wavelength is the actor who
plays Fuller, the company man.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
Yes, Christopher Aarn's another American actor living in Italy at
the time. We haven't I don't think we've mentioned this,
but this is an Italian film, but all the dialogue
is in English. It was like shot in English, so
using a lot of American actors or Americans in general
that happened to be in Italy at the time. So

(28:51):
this guy's acting credits, though, stretch from nineteen eighty five
through around nineteen ninety nine. They include eighty eight Raiders
of the Magic Ivory, Anyone, Top Gun Knockoff with Aliens
and David Warner, Blue Tornado nineteen ninety one, is Beyond
Justice with Rudger Howard and Elliott Gould, and finally a
bit part A is a Goths soldier in the nineteen

(29:12):
ninety nine all star Julie Taymoor film Titus, produced in
part by Steve Bannett.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
Yeah, that's come up before. I don't remember him from Titus, though.

Speaker 1 (29:22):
I think it's a bit part you know, God Soldier
or God's Soldier Never Won or something, you know.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
Okay, So my read on this guy is that they
told him you are the bad guy, be mean, and
so in every single moment, every single line, every single
second that the camera is on him, he is sneering. Yeah,
he's just like. It is one of the most over

(29:47):
the top villain performances I've ever seen. I don't think
he ever cracks a smile.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
He is just like, Yeah, he's like every scene he's
making that. You know, sometimes you see people who's like
their idea for a headshot is they need to look
mean in all of them. They need to look like
like very stern and not smile. That's his whole vibe,
the whole picture.

Speaker 3 (30:09):
Yes, yeah, that's off to him.

Speaker 1 (30:12):
Yeah, it's a he commits the part. It's fun all right.
Now getting into the basically the Colonial Marines the picture
we have the character cost Her, and Costa is played
by Garretta Garetta born nineteen fifty eight.

Speaker 3 (30:28):
I love her. I can't literally like the moment when
she died in the movie, like halfway through I shouted
out loud. I was like, no, do not take her away?

Speaker 1 (30:39):
How can we finish the picture without her just jarring presence.
So she is an American model turned actor with a
number of notable credits from the world of Italian b cinema,
making her something of an icon and this part of
the world of cinema. Her credits include nineteen eighty three

(31:00):
He's Warrior of the Lost World and eighty three He's
twenty twenty Texas Gladiators, Fulci's Murder Rock from nineteen eighty four.
That one not that good. But not only for folci completists,
I think. But she's in that one. She's in Bruno's
Rats Night of Terror, and in nineteen eighty five she

(31:20):
appeared in Loberto Baba's Classic Demons, which is definitely worth
seeing if you're into just wild Italian horror movies of
this time period.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
Is Warrior of the Lost World, the one they did
on Mystery Science Theater that has mega weapon.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
Yes, I believe so. I think that's the one with
Donald Pleasants in it, right.

Speaker 3 (31:40):
That sounds right. A mega weapon from what I recall,
is like a dump truck that's got a little like
thing pooping out some flames from it.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
And yep, yep, that's the one. Fred Williamson's in it.

Speaker 3 (31:51):
Yeah. But to repeat the theme of actors who are
giving it, they're all who are giving a I don't know,
you you might not think of as a realistic dramatic performance,
but who are going over the top in ways that
make this movie so much fun. Bullseye Like Greta. Greta
is so much fun in this Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:13):
She has this kind of like unhinged green energy that
makes her just absolutely captivating to watch. Like we'll get
into the key scene here in a bit. But yeah,
anytime she is on on on screen, you're like, what
is she gonna say next? What is she gonna do?
And what choices is she gonna make in her acting?

Speaker 3 (32:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (32:33):
All right. We also have Foster Lombardi playing Frienzini, another
one of the Mega Force crew here the Marines here
born nineteen fifty five, Italian actor who credits include nineteen
eighty's Terror Express eighty two s Don't Look in the
Attic Rats Night of Terror, nineteen eighty nine's After Death
aka zombiefore. That one was directed by Claudio Fragasso and

(32:55):
written by Rosella Drudi, and he was also in Blue Tornado.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
Is this the guy who cost her yells at for
being Italian?

Speaker 1 (33:03):
Yes? Yeah, okay, all right. It can't be an alien's
ripoff without a newt ripoff and that is where the
character Samantha comes into play. Samantha was played by child
actress Dominica Colson, who was apparently eleven at the time
but looks quite a bit older on the screen. Judian
Fragoso points this out that she's almost as tall as

(33:26):
Tyler and these various scenes and I don't think everyone
was really happy with the way this ended up looking.
But hey, being being a parent of a twelve year
old and seeing how his friends have grown especially, I
can totally see how this could happen. You cast an
eleven year old and suddenly she's like a foot and
a half taller.

Speaker 3 (33:44):
Oh yeah, I guess it takes a while to make
a movie, didn't it. Yeah yeah, we.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
Would maybe not this one, but I'm maybe between the
time of casting at or maybe you don't realize that
your lead actor isn't as tall as Sigourney Weaver. I
don't know.

Speaker 3 (33:57):
Yeah that would make sense. I would have guess this
actress was older than eleven. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
Yeah, But anyway. In that interview with Fangoria, Tyler shares
that she and her mom, who was on set with
her the whole time, were lovely people. So it's always
nice to hear when a low budget picture like this
is not in and of itself a secondary horror movie.
Yeah yeah, because you can imagine the pitch. I was
a college student living in Italy for a summer, and

(34:24):
I was cast in a sci fi horror movie filmed
in an abandoned nuclear power plant.

Speaker 3 (34:29):
Oh my god, that is where they filmed some of
the stuff, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
Yeah, Yeah, we'll get into like you have so many
great sequences, and well, there are great sequences. You have
some great locations in this film, Yes, that look very
interesting that could have this industrial quality to them, but
also don't look like straight up grimy ruins like they're
kind of they're very clean and futuristic looking in some regards,

(34:54):
and that's basically what the whole situation is.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
When I was watching, I was really wondering where some
of this was shot, because it doesn't look like cheap sets.
It looks like a real industrial setting with like heavy
bulkhead doors and all this stuff, Like what were they
doing here? But they actually got let into a nuclear
power plant.

Speaker 1 (35:14):
Yeah. Italy, I believe, historically had four different nuclear power plants,
all of which close by nineteen ninety following the nineteen
eighty seven Italian referendums on nuclear power, and this would
have been in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster. So yeah,
they shot stuff there. They also shot some in Rome's
Roma Termini train station. I think there are some grinier

(35:37):
tunnel sequences that must have been shot there. And then
there's one set late in the picture. There's one like
fully created set. Basically, it'll be a set that looks
a lot like maybe they were inspired by the Mother
command center in the original Alien.

Speaker 3 (35:51):
That's what I was thinking, was the one. Yeah, should
we spoil it right now? It's a time machine.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
Yeah. This movie as the gall to throw in the
last ten to fifteen minutes of the film, they're like, oh,
time travel exists, Yeah, in a big way.

Speaker 3 (36:09):
Best codea ever.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
All right, let's see who do we have left on here? Okay,
there's a character named Drake who shows up. We mentioned
Drake earlier, played by Clive Ricci born nineteen fifty eight.
This is another This is a much much smaller role,
but another totally unhinged performance that lands somewhere between bad
and transcendent.

Speaker 3 (36:29):
I could not believe what I was watching. In the
scene where he starts screaming at all of the Mega
Force guys and they all start screaming, and everyone's screaming,
It's like I nearly fell over.

Speaker 1 (36:39):
It's a lot of screaming in this film, a lot
of shrill screaming. So this is a This is an
English born actor born fifty eight, also a composer. This
was his first film credit, which I think is understandable.
But he went on to appear in ninety four Cemetary Man,
two thousand and five's Casanova, the two thousand and seven
HBO series Rome, Dario Argento's Mother of Years in two

(37:00):
thousand and seven, in the twenty twenty four series Those
About to Die, along with various other I think Italian
productions and productions that took place in Italy. I believe
he's also a translator and a voiceover artist.

Speaker 3 (37:13):
Okay, well, hey, should we talk about those creature effects
that Claudio was talking down on.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
Yes, this is the work of the Polucci brothers. So
these are a pair of twin Italian monster suit makers,
Francesco and Gaetano, active behind the scenes, or at least
credited as such, because sometimes you know, special effects people
are kind of lost in the shuffle and aren't actually credited.
But based on the databases, we know that they were

(37:41):
active between eighty five and ninety six. They'd previously worked
on nineteen eighty five's Texts and The Lord of the
Deep on some special effects, and then they followed this
up working alongside the legendary Italian special effects master Carlo
Rombaldi on nineteen eighty five Silver Bullet. This is the
Stephen King scripted adaptation of King's Werewolf story.

Speaker 3 (38:02):
Is that Gary Busey in it?

Speaker 1 (38:04):
It sure does?

Speaker 3 (38:05):
Yeah, okay?

Speaker 1 (38:06):
And also what's his name that played Stilgar in the
David Lynch Dune.

Speaker 3 (38:11):
Oh Everett McGill there you go.

Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, Everet McGill's in that too. So anyway, this seemed
to be like this. I'm guessing this was their big moment,
like working with a legit master of like creature effects
and creature building, and after this they seem to go
their own way. Their creature work continues in Body Count
in eighty six, The Barbarians in eighty seven, Top Line
and Robo War in eighty eight, and Night Killer in

(38:35):
nineteen ninety, and then their last picture came out in
ninety six. But again, sometimes special effects workers don't end
up being credited properly, so I'm not entirely sure where
else they may have worked.

Speaker 4 (38:46):
Well.

Speaker 3 (38:46):
I think the monsters in Shocking Dark look a lot
better than the monster in Robo War.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
Yeah, they look good. I feel like they're mostly lit
pretty well. They clearly just had two suits, one of
which which looks kind of like a fishy frogman, and
the other one looks kind of like a cross between
the alien space jockey and a giant cicada.

Speaker 3 (39:08):
That's what I was thinking of. One is the cicada
because it's got a oh, it's got kind of a
hose running down the middle of its face that is
space jockey ish but could also be interpreted as the
insects rostrum, and it has the red eyes of a cicada.
It just looks very insecty. But then the other one
is the one I was thinking of, is the bubblegum hippopotamus,

(39:29):
because it's kind of a hippo. Then when it opens
its mouth, it's got this stretchy the bubblegum kind of
the sticky stuff in between its jaws that it's always
like peeling up and I don't know what you call that,
that physical effect, but it's like bubble gum stuck between
two things that are peeling apart.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
It's always painfully obvious that they only had two monster
suits in this film, like they're not really able to
create that illusion of there being tons and tons of monsters.
I always felt like there was monster A, a monster B,
but still they look pretty.

Speaker 3 (39:57):
Good, though there are some surprise monsters later on of
a different format.

Speaker 1 (40:01):
Oh yes, there is going to be a y spoiler
monster coming later. I guess not much of a spoiler monster,
all right. And then finally, the music in this picture.
The score is by Carlo Maria Cordillo born nineteen fifty two,
composer and one time producer on Joe Diamato's ninety one
fantasy film Quest for the Mighty Sword. He worked a

(40:23):
lot in European exploitation in genre cinema. His credits include
the nineteen eighty one Joe Diamato George Eastman Gorefest Absurd.
He did one Picicerre Simon's eighty two slasher pieces, along
with Joe Diamanto's A Tour the Fighting Eagle, and his
eight nineteen eighty three post apocalyptic film Endgame, Bronx Lata

(40:46):
Finale eighty seven, z Iron Warrior, Fulchi's Enigma the same year,
Night Killer Troll two, and various other schlocky titles. His
work typifies that kind of like fun and atmospheric work
you find in a lot of these films, which along
with you know, the work of bigger name players in

(41:06):
the game helped inspire whole modern subgenres of like horror, disco,
and you know, sort of like retro dark synth wave stuff.

Speaker 3 (41:13):
Yeah, the soundtrack here is not super original, but I
think it fits well and is quite fun.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
Yeah. Yeah. You can find some of these tracks on
Cordea's official streamable releases under the title Alienator, which is
one of the alternate titles for the film, if you
look for the album The Bite of Fear. So yeah,
I thought it sounded pretty good. Special edition vinyls of
his scores have been released before, I don't think for

(41:41):
Shocking Dark, but but Troll Too and Absurd definitely have
come out on vinyl. And finally, I should note that
IMDb lists the use of stock music on this film
by none other than legendary Greek progressive and electronic composer
Evangelists who live forty three through twenty and twenty two.
But I'm not sure what where and to what extent

(42:02):
we hear Evangelists in Shocking Dark, But I know he
did a lot of major compositions obviously, you know Oscar
winning stuff like eighty one's Chariots a Fire, or you
know the legendary score to eighty two's Blade Runner. But
he also did stuff like a twelve hour private score
for some surgery instruction videos that the Tacos tape. So

(42:22):
I don't know. I'm not I'm not a vangelist expert,
so I'm not sure like what all he got into
outside of like his main work. So maybe there is
some like you know, straight up you know stock music
that he did that they're sampling here. But but again
I'm not sure. I'm not sure on the details of
where we hear any of his work in this picture.
Let me stress though, score by Cordillo not a score

(42:45):
by vangelists.

Speaker 3 (42:46):
Evangelists directed shocking everybody remember that. Okay, is it to
talk about the plot?

Speaker 1 (43:01):
Yeah? It's getting the plot now.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
I think once we sort of hit a certain point
in the progression of the story here, the plot recap
may become thinner or more cursory than usual. Since it
just did not make sense to me to, like after
Act two begins, to try to narrate in detail. This
is one of those movies where when I started playing
the stream, I had to stop and make sure I

(43:26):
had selected the right title, because if you know that
the premise is it's a ripoff of aliens and terminator.
The first scene does not make any sense. We open
on tourists in Venice. Yes, so we're in some piazza
with cathedrals in the background. You see tourists wandering around
with cameras taking pictures of stuff. They're pigeons everywhere. Somebody

(43:49):
strikes up some soft Italian mandolin music, and then a
voice over comes on, sounding like the narrator of a
slasher movie trailer, and says, Venus before the year two
thousand and it goes on to say squares, museums and churches,
Tourists crowd the streets. Venice is threatened by the high tide.

(44:12):
The seaweed is killing the oxygen in the waters, and
the putrid waters are corroding the foundations of the city.
So we're treated to some shots of Venice from the
water from out on the ocean, looking at the at
the coastline and the buildings, and then the narrator says,
this is Venus today, and then it grows softer and

(44:32):
it says what will happen tomorrow? We cut away from
the waters and the pleasure boats to a shot of
the city with soft, fuzzy lens Now it looked very
clear beforehand. Now we got the fuzzy lens, so the
camera operator has activated conquest mode. I don't know how
exactly they do that. I mean they smear some vasoline

(44:53):
on the lens or something, but we're in that mode,
and in front of the city there is now a
red sign that says Venus off limits. And here we
get our first glimpse of the Mega Force. Now, these
costumes are I don't know, they're a big part of
what makes the movie funny because they're just funny looking costumes.

(45:14):
From the bottom to the top, the Mega Force wear
heavy boots, baggy cuffed up nylon pants, a Batman utility belt,
golden yellow long sleeve shirts, and then I don't know
what you call these this like shoulder formation or sleeve type,
but they're like a V shaped gray vest with sort

(45:35):
of arched cap sleeves. You know, there's like where the
sleeve comes out from the shoulder over the arm.

Speaker 1 (45:42):
Yeah, it looks kind of like the things that the
Ninjas wear in Mortal Combat.

Speaker 3 (45:46):
Yes, yeah, yeah, and then a gas mask and a
bicycle outlet.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
Yeah yeah. So basically, so, yeah, Venus is off limits. Now,
future Venus is kind of like New York City and
Escape from New York, only it's a biohazard zone instead
of a penal colony.

Speaker 3 (46:02):
Will learn, Yeah, not even any prisoners in there. There
is no Duke of Venice. There is only slime, which,
by the way they show us, we're just getting at
this point. They're showing us pictures of the water and
they're slime in the water. And then another narrator comes on,
I think this is a different voice who says the
situation in Venice is now critical. A giant toxic cloud

(46:25):
has settled over the city and is slowly destroying every
form of life. The government has declared it a disaster
area and has ordered the evacuation of the few remaining survivors.
Venice is now a dead city. And then like the
camera pans around looking at the canals, filming places where

(46:45):
there's like a lot of algae on the bricks around
the canal, or just some litter, and it kind of
reminds me of something we talked about in our Weird
House episode on Frogs from nineteen seventy two, when you've
got a movie scene that is supposed to be showing
that a place is filled with litter and pollution. But
the trash in the scene looks too fresh. They do

(47:07):
not have that problem here, because I think they're just
I think they got these shots by just going around
in filming places where there was actually trash piled up.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
Yeah, they just like picked out the worst spots in
Venice and like, here's your dystopian future.

Speaker 3 (47:23):
Right, So it doesn't actually look that futuristic. It just
looks like they were cruising for trash and they found
some and you know, got some shots. So we go
around looking at these these fuzzy scenes of a desolate,
abandoned Venus. There's like crumbling. There are crumbling buildings hanging
over the canals, old wooden scaffolding in various stages of rot,

(47:44):
bricks falling into the ocean, rats living in old water
logged mattresses. The idea is Venus stinks. Now, it's no good. Next,
we go inside a secure facility to a control room
of some kind with huge banks of lights and monitors
and dials all beeping, and in here we meet some
Megaphorce guys. And as soon as I saw this, I

(48:05):
was like, oh, this is not a set they cannot
afford to create a set like this, this is some
kind of actual industrial control room.

Speaker 1 (48:12):
Yeah, it's very it's very functional looking, like especially in
the still that you popped into our notes here, it's
like you can see computer screens online in the background,
like all the lights are on. You know, presumably they
did not fire the plant back up again in full,
but everything looks very operational, like. This is not a

(48:33):
This is not a power plant that was taken off
line because it had completely worn out. No, it came
off line because of you know, other other reasons.

Speaker 3 (48:42):
I'm just imagining Bruno like that guy in Chernobyl where
he's like, no, get my reactors started again.

Speaker 1 (48:50):
But yeah, these are some great spaces that that we
see throughout the picture at times, like huge vault doors
in this case, you know, big control banks, some great
hallway and yeah, so some and it feels significantly different
compared to a lot of the grimy industrial spaces that
we've seen in a lot of our other movies that

(49:10):
we watch for Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (49:12):
Yeah. Yeah, So a guy from wearing the Megapores uniform
comes into this room. He says, what's going on here?
And the guy manning the computer says there's an SOS
from Venice, sir, And before the guy even finishes saying venus,
we hear people screaming from somewhere and then we realize
they're screaming on the TV that they're watching. So let's watch,

(49:33):
and we get to see the closed circuit camera and
it's like some workers in a steamy tunnel somewhere and
they're looking up at the camera in the tunnel and
screaming for help. And the performances of these guys is
so strong, so they're they're like overacting in one sense
where they're like a just screaming at the top of

(49:54):
their lungs. You can see their uvulas, you know, teeth out,
just shrieking. But then they're there are also moments where
they'll like pause and look at the camera for a
second and then scream for help again. Yeah, so we
see a look of grave concern on the face of
the Mega Force leader. I think this guy is technically
the kernel, but this guy is great. He's got a

(50:16):
very Charlton Hesteny stab you with his Adam's Apple quality.
But he also I don't know exactly why, maybe because
of the yellow shirt. He just reminded me of corn,
like he's a big old corn corn on the cob,
just yellow, sweet summer corn. And he also is a
really funny character because the corn guy here stares into

(50:39):
space for several seconds before saying his lines. It does
it repeatedly, like it'll cut to the Mega Force guy
and then engage the emergency protocol.

Speaker 1 (50:51):
I want to say that he's also one of these
characters that is often like clearly reading lines off a screen,
whether they're actually on the screen digitally or they are
there probably and we just can't see it from a
d to the camera angle.

Speaker 3 (51:04):
Yeah. So in the scene, Corn commander here wants to
get in touch with somebody named Raffleson, who is the
scientist in charge of whatever they're looking at, but they're
unable to raise him. Communications have been cut. As I
alluded to earlier, it's kind of hard to describe what
makes this so funny, but all throughout here there is
pretty high level hilarity in like every human aspect of

(51:27):
the movie, from the physical blocking and posture of the actors,
to the facial expressions, to the lines as scripted, to
the line deliveries. Like everything on that level is super
awkward and funny. And sometimes adorable.

Speaker 1 (51:43):
Yeah, and it's at that level that is I think
ultimately very difficult to reproduce for comedic value. Like, yes,
it's a rarey. You see something like Garth Morange's Dark
Place that was able to so perfectly capture the sort
of vibe that was achieved organically in this picture.

Speaker 3 (52:00):
Right, Yes, Okay, So we go into the facility that
we were just watching on the closed circuit and we
follow around a couple of the workers in jumpsuits as
they run around the tunnels. Occasionally they remembered act scared
and then they you know, and they'll have lines about
how it seems like it's curtains for us. And eventually
they wander up on a monster hidden by fog, so

(52:21):
we don't get a good look at it yet, but
you know that they're like, oh no, it's our time,
so you know they know they're done for Then we
cut back to another guy. It's this curly haired guy
we follow as he runs around the tunnels. He makes
some really good faces if you pause it at essentially
any moment, and then he gets assaulted by this other guy, Drake.

(52:45):
Drake is the scientist who we mentioned earlier who gives
the the just really astoundingly unhinged performance. When he first
sees him, he's like, oh, Drake, it's you. What happened
to the others? And then Drake puts a hand on
him and he's like, goods. Drake starts, I think, sort

(53:05):
of choking him, and I don't know, probably eats him
or something. We like Drake, by the way. So next
week cut back to headquarters and we got the Corn commander,
this other kind of dorky Megaphorce guy, and a lady.
Now also, she's wearing a vest with arched caps leaves,
but hers is a leather vest for a green jumpsuit,

(53:27):
so I think she's supposed to look cool. And these
three people are Sarah Drumble, the scientist. We've got Bond,
who is the captain of the Megaphorce Strike Team, which
will be our colonial space Marines for the film. I
recall Bond being quite unremarkable. I don't know what to
say about him. He's just like leader Man. And then

(53:50):
of course there's Commander Corn, who is some kind of
some kind of colonel. He stays back in the command
center for much of the movie.

Speaker 1 (53:58):
Yeah, he's played by one time or Bruce McFarland, and
Raffleson on the screen is played by Al McFarland. So
I don't know if these two were like father and son,
if they were related, or they're just having to be
a couple of McFarland's yeah, in Italy at the time.

Speaker 3 (54:13):
So the three of them are in what looks like
one of those featureless rooms attached to the side of
a church where you do Sunday school, and they are
watching a videotape of the scientist Raffleson. He's the big
science guy in charge of all the dudes in the tunnels,
and Raffleson on the tape is saying, well, yeah, one
thing's for sure. Our group here seems to be condemned
to certain death, a hideous death, and he could not

(54:36):
sound more bored. But Raffleson says he wants to create
a record of what happened here. He says, about a
week ago, strange things started to take place. Several of
his team disappeared and others showed signs of mental disturbance.
And then Drake, who's the guy we met in the tunnel,
has begun to insist that he is in touch with
a community of strange creatures, almost as if he were.

(54:58):
And then the signal cuts off off, cut to static.

Speaker 1 (55:01):
Now at this point, I feel like the movie is
starting to fire in all cylinders and you're and to
be fair, like doesn't feel particularly aliens at this point,
doesn't feel like a huge rip off, you know, it's
kind of like, all right, some sort of weird creature
community has emerged in post apocalyptic Venice.

Speaker 3 (55:19):
Okay, yeah, you could imagine it going in other directions,
but so okay, here the corn commander tells Sarah Drumble
that she's gonna have to go on a mission into
the lab facility to see if they can rescue any survivors.
And then there's a guy who pipes up from the
back of the room who's He says something like, you know,
to heck with the survivors, I need Raffleson's secret diary.

(55:43):
Who is this guy? Well, he introduces himself as Samuel
Fuller from the Tubular Corporation.

Speaker 1 (55:50):
Oh my god, I love the Tubular Corporation. And they
say it a lot.

Speaker 3 (55:54):
They never stopped so many references to the Tubular Corporation.
So I'm trying to think, is there something that refers
to like, where does that title come from? Obviously this
is either waylund Utawni or Cyberdine, But where does where does?
What is the source of tubular?

Speaker 1 (56:12):
They made tubes, I guess, or they were just like
totally tubular.

Speaker 3 (56:16):
They did like tunnels.

Speaker 1 (56:18):
We learned that, Yeah, tubular tubular. It's just so funny.
But I did find it hilarious that someone out there
on one of these like there's like a Terminator wiki
had added a page for the Tubular Corporation and its
stressed that it was non canon, that it was not
officially part of the Terminator universe. But I'm sorry you've
put it on the Terminator wiki, so it kind of

(56:40):
is at this point. It's just like an Italian company
that is in the same world.

Speaker 3 (56:44):
Tubular Corporation is Terminator Dutero canon. Yeah, it's like how
some Christians feel about like the Book of Enoch or something. Okay,
but anyway, this guy, Samuel Fuller, he is like our
Burk from Aliens, except it completely misses the thrust of Burke,
which is that Burke is charming at first and then
is revealed to be a snake. Samuel Fuller is mean

(57:08):
and explicitly evil from the very first moment. He is
like if the abstract notion of contempt became flesh and blood.
He's sneering in every single scene, you know. He comes
up and he's like, I'm going on the mission. And
then the strikeforce guy Bond, he says, it's only right
that the lady here comes along. She's a scientist, but

(57:30):
I don't want any other civilians on the mission. And
then Fuller comes up and sneers at him. Fuller, by
the way, is wearing like a black and red jacket
with these big pouches on it, like a cargo pockets
jacket and a black and red hat. So again very
terminator color scheme. And he comes up and sneers at

(57:51):
the guy, and he says, eleven years in the Marines
were enough to teach me that whoever talks a lot
doesn't get much done, and you seem to talk lot.
So Bond is he gets mad and he's going to lunge,
but the corn commander holds him back and says, easy, Bond,
Fuller here is an expert in martial arts. So the

(58:12):
colonel explains that Bond doesn't really have a choice because
the Tubular Corporation is the one that ordered the mission
that they've got to go in there, and they're the
ones that constructed the viaduct leading to the underground venice,
which is I guess where they're headed.

Speaker 1 (58:27):
Yeah, so that is, to your point, basically a tube.

Speaker 3 (58:30):
It is, right, Yeah, it's a tube. So Sneerman here
is with the company, and he gets to come along
with the Mega Force because he's with the company and
because he knows karate.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (58:41):
Also here the scientist Sarah Drumbel speaks up, and she
says the project was supposed to purify the city's polluted waters.
As things stand, it appears that all of your millions
have only gone to worsen the situation. And Fuller looks
at her ego that remains to be seen. Then they're like, okay,
we've got fifteen minutes to get ready. So instead of

(59:03):
the whole like drop ship situation in Aliens where we
get to know everybody, instead we get like a locker
room scene where we get to know the Marines before
they go through a door. So let's meet our Megaporce team.
They are strongly trying to recreate the competitive swagger and
bravado of the Colonial Marines when we first meet them

(59:26):
in Aliens, But there once again is a malfunction in
the photocopier, so these Marines do not feel like the tough,
cocky space warriors that they're trying to emulate. This is
not Vasquez, Drake, Hudson, Hicks and Apone. Instead, these marines
are there. They are trying to be cocky and aggressive
at one another, but they just come off as incredibly weird,

(59:48):
like off the charts bizarre energy. The first one we
meet is my favorite by far. This is Costor. We
talked about her earlier, but she is just a gift
from Heaven. I love her. When we first meet her,
she's looking straight into the camera and breathing heavy. Her
first line is when we can't repeat on the show,
or we're gonna get tagged explicit by the platforms. But

(01:00:12):
she's just wandering around the Megapce locker room, playing with
guns and suggestively taunting the other Mega Force dudes about
not sweating enough and not being real men. In her
intern monologue, she talks about how she's back and she's
ready to kick butt, but like, where is she back from? Yeah?
I don't think we ever learned that there's also so
much just unreal levels of forced hostility between these people,

(01:00:37):
Like you don't feel tension in the room at all,
but they just start insulting each other out of nowhere.
There is there's out of nowhere and for no reason
ethnic antagonism that arises and then dissipates where somebody's like
you're Italian and they get real mad at each other
and then it just goes away.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
Yeah, there's just such an unhinged feeling of what is
going to happen next in this scene, and it just
feels completely off the rails from the very start, because
you have like the apparent fourth wall breaking in the beginning,
because who else is she talking to looking right into
the camera us, I guess yeah, and I feel kind
of put on the spot by it. Then there are
all these like weird like first draft insults being thrown around,

(01:01:21):
and just an overbearing sense of wandering and seam filling,
especially as Coster like walks. It's a huge locker room
like this is clearly one at this nuclear facility, former
nuclear facility, and she's just like walking from one marine
one Mega Force member to another to insult them and
or encourage them, and it just the camera is just

(01:01:42):
just tracking her as she goes. So this definitely feels
like a scene where they're like, well, we've got to
fill we got to fill some time up here, guys,
so get out there, do the lines, maybe add a
little bit extra, but we're absolutely not going to stop rolling.

Speaker 3 (01:01:57):
Oh my, it feels so stretched out. It's like it's
like a jam band improv so low, but just marines
yelling at each other. But it's so good.

Speaker 1 (01:02:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:02:07):
Oh but then after Costa is insulting everybody, she finally
meets the one other marine she likes, the Megaphores guy
named Cain, who is a shirtless guy with long blonde
hair and sunglasses and a bandana on. So he's like
a surfer. Yeah, and he's the only guy that cost
he seems to respect. And Cain is really weirdly like

(01:02:29):
soft spoken, like he just doesn't seem to be playing
one of these, like, you know, marine types. So I
think they're trying to reproduce like the Vasquez and Drake
friendship from Aliens, but it just doesn't it's not working.

Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
Yeah, I'm going to shock everyone with the fact here
that the actor playing Kan Cortland Riley. This was his
only acting role, so I don't know the details on it,
but I imagine it's another situation of here's a guy
who happened to be in Rome. Maybe he was doing
some modeling work or something thing and got picked up
for this picture.

Speaker 3 (01:03:02):
Yeah, that sounds about right. He I mean, he is
barely acting. He just kind of says his lines. There's
he Then in this scene in the locker room, he
like hands cost her or shotgun and he's like, play
with it, and then she does. She like runs around
the room pointing at dudes in the locker room and
then gets into a fight with this guy Franzini. It's nuts.

Speaker 1 (01:03:25):
Yeah, I like franzenians up pulling a switch play, doesn't
he It's I recently rewatched Aliens, and I did think
that there were times where the Colonial Marines, again though
to be sure, under significant stress, were lacking in discipline
in some key moments. But Mega Force is just pure anarchy.
There's not they haven't even gone out in the field yet,

(01:03:46):
there's no additional stress other than what they brought to
the locker room, and they're already at each other's throats.

Speaker 3 (01:03:59):
Okay, so the Mega Force they meet up with the
characters we've already met, you know, doctor Sarah, Drumbull and
Fuller from the Tubular Corporation. So they open the door
to the secure facility and kickstart the action. And I
think here is a good place to kind of shift
gears in how we're talking about what happens, because much
of the rest of the movie is very action focused

(01:04:21):
and is very much a copy of the plot of Aliens,
but with variations. So speaking more loosely from now on,
I think we should just talk about things that stood
out from this copy of the Alien's plot as it
goes forward. So there is generally the shape of things
to come is that they go into this facility, they

(01:04:43):
discover the monsters inside, the monsters attack them, They discover
what happened to the previous occupants there, they were attacked
by monsters, and then there is a betrayal where the
company man tries to I don't know, monster infects some
more people, and there's just general Then there's progression into
another location. There's discovery of a survivor, which is the

(01:05:05):
newt type character, the daughter of what's his name Raffleson,
the guy who was running the facility, and then there
is progression to another location where they learn some more
stuff about a conspiracy to create monsters I think as
a weapon or something. It's your standard, you know, Oh,
the Evil Corporation was trying to make trying to make
giant monsters as I don't know, for military contracts or something.

(01:05:28):
I don't know why they'd be all that useful. And
then there is a self destruct sequence. You have ten
minutes to achieve minimum safe distance. Now do we have
anything to say else to say about the scene and
the tunnels where they come across this guy Drake who
is giving a really a plus performance, like so hyperactive,

(01:05:49):
where he's like, if you enter the city, you're going
to die one and then he screams. He does a
scream kind of like in the end of Invasion of
the Body Snatch, and then everybody starts screaming and covering
their ears, and I don't know, that was one of
the moments that really got me.

Speaker 1 (01:06:07):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know what exactly was going on
in that sequence, but it's like it's so over the top.
Sometimes less is more, but sometimes you've got to be
a little more experienced to find that correct level.

Speaker 3 (01:06:18):
I guess I think we could continue to think about
the question of, like, what is it that made them
copy certain elements from Aliens and not others. One thing
that they definitely took from Aliens is the motion trackers. Yeah,
they really like these handheld devices that look kind of

(01:06:40):
like a remote control where they're scanning for motion in
front of them and it's making that pulsing beeping sound
That is a very effective thing in Aliens because there's
like a sound cue that lets you know something is approaching,
but you know you can't hear it directly, so it's
very creepy like that, and they use that to the
best effect they can in this movie too, so it

(01:07:00):
kind of makes sense why they why they lifted that element.
They also lifted the element of the monsters cocooning their
victims in the walls. So they're like going through these
tunnels and they find people who were part of this
science mission sort of wrapped up in the slime and
stuck to the walls, and and you know, they act
a lot like the cocooned people in Aliens.

Speaker 1 (01:07:21):
Do, except what bursts out of them not the larval
monster of any form, but the monster glove hand of
a full sized monster.

Speaker 3 (01:07:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:07:33):
Which I like, but it is also stupid.

Speaker 3 (01:07:38):
There is a scene a lot like the the Assault
on the Hive in Aliens, where you know, the Marines
are going through these dark tunnels and they get confused
and attacked by monsters in the dark.

Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
And this sequence, the sequence where they're actually fighting the monsters,
I thought, is way better than it had any right
to be.

Speaker 3 (01:07:58):
Yeah, pretty good.

Speaker 1 (01:07:59):
The monsters look pretty good. They'd like throw they throw
a dude over a rail. There are a lot of
scenes of monsters being shot with these shotguns. So it
all came together pretty well, and it kind of matches
up with something Tyler had to say about the production
that that basically Bruno was really focused on the technical
aspects of the shoot, and meanwhile the dialogue was maybe

(01:08:20):
you know, second or third in everyone's priority. In that
Fangoria interview, she said, quote, there was a lovely woman
on set. I believe she was Australian who was supposed
to be the dialogue coach, if you will. So if
she wasn't there, you could say whatever you wanted and
Bruno would have no idea. Bruno didn't speak English.

Speaker 3 (01:08:39):
Oh man, I actually can't even imagine that directing a
film in a language that I don't speak, that that's
like a difficult task.

Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
But directing this film in a language you don't speak,
maybe maybe you know especially I mean, I can maybe
see where like Bruno is coming from. It's kind of like,
all right, I've got all I can handle is the
technical stuff here. Someone else is going to have to
handle this script and talking to these actors because there's
just not enough time.

Speaker 3 (01:09:07):
So onto more elements they copy from Aliens. There's, of
course the newt character and the discovery of her. That
scene is similar to how it is in Aliens. They've
got the scene where they sort of create a defensible
position and they're trying to they're trying to prevent the
monsters from coming in and getting them, and it's very

(01:09:28):
similar as it is in Aliens. It's like, oh, they're
inside the perimeter. They cut the power, But they don't
say how could they cut the power? Man? Their animals,
I think they just say how could they cut the power?
I don't recall anybody saying game over, man, game over?

Speaker 1 (01:09:42):
No, they didn't. They showed some restraint, but there are
plenty of lines that are just copied wholesale. Like there's
the pull back and forth where the new character in
Aliens is like my mother said, there weren't monsters, but
there are, you know, that effect, But basically have that
here as well. The scene where Newt is separated from

(01:10:04):
from Ripley, that's pretty much directly copied here, but without
without the as effective a set being utilized. So yeah,
there are multiple places like that.

Speaker 3 (01:10:16):
I already mentioned this earlier, But one scene that is
copied almost exactly is the scene in Aliens where Burke
is trying to infect Ripley and Newt with face huggers
while they're taking a nap. He like releases them into
the room with them and then turns off the monitors
so none of the soldiers can see that happens. Almost
exactly the same in this with Fuller like sitting there

(01:10:37):
watching coldly as you know, they're screaming for help and
what is it? Though it's Ripley. She manages to get
everybody's attention by holding a lighter up to the sprinkler
system so they think there's a fire. Very clever on
Ripley's part. I love that. It's a good, good moment
of fast thinking and aliens. But she does something different
in this movie. What does she do?

Speaker 1 (01:10:57):
Oh, this is a great question that I don't know
the answer. I'm not sure how they wrap this scene up.

Speaker 3 (01:11:02):
It's like she I think she just like presses an
alarm button. It's a little more direct. Yeah, that sounds
I believe you're correct on that. But then they have
basically the same outcome where they're like, well, we should just
execute this guy. He's not on our side. But unfortunately
for them, it becomes apparent as we proceed through the
plot here that our company man is not a man.

(01:11:26):
He's maybe a little more like Ash from Alien by
way of Terminator. That's right, So, yes, it's more like
the Ash reveal, but the format is terminator. Like, he
gets part of his face scraped off and he's got
a metal Indo skeleton, so he looks like a T
eight hundred. Yeah, and it's revealed that the company, yeah,
the company man is here to ensure that their profits

(01:11:47):
are secured and I don't know, to erase any evidence
of what happened here. I don't remember the exact details,
but he just turns out to be a bad guy
and he's chasing our heroes around. You know, all of
those space marines get wiped out by the monsters. But
then the Fuller here is chasing Sarah drumble around in
this facility, much like the scene where the Terminator is

(01:12:10):
chasing Sarah Connor in the computer factory. At the end
of Terminator there, oh, when Fuller gets kind of semi
defeated several times, but it comes back. You know, there
are people who are trying to shoot him, and he's like,
you fool, I am immune to bullets. But then Sarah
defeats him with an with a fire extinguisher.

Speaker 1 (01:12:27):
I think, yeah, yeah, she's like phrasing with a fire extinguisher.
And they not only need to escape the Terminator, they
need to escape the facility, which is going to explode.
And just yeah, just when you think this film is
out of jaw dropping choices, there they escape. I think
we reference this already via time machine. They find a

(01:12:48):
Tubular Company time machine they also make tubes through time
and space apparently, and they climb aboard that and escape
into the past.

Speaker 3 (01:12:58):
Yes, into the past, you know Venice of nineteen eighty nine.

Speaker 1 (01:13:03):
I would have also settled for escape into the future,
where they land up in the background of a Stanley
Tucci documentary, and Stanley tuccis like, jump in and help
defeat the enemy here, but they went in the past instead.

Speaker 3 (01:13:18):
I'm making you zucchini pasta. Yeah, yeah, So this coda
is there are a lot of like jaw on the
floor things in Shocking Dark, but this was the one
for me. I could not believe it that the ending
involved a twist with time travel. There's no hint earlier
on that there's time travel. They just like go into

(01:13:39):
a room while they're trying to escape the blast, and
it's like, welcome to the Tubular Corporation time machine. Yes,
use the following controls to go into the past, and
they do. And then it turns out that Fuller, the
Terminator also took a time machine into the past to
chase them.

Speaker 1 (01:13:57):
You have to chase them through the streets of Venice.

Speaker 3 (01:13:59):
Yes, chases them around Venice while they're asking just Italians
for help, you know, And so the Terminator's like throwing
them into the canals anybody who tries to help them.
And then also they defeat. So Sarah defeats the terminator
by tossing him a remote control that is somehow associated

(01:14:20):
with the time machine. I don't understand why this defeated him,
but she's like catch and throws him the remote and
he catches it and then just electricity shoots all over
the place and he's dead.

Speaker 1 (01:14:29):
I guess, yep, enemy defeat it. And it felt a
little pressed for time perhaps, And I have to say,
no gondola chases. I think we needed a gondola chase here,
but you know, last five minutes of the picture. I
guess they didn't have time.

Speaker 3 (01:14:44):
That's what I Roger Moore era James Bond, a movie
you would have done, but not Shocking Dark. But so
it's interesting that you were like watching Shocking Dark and
it's a ripoff of Aliens, and you forget that it
was according to the poster and the box start and
the title supposed to be a ripoff of Terminator, and
you just forget that that's even what you signed up

(01:15:06):
for until the last fifteen minutes of the movie, and
then oh, you're like, oh, now it is a ripoff
of Terminator. We're done with Aliens now. Now for the
rest of the runtime, it's Terminator. We got time travel,
killer robots and Sarah Sarah Connor.

Speaker 1 (01:15:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, by that point the picture you've forgotten
Terminator was really in the mix, and so the time
travel comes out of nowhere. But I guess makes sense
if you realize, well, it was a Terminator ripoff all
along as well.

Speaker 3 (01:15:33):
So I'm so glad you picked shocking Dark for the show.
This was a beautiful experience and I know I'm going
to watch this one many times to come.

Speaker 1 (01:15:40):
Yeah. Like I say, it's been a while since we
watched something this schlocky, so it was a nice return.
I don't think we could cover a film like this
every week. I don't think there are enough schlocky films
of this caliber out there ultimately, but it's great to
return to them. Rob.

Speaker 3 (01:15:57):
I don't know if you've had the experience, but it
in my I feel like movies of this sort that
are extremely pleasing to watch and have this kind of
awkwardness to them are actually harder to cover and explain
on the show than some technically duller films are.

Speaker 1 (01:16:13):
Well, sometimes those technically dull films have also have plots
that you can really follow because they're like bullet points,
you know, and or there's not a lot happening this one.
There's always a lot of a lot of things happening.
There's to the point where I have difficulty remembering exactly,
you know, what all the plot points are. I just

(01:16:35):
remember the spectacle of the acting, and then sometimes the monsters.
But yeah, I see what you're talking about. But luckily,
Shocking Dark is a film that invites you to view
it over and over again.

Speaker 3 (01:16:47):
Yes, I do feel like I have somewhat fallen short
in describing its virtues, but it I hope I can
at least say, if you like schlock movies, you should
see it. It needs to be you need to see
it for yourself. You've got to have the experience.

Speaker 1 (01:17:01):
Absolutely. All right, We're going to go ahead and close
the time machine hatch on this selection of Weird House Cinema,
but we'll be back next week with something else. I'd
reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
science podcast Science and culture podcasts with core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most
serious concerns and just talk about a weird film on
Weird House Cinema. If you want to see a list

(01:17:22):
of all the movies we've covered over the years, go
to letterbox dot com. That's l E T E r
box d dot com. Our username is weird House, and
there you will find the list and sometimes you'll get
a peek ahead at what's coming out the following week.

Speaker 3 (01:17:34):
Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:17:55):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.