Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 3: today on Weird House Cinema we're going to be talking
Speaker 3: about the nineteen eighty nine Aliens ripoff Shocking Dark, which
Speaker 3: has got to be a new favorite for me. I've
Speaker 3: never seen this before and it is top tier schlock.
Speaker 3: This movie is it was such a good time.
Speaker 2: That's right, I mean, this is bad movie. Caviat from
Speaker 2: the screenwriters behind Troll two and the director of such
Speaker 2: films as Zombie three and Robo War's Shop Door singular
Speaker 2: rob ro wor singular my mistake. Yes, Robo War. There
Speaker 2: was only ever one Robo War, but.
Speaker 3: They didn't yet have James Cameron to come along and
Speaker 3: write Robo War with a dollar sign after it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this this one. I have to say, this is
Speaker 2: a film that I actually absolutely has to be seen
Speaker 2: to be believed. We we don't talk about bad movies
Speaker 2: so much on Weird House. Were generally, you know, very
Speaker 2: I would say, we're pretty forgiving. We're we're here to
Speaker 2: to lean into films and find find what works and
Speaker 2: celebrate what works in a movie. So it may have
Speaker 2: been a while since we watched something this schlocky this,
Speaker 2: but in its own way, this this perfect because I think,
Speaker 2: you know, one would be tempted to cast a film
Speaker 2: like Shocking Dark as the mere antithesis of great filmmaking.
Speaker 2: But I think you could also argue that this is
Speaker 2: the reflected reverse image, and as such it's that same greatness.
Speaker 2: It's just reversed, you know, it's Shocking Dark. Is is stupendous,
Speaker 2: and as such, I would argue it's more captivating than
Speaker 2: most motion pictures. There's no lukewarm movie here to be
Speaker 2: spat out and forgotten half finished. The experience no matter what,
Speaker 2: is going to be absolutely memorable.
Speaker 3: I totally agree with that this is not a middle
Speaker 3: of the road, boring hack exercise. This is a jewel
Speaker 3: of badness. It's the kind of badness that takes on
Speaker 3: a form of genius, like other films of this caliber
Speaker 3: we've talked about before, like troll To like Plan nine
Speaker 3: from Outer Space, like Highlander two. In many ways, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think it's right up there. This movie is so pleasurable,
Speaker 3: and I think there will be a bunch of reasons
Speaker 3: that we can get into. Some are harder to describe
Speaker 3: than others, but we'll try to sort of lay out
Speaker 3: a roadmap of the pleasures on offer here. But first,
Speaker 3: since this movie is widely acknowledged to be a shameless
Speaker 3: ripoff of at least one James Cameron movie, actually two
Speaker 3: two James Cameron movie, I thought we should try to
Speaker 3: place it within a kind of taxonomy of different ways
Speaker 3: a movie can be thought of as a copycat or
Speaker 3: a ripoff. All right, So, the first way I want
Speaker 3: to think of a movie being a knockoff is the
Speaker 3: marketing clone. And in this case, the actual substance of
Speaker 3: the movie may have nothing to do with the film
Speaker 3: that's being copied, but the market facing information about the film,
Speaker 3: such as title, poster, or trailer, tries to make the
Speaker 3: movie seem related to or identical to another more successful movie.
Speaker 3: And there are actually a few different ways you can
Speaker 3: do this. One example is sequels in name only. An
Speaker 3: instance here is Troll two, which is connected to the
Speaker 3: very same creators of Shocking Dark. Troll two had nothing
Speaker 3: to do with the.
Speaker 2: Movie called Troll.
Speaker 3: Movies like this are in neither form nor function actual
Speaker 3: sequels to the original. They just illicitly slap a title
Speaker 3: and they're like Zombie two or Terminator two. In this case,
Speaker 3: they put it on the poster without permission and they
Speaker 3: opened the box office.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so like with this film. This film was
Speaker 2: apparently shot as shocking dark, and it was a producer
Speaker 2: level choice to then try and sell it as Terminator too.
Speaker 2: So I think if everyone involved in making the film
Speaker 2: realize like that was, that was maybe even a step
Speaker 2: step too far. You're not just not It's one thing
Speaker 2: to call your film troll too, but to go after
Speaker 2: to go in the wake of Terminators. They're like, hey,
Speaker 2: here it is Terminator too. I know there's another Terminator
Speaker 2: two coming out in a few months. I'm not going
Speaker 2: to say anything about that one, but why don't you
Speaker 2: buy this?
Speaker 3: Yeah. Another way you can have a marketing clone is
Speaker 3: mockbusters movies that you know, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 3: are trying to confuse people into buying the wrong DVD.
Speaker 3: These were very popular in the late two thousands and
Speaker 3: the twenty ten. So imagine a movie called Transmorphers with
Speaker 3: DVD box art that looks very similar to Michael Bay's Transformers.
Speaker 3: You can think of other examples like Atlantic Rim and
Speaker 3: The Da Vinci Treasure. These movies may or may not
Speaker 3: be similar to the target blockbuster in terms of plot, character,
Speaker 3: or style. The point is that they can be hard
Speaker 3: to tell apart before you watch them. They're hard to
Speaker 3: tell apart like at the store, especially maybe to like
Speaker 3: a grandparent buying a DC for their grandchild or something. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so that's a kind of crass way you can approach
Speaker 3: trying to steal the artistic or entertainment credibility of another film.
Speaker 3: Another way you can have something that could be thought
Speaker 3: of as a knockoff is the premise lifter. A lot
Speaker 3: of copycat movies are like this, and I think it's
Speaker 3: one of the most benign forms of copying in storytelling.
Speaker 3: In this type of movie, you take the basic premise
Speaker 3: or elevator pitch of a pre existing movie, but then
Speaker 3: you take it in your own direction. So, for example,
Speaker 3: a premise clone of the original Terminator might be a
Speaker 3: movie about a killer robot that is transported from a
Speaker 3: dystopian future back to the present to carry out a mission.
Speaker 3: So you could have the same setup as the Terminator,
Speaker 3: or at least the same setup as far as you know,
Speaker 3: as far as it would sound in a sentence long pitch.
Speaker 3: But then maybe the plot and the characters and execution
Speaker 3: could be totally different, And there are even some quite
Speaker 3: good movies in this category. I think a fresh take
Speaker 3: on a familiar premise can be exciting and sometimes can
Speaker 3: even be great art. Lots of examples of this category
Speaker 3: don't even feel like copying. They might just be variations
Speaker 3: on a theme or further exploring a new niche subgenre
Speaker 3: in the example of Terminator. At this point, does Dangerous
Speaker 3: Robot from the Future even really belong to James Cameron?
Speaker 3: Or is that more just kind of a very specific
Speaker 3: subgenre of sci fi?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Now, another way a movie might be thought of
Speaker 3: as a copycat is what I would call the vibe repeater.
Speaker 3: A lot of Star Wars copycats are in this category.
Speaker 3: They don't exactly lift all that much directly from Star
Speaker 3: Wars in terms of semantic plot content, but instead they're
Speaker 3: trying to copy like the texture and the feeling of
Speaker 3: Star Wars. So it's more the world, the ensemble, the
Speaker 3: look and sound, the emotional range, and so forth. So
Speaker 3: in the case of Star Wars vibe repeaters, you'd usually
Speaker 3: get some kind of swashbuckling space adventure with a cast
Speaker 3: of zany characters and morphologically diverse aliens, droids, bad guys
Speaker 3: in scary helmets, rebels fighting against the odds, space battles, mysticism,
Speaker 3: and things like that. So these movies try to copy
Speaker 3: the texture and the feeling of another movie that's been successful,
Speaker 3: more so than explicit details of the story or or
Speaker 3: explicit designs or anything like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a lot of the times, a lot of
Speaker 2: the time it falls flat. To be honest, I guess
Speaker 2: it depends on what you're copying. Like I would say,
Speaker 2: in general, I've never seen a Star Wars vibe repeater
Speaker 2: that gets the job done. But if I were to
Speaker 2: look at, say, the various Conan the Barbarian inspired movies, Okay,
Speaker 2: certainly none of them are on the level of Conan
Speaker 2: in terms of cinematic quality, but like, the general vibe
Speaker 2: might be there. It's like, all right, you know, muscle Barbarians,
Speaker 2: and some of the similar themes might be explored. It
Speaker 2: can work kind of like some of your better Mad Macs.
Speaker 2: Vibe repeaters can essentially get the job done.
Speaker 3: I agree, Yeah, yeah, okay, And then the final category
Speaker 3: I would talk about is just the all out ripoff,
Speaker 3: and this is the territory we're in with Shocking Dark.
Speaker 3: Shocking Dark is indeed a marketing clone of Terminator. Specifically,
Speaker 3: it is a sequel in name only that uses a
Speaker 3: poster that looks exactly like the poster for Terminator. It
Speaker 3: is both a premise lifter and a vibe repeater of Aliens.
Speaker 3: It's taking the basic plot pitch, and it's also trying
Speaker 3: to copy a lot of the texture and feeling of Aliens.
Speaker 3: But it goes beyond any of these categories into outright
Speaker 3: reproducing whole characters, situations, and scenes from Aliens, but with
Speaker 3: a much lower budget and less finesse in terms of acting, writing, sets, costumes,
Speaker 3: and effects. And so it's actually a pretty interesting question
Speaker 3: to me, why would you want to do that? I
Speaker 3: can understand. I think all of the other categories, like
Speaker 3: I understand the mercenary money making appeal of the marketing
Speaker 3: clone that is a cash grab. I understand the creative
Speaker 3: appeal of taking a crack at a story premise that
Speaker 3: has been done before, but doing it your own way.
Speaker 3: It can be fun to work out your own unique
Speaker 3: version of an idea. I understand wanting to capture the
Speaker 3: vibes of a movie that you liked in the past,
Speaker 3: but just do something different with it, you know, so
Speaker 3: create a similar feeling that you have enjoyed yourself. But
Speaker 3: I don't quite understand what is the appeal of just
Speaker 3: taking the scene from Aliens where Burke leaves the face
Speaker 3: hugger in the room with Ripley and Newt and reproducing
Speaker 3: it essentially the same but less well within another movie.
Speaker 3: That is a head scratcher for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, my only guess is that it basically
Speaker 2: comes down to like a producer level understanding or misunderstanding
Speaker 2: of what cinema is, you know, where it's just about
Speaker 2: the cash grab. It's not about what emotions the movie
Speaker 2: can summon. It's not about the stories they can tell.
Speaker 2: It's just like, what how much money can we make
Speaker 2: tomorrow using the limited resources we have today?
Speaker 3: But I don't even understand, So, like, what kind of
Speaker 3: appeal do you think you're gonna sell more movie tickets
Speaker 3: if you have a scene in your movie it's the
Speaker 3: same as a scene from the other movie that made money,
Speaker 3: do you know what I mean? Like, I don't even
Speaker 3: know how that you think that translates into getting people
Speaker 3: into the theaters or getting people to rent it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I can only assume it was just
Speaker 2: kind of a product of the time, right it. It
Speaker 2: must have worked right because they did it all the
Speaker 2: time in like B and C budget Italian cinema.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess so. But by the way, I don't
Speaker 3: mean to say any of this to detegrate the experience
Speaker 3: of Shocking Dark, because despite what you might regard as
Speaker 3: its creative failures or crimes, it is an absolutely brain
Speaker 3: melting good time. I can't recommend this movie enough to
Speaker 3: people who like schlock movies.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, this is definitely so bad it's good territory. I couldn't.
Speaker 2: I couldn't get my wife to watch it. She was like,
Speaker 2: she kind of scratched her head with why I would
Speaker 2: watch this in full. But if you, if you enjoy bad,
Speaker 2: schlocking movies, movies that are very rough around the edge,
Speaker 2: is then Shocking Dark is the film for you.
Speaker 3: It feels like a movie built entirely out of first takes.
Speaker 3: There are parts where actors literally screw up their lines
Speaker 3: and then correct themselves, or they like miss a queue
Speaker 3: and leave a long, awkward pause before responding to someone
Speaker 3: and just leave it in. That's in the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll get into some specific examples of this too,
Speaker 2: where it's just kind of like the camera's rolling, we're
Speaker 2: gonna get what we're gonna get, and yeah, it's in
Speaker 2: the movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love it. And then there are otherwise where
Speaker 3: it's just hard to describe what is so funny and
Speaker 3: pleasing about it. You just have to see it for yourself.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of little details about timing, editing, framing,
Speaker 3: line delivery that are difficult to translate into words, but
Speaker 3: you should see this once again. It is top shelf shlock.
Speaker 2: All right, I have a quick elevator pitch, and I
Speaker 2: think you have a longer one, but mine is simply,
Speaker 2: we have aliens at home. This movie is aliens at home.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's like what if aliens, but instead out of
Speaker 3: a terraforming colony on LV four twenty six, it's tunnels
Speaker 3: allegedly underneath Venice. Does that even make sense to have
Speaker 3: tunnels underneath Venice? Sounds like a flooding risk? But okay,
Speaker 3: so it's tunnels underneath Venice, the city of Venice in Italy.
Speaker 3: And then instead of colonial marines, you've got the Mega Force.
Speaker 3: More on them later, and then instead of xenomorphs, you've
Speaker 3: got bug eyed Ooze hippos. And then instead of Whale
Speaker 3: and U Tanni, you have the Tubular Corporation, And instead
Speaker 3: of James Cameron, you have the guys who made Troll.
Speaker 2: Too and Robo War. All right, let's go ahead and
Speaker 2: just listen to a little bit of the trailer audio
Speaker 2: for Shocking Dark.
Speaker 4: They thought they were fighting only against aliens. They were
Speaker 4: sure that they had won their but they were mistaken.
Speaker 4: Shocking Dark.
Speaker 5: Full ferocious, indestructible, ruthless terminator.
Speaker 4: Shocking Dark.
Speaker 3: Hey there, this is Joe with an insert from the future.
Speaker 3: After we finished recording the episode, just thought back about
Speaker 3: how Shocking Dark has a pretty unbelievable plot twist in
Speaker 3: the last fifteen minutes or so, and we end up
Speaker 3: talking about it without much warning in the episode. So
Speaker 3: if you want to see the movie without having a
Speaker 3: pretty bizarre surprise spoiled for you, you should watch it
Speaker 3: before listening further.
Speaker 2: That's all all right, So at this point in the podcast,
Speaker 2: you might be wondering, all right, how can I see
Speaker 2: Shocking Dark? Then, well, Shocking Dark did not receive a
Speaker 2: proper release in the US for a very long time,
Speaker 2: I think for some obvious reasons. But in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: the excellent Severin Films put out the definitive Blu ray edition,
Speaker 2: scanned in two K from the director's cut negative discovered
Speaker 2: in a Rome Lab vault. Plus there are some There
Speaker 2: are a couple of fun extras on the disc that
Speaker 2: I'll reference later. You can buy this in most places,
Speaker 2: but you can also get it off their website. Severin
Speaker 2: dot com. They do great releases in general. Shocking Dark
Speaker 2: is probably a film where you can get by seeing
Speaker 2: it in a grungy format, but I still think it's
Speaker 2: worth seeing in the best quality available. I know that
Speaker 2: some of the streams you'll find out there are on
Speaker 2: the official services that offer them. These are also the
Speaker 2: seven restoration, or at least you know the restoration that
Speaker 2: Severn Films used in their release. Okay, this is what
Speaker 2: I watched. I rented it from Video Drum here in Atlanta.
Speaker 3: I am soon to own a disc of this, but
Speaker 3: I watched a stream of it that was available through
Speaker 3: I think scream box and it looked good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I bet it's the same restoration, because it is
Speaker 2: worth stressing that it's a film with some things that
Speaker 2: I think are worth seeing in high detail. The locations
Speaker 2: they used and the I think one set that they
Speaker 2: utilized late in the film. I think these are great.
Speaker 2: I enjoyed seeing them, these performances, you know, respect the
Speaker 2: actors involved here and see them in the highest format possible.
Speaker 2: All right, let's talk about the people who made it.
Speaker 2: The director's chair occupied by Bruno matte who of nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty one through two thousand and seven Italian director of
Speaker 2: B movies, exploitation films, and yes, shameless knockoffs. His story
Speaker 2: is pretty endearing in a number of ways. Though his
Speaker 2: father owned a film editing studio, so he grew up
Speaker 2: in and around the business, and he has various technical
Speaker 2: credits to go all the way back to the Night
Speaker 2: to the early fifties. In sixty nine and seventy, he
Speaker 2: worked as an editor on two Jess Franco films, ninety
Speaker 2: nine Women and Count Dracula. That's the one that had
Speaker 2: Christopher Lee in it with a mustache, and he apparently
Speaker 2: did some uncredited directing on ninety nine Women. After this,
Speaker 2: he directed a string of Italian sex comedies and exploitation
Speaker 2: films leading up to nineteen eighties Hell of the Living Dead,
Speaker 2: a Dawn of the Dead inspired zombie film featuring a
Speaker 2: score by Goblin. Oh wow. Yeah, Now, don't be mistaken.
Speaker 2: All of the exploitation projects continued in the background here.
Speaker 2: But he also followed this up with eighty three's The
Speaker 2: Seven Magnificent Gladiators, which starred Luferi No and Sybil Danning
Speaker 2: who guess we're also in a Hercules movie that we watched,
Speaker 2: and Brad Harris so I think was also in that
Speaker 2: Hercules movie.
Speaker 3: Wait, they're trying to get some Magnificent seven juice into
Speaker 3: the title of this gladiator. Is this a future gladiator's movie?
Speaker 2: Ooh, that's a great question. I would say given the timeframe,
Speaker 2: there's like a seventy five percent chance that it takes
Speaker 2: place in a post apocalyptic future. But I don't know.
Speaker 2: This could be This could be a Sword and Sandals picture.
Speaker 2: I mean, he does have Luf Rigno in it, so
Speaker 2: come the Hercules connection.
Speaker 3: He could be a Roman gladiator or he could be
Speaker 3: a cyber gladiator. Both maver sense.
Speaker 2: There's also eighty four's Rats Night of Terror that is
Speaker 2: a post apocalyptic film with like rats overrunning a post
Speaker 2: apocalyptic city, and I think they used decaying sets from
Speaker 2: more exterior sets from a Once upon a Time in
Speaker 2: America for that one. And then there's eighty seven's Double Target.
Speaker 2: This had Miles O'Keefe in it, and Donald Pleasants is
Speaker 2: Miles O'Keefe, the guy from Atour Yes Okay. Eighty seven
Speaker 2: Scalps and Strike Commando was starring Reb Brown. Eighty eight
Speaker 2: Zombie three, the nineteen eighty eight Predator ripoff Robo War
Speaker 2: starring Reb Brown.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's one of my favorites. I used to put
Speaker 3: Robo War on when I was like hanging out with
Speaker 3: my D and D friends. I'd put it on on
Speaker 3: mute because something often silly looking was happening on screen.
Speaker 3: But if you watch that one, I don't know if
Speaker 3: that's fun to sit through the entire time because it
Speaker 3: gets rather monotonous. There's just a lot of like running
Speaker 3: around in the jungle and stuff, but there are some
Speaker 3: quite funny dialogue moments in it.
Speaker 2: The alien does not look as good as the predator
Speaker 2: in our Predator franchise. I have to.
Speaker 3: Say, no, it does not. I would say that the
Speaker 3: monster costumes in shocking Dark are much better than the
Speaker 3: monster monster suits and designs in the other Bruno Matte
Speaker 3: and Claudio Fragoso movies I've seen.
Speaker 2: I agreed, agreed, We'll come back to those monsters in
Speaker 2: a bit. But let's say following Robo War, there's eighty
Speaker 2: eight Strike Commando two, which has Richard Harrison, and then
Speaker 2: there's the nineteen ninety five Jaws knockoff, cruel Jaws and
Speaker 2: much more.
Speaker 3: No nice jaws around here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess by ninety five you got to come
Speaker 2: up with new angles on your Jaws knockoff. Anyway, what
Speaker 2: your angle is that the shark is mean? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: he wouldn't mean enough. Further, it's just an animal now
Speaker 2: he's mean. Okay. So Mittea continued working in low budget
Speaker 2: horror until his death in two thousand and seven, and
Speaker 2: I've read that he was, you know, working pretty much
Speaker 2: extensively in the Philippines by that time.
Speaker 3: I think Robo War was shot in the Philippines.
Speaker 2: From what it is, a jungle movie, right, yeah, all right,
Speaker 2: Now onto the screenwriters. It is the husband and wife
Speaker 2: duo of Rosella Drudi and Claudio Fragasso. He was born
Speaker 2: in fifty one they also wrote nineteen nineties, often exceeded
Speaker 2: but never equaled Troll two, which was our second selection
Speaker 2: ever for Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: A classic for a reason.
Speaker 2: For Grosso's credited screenplays go back to around seventy four
Speaker 2: and hers to nineteen eighty, but they frequently worked with
Speaker 2: Bruno on such films as Hell as a Living Dead, Rats,
Speaker 2: Night of Terror, Zombie three Strike, Commando two, and Robo War. Now,
Speaker 2: of their pictures, I've mainly just seen Troll two and
Speaker 2: The Night Killer, as well as some behind the scenes
Speaker 2: interviews with them, and it's always very interesting and it
Speaker 2: always strikes me that they take their films very seriously.
Speaker 2: So Troll two had aspirations of being a sort of
Speaker 2: cutting critique of vegetarianism got them, and Night Killer aspired
Speaker 2: to be some sort of like serious psycho sexual thriller.
Speaker 3: In some respects Night Killer is very funny but also gross.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I can't. I can't recommend. I can't recommend
Speaker 2: Night Killer to the average film viewer. It's more of
Speaker 2: it's a deeper cut. Yeah, But I was curious, Okay,
Speaker 2: there's going to be an interview on this disc from Severn,
Speaker 2: and I was like, what's their takeing it beyond it?
Speaker 2: Are they going to be you know, very serious about
Speaker 2: it or are they going to be upfront about it
Speaker 2: being a knockoff. It's more of the latter. They stressed,
Speaker 2: the producers put a put some very strict parameters on
Speaker 2: this project. It needed to be a combination of Aliens
Speaker 2: and The Terminator, and it needed to use character names
Speaker 2: from those films. So, yeah, have a Sarah, for instance,
Speaker 2: in this picture.
Speaker 3: Except she's the Ripley, right, yeah, yeah, so the Sarah
Speaker 3: Connor is the Ripley. And then there's a Drake in it.
Speaker 3: Drake is one of the colonial Marines in Aliens, but
Speaker 3: instead they make him like a scientist who has been
Speaker 3: driven insane by the monsters and like has a scream
Speaker 3: from beyond space and time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they said that they actually pushed back as
Speaker 2: much as they could, trying to inject some originality into
Speaker 2: the script, but that neither they nor Bruno had any
Speaker 2: control over the switch to the title Terminator too, when
Speaker 2: the producer turned around and tried to sell it.
Speaker 3: Okay, I think maybe the direct copying of scenes from
Speaker 3: Aliens makes more sense if like these are just hired
Speaker 3: guns and they are doing what the producers tell them
Speaker 3: they have to do. Yeah, that makes sense. It's like
Speaker 3: an order that is executed unthinkingly, or maybe not unthinkingly
Speaker 3: by the people executing it, but is given unthinkingly.
Speaker 2: Right, But then part of the creative exercise here becomes Okay,
Speaker 2: it's one thing to say, rip off aliens and terminator,
Speaker 2: but then how do you do it with such a
Speaker 2: limited budget. You can't, So you have to make up
Speaker 2: new stuff, even if you didn't want to, even if
Speaker 2: you want to just save all of your creative juices
Speaker 2: for the next project that you have more investment in,
Speaker 2: You're gonna have to come up with something because you cannot.
Speaker 2: You cannot reproduce alien scene for scene, like you just
Speaker 2: can't not do it.
Speaker 3: Absolutely not, though I've sort of already alluded to this,
Speaker 3: But I think that the normally, when you're dealing with
Speaker 3: the small budget, what you would expect to be the
Speaker 3: weakest link in the movie is the technical realization, like
Speaker 3: the you know, the special effects and the monster costumes
Speaker 3: in the sets. But I don't think that is the
Speaker 3: weakest link here. I think that you know, some of
Speaker 3: the monster costumes kind of look okay, they're kind of
Speaker 3: they're they're not as scary and realistic looking as the
Speaker 3: xenomorph costumes, but they're fun, they're they're pretty good. I mean, clearly,
Speaker 3: the weakest link here is like the script and the
Speaker 3: acting and the human elements.
Speaker 2: I agree Frigaso thought that the monster costumes were the
Speaker 2: worst part. You know, he's like some of the atmosphere
Speaker 2: they created, But yeah, I thought the monsters were fine.
Speaker 2: There are other glaring problems here. Drudi, for her part,
Speaker 2: said that she didn't like the film, was slightly mystified
Speaker 2: that people did like it, but was generally like glad
Speaker 2: that the film made people happy, and she commented that
Speaker 2: there was too much dialogue pas in the film, like
Speaker 2: they just they had to, they had to fill up
Speaker 2: a certain amount of runtime, and you know, you can't
Speaker 2: just do effects and shotgun blasts the whole time. You've
Speaker 2: got to have some dialogue, and that there's too much
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 3: That's some of my favorite stuff in the movie, when
Speaker 3: it feels like the actors are just ad libbing to
Speaker 3: stretch out a scene. And yeah, oh that's some of
Speaker 3: the best stuff, especially costers stuff in that regard.
Speaker 2: Oh goodness, yes, I guess we'll get to hurt in
Speaker 2: a minute. So anyway, the writers here, they seem to
Speaker 2: have no illusions about the film and they're glad people
Speaker 2: liked it and they didn't disown it or anything, you know,
Speaker 2: So it was it's a fun little interview, all right. Now,
Speaker 2: let's get into the cast here. I'm going to start
Speaker 2: with really our central protagonist here, our ripley, if you will.
Speaker 2: It is the character Sarah, and she is played by
Speaker 2: Haven Tyler. You know she is.
Speaker 3: I don't think anybody could say she is a good
Speaker 3: actress in this movie, but she is like a blee
Speaker 3: bad Like I found her bad performance was endearing.
Speaker 2: This is Tyler's only acting credit. She was an American
Speaker 2: college student studying abroad at the time, and since she'd
Speaker 2: done a little bit of modeling and she had in
Speaker 2: the past done some like school stage performances, she signed
Speaker 2: up with a talent agency in Rome, which led to
Speaker 2: her casting in this production. According to a twenty twenty
Speaker 2: one interview with Fangoria magazine, this one was conducted by
Speaker 2: Michael Gengold. Her audition was apparently just her screaming in
Speaker 2: a room, and it's a really good interview. I've certainly
Speaker 2: worth worth checking out for anyone interested in this picture.
Speaker 2: But she reflects positively on the experience of making it,
Speaker 2: saying that like most everyone was nice. The guy who
Speaker 2: oversaw the munitions was really professional, which is something I
Speaker 2: have to admit is often on my mind these days.
Speaker 2: When I watched these older films with a bunch of
Speaker 2: guns in them, I'm like, geez, I hope nobody was
Speaker 2: hurt or killed making this. I hope they were. They
Speaker 2: were careful, so it's alway refreshing to hear something like that.
Speaker 2: I showed my wife part of the movie and she
Speaker 2: observed that Tyler bears a certain resemblance to contemporary actress
Speaker 2: Kate McKinnon.
Speaker 3: Yep, she looks like her.
Speaker 2: Yes, And of course the whole idea was I think
Speaker 2: she was calfs because she at least vaguely to some degree,
Speaker 2: resembles Ripley. It looks like Sigourney Weaver. I don't know
Speaker 2: sure why not.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to get there, but I don't quite see it.
Speaker 3: But I respect that they tried, and you know what,
Speaker 3: I feel like my judgment is going to continue because
Speaker 3: now that I'm looking down the list of the other
Speaker 3: actors we have to talk about in almost every case,
Speaker 3: I actually feel have the same judgment, which is likably bad,
Speaker 3: not a good actor giving a very stiff, wooden performance.
Speaker 3: But I like them a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean really, you know, someone like Tyler, this
Speaker 2: is her only film, She've had very little experience. This
Speaker 2: is a very green performance, but it's great, like she
Speaker 2: gives it her all. It is perfect for this film totally.
Speaker 3: And another person on that wavelength is the actor who
Speaker 3: plays Fuller, the company Man.
Speaker 2: Yes, Christopher Aarn's another American actor living in Italy at
Speaker 2: the time. We haven't I don't think we've mentioned this,
Speaker 2: but this is an Italian film, but all the dialogue
Speaker 2: is in English. It was like shot in English, so
Speaker 2: using a lot of American actors or Americans in general
Speaker 2: that happened to be in Italy at the time. So
Speaker 2: this guy's acting credits, though stretched from nineteen eighty five
Speaker 2: through around nineteen ninety nine. They include eighty eight Raiders
Speaker 2: of the Magic Ivory, the nineteen ninety one Top Gun
Speaker 2: knockoff with Aliens and David Warner, Blue Tornado, nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: one's Beyond Justice with Rudger Howard, and Elliott Gould, and
Speaker 2: finally a bit part as a Goths soldier in the
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine all star Julie Taymoor film Titus, produced
Speaker 2: in part by Steve Bannett.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's come up before. I don't remember him from Titus, though.
Speaker 2: I think it's a bit part, you know, Goth soldier
Speaker 2: or God's Soldier number one or some thing you know.
Speaker 3: Okay, So my read on this guy is that they
Speaker 3: told him you are the bad guy, be mean, and
Speaker 3: so in every single moment, every single line, every single
Speaker 3: second that the camera is on him, he is sneering.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's just like.
Speaker 3: It is one of the most over the top villain
Speaker 3: performances I've ever seen. Dot. I don't think he ever
Speaker 3: cracks a smile.
Speaker 2: He is just like, yeah, he's like every scene he's
Speaker 2: making that. You know, sometimes you see people who's like
Speaker 2: their idea for a headshot is they need to look
Speaker 2: mean in all of them. They need to look like
Speaker 2: like very stern and not smile. That's his whole, the
Speaker 2: whole picture.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yeah, that's off to him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a he commits the part. It's fine, all right.
Speaker 2: Now getting into the basically the colonial Marines the picture
Speaker 2: we have the character cost and cost is played by
Speaker 2: Garretta Garretta born nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 3: I love her. I can't literally like the moment when
Speaker 3: she died in the movie, like halfway through I shouted
Speaker 3: out loud. I was like, no, do not take her away.
Speaker 2: How can we finish the picture without her just jarring presence.
Speaker 2: So she is an American model turned actor with a
Speaker 2: number of notable credits from the world of Italian b cinema,
Speaker 2: making her something of an icon in this part of
Speaker 2: the world of cinema. Her credits include nineteen eighty three's
Speaker 2: Warrior of the Lost World and eighty three's twenty twenty
Speaker 2: Texas Gladiators, Fulci's Murder Rock from nineteen eighty four, that
Speaker 2: one not that good, but not only for Fulci, completist,
Speaker 2: I think, but she's in that one. She's in Bruno's
Speaker 2: Rats Night of Terror, and in nineteen eighty five she
Speaker 2: appeared in Lamberto Baba's Classic Demons, which is definitely worth
Speaker 2: seeing if you're into just wild Italian horror movies of
Speaker 2: this time period is Warrior of.
Speaker 3: The Lost World, the one they did on Mystery Science
Speaker 3: Theater that has mega Weapon.
Speaker 2: Yes, I believe so. I think that's the one with
Speaker 2: Donald Pleasants in it, right.
Speaker 3: That sounds right. Mega weapon from what I recall is
Speaker 3: like a dump truck that's got a little like thing
Speaker 3: pooping out some flames from it, and.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, that's the one. Fred Williamson's in it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But to repeat the theme of actors who are
Speaker 3: giving it, they're all who are giving a I don't know,
Speaker 3: you you might not think of as a realistic dramatic performance,
Speaker 3: but who are going over the top in ways that
Speaker 3: make this movie so much fun Bullseye Like Greta. Greta
Speaker 3: is so much fun in this Yeah.
Speaker 2: She has this kind of like unhinged green energy that
Speaker 2: makes her just absolutely captivating to watch. Like we'll get
Speaker 2: into the key scene here in a bit, but yeah,
Speaker 2: anytime she is on on on screen, you're like, what
Speaker 2: is she going to say next? What is she gonna do?
Speaker 2: And what choices is she gonna make in her acting?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: All right. We also have Foster Lombardi playing Frienzini, another
Speaker 2: one of the Mega Force crew here the Marines Here
Speaker 2: born nineteen fifty five, Italian actor. His credits include nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty's Terror Express eighty two is Don't Look in the
Speaker 2: attic Rat's Night of Terror nineteen eighty nine's After Death
Speaker 2: aka zombiefore. That one was directed by Claudio Fragasso and
Speaker 2: written by Rosella Drudi, and he was also in Blue Tornado.
Speaker 3: Is this the guy who cost her yells at for
Speaker 3: being Italian?
Speaker 2: Yes? Yeah, okay, all right. It can't be an alien's
Speaker 2: ripoff without a newt ripoff, and that is where the
Speaker 2: character Samantha comes into play. Samantha was played by child
Speaker 2: actress Dominica Colson, who was apparently eleven at the time,
Speaker 2: but looks quite a bit older on the screen. Judian
Speaker 2: Fragasso points this out that she's almost as tall as
Speaker 2: tap Tyler and these various scenes, and I don't think
Speaker 2: everyone was really happy with the way this ended up looking,
Speaker 2: but hey, being being a parent of a twelve year
Speaker 2: old and seeing how his friends have grown, especially, I
Speaker 2: can totally see how this could happen. You cast an
Speaker 2: eleven year old and suddenly she's like a foot and
Speaker 2: a half taller.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I guess it takes a while to make
Speaker 3: a movie, didn't it. Yeah, yeah, I would have maybe
Speaker 3: not this one.
Speaker 2: But I'm maybe between the time of casting at or
Speaker 2: maybe you don't realize that your lead actor isn't as
Speaker 2: tall as Sigourney Weaver. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that would make sense. I would have guessed this
Speaker 3: actress was older than eleven. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But anyway, in that interview with Angoria, Tyler shares
Speaker 2: that she and her mom, who was on set with
Speaker 2: her the whole time, were lovely people. So it's always
Speaker 2: nice to hear when a low budget picture like this
Speaker 2: is not in and of itself a secondary horror movie. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because you can imagine the pitch was. I was a
Speaker 2: college student living in Italy for a summer, and I
Speaker 2: was cast in a sci fi horror movie filmed in
Speaker 2: an abandoned nuclear power plant.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, that is where they filmed some of
Speaker 3: the stuff, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, we'll get into like, you have so many
Speaker 2: great sequences, and well, there are great sequences. You have
Speaker 2: some great locations in this film, Yes, that look very
Speaker 2: interesting that could have this industrial quality to them, but
Speaker 2: also don't look like straight up grimy ruins, like they're
Speaker 2: kind of they're very clean and futuristic looking in some regards,
Speaker 2: and That's basically what the whole situation is.
Speaker 3: When I was watching, I was really wondering where some
Speaker 3: of this was shot, because it doesn't look like cheap sets.
Speaker 3: It looks like a real industrial setting with like heavy
Speaker 3: bulkhead doors and all this stuff, Like, what were they
Speaker 3: doing here? But they actually got let into a nuclear
Speaker 3: power plant.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Italy, I believe, historically had four different nuclear power plants,
Speaker 2: all of which close by nineteen ninety following the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty seven Italian referendums on nuclear power. And this would
Speaker 2: have been in the wake the Chernobyl disaster. So yeah,
Speaker 2: they shot stuff there. They also shot some in Rome's
Speaker 2: Roma Tormini train station. I think there are some grimier
Speaker 2: tunnel sequences that must have been shot there. And then
Speaker 2: there's one set late in the picture. There's one like
Speaker 2: fully created set. Basically it'll be a set that looks
Speaker 2: a lot like maybe they were inspired by the Mother
Speaker 2: command center in the original Alien.
Speaker 3: That's what I was thinking was the one. Yeah, should
Speaker 3: we spoil it right now? It's a time machine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this movie has the gall to throw in the
Speaker 2: what are like last ten to fifteen minutes of the film,
Speaker 2: they're like, oh, time travel exists. Yeah, yeah, in a
Speaker 2: big way.
Speaker 3: Best CODEA ever.
Speaker 2: All right, let's see who do we have left on here? Okay,
Speaker 2: there's a character named Drake who shows up. We mentioned
Speaker 2: Drake earlier, played by Clive Ricci born nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 2: This is another This is a much much smaller role,
Speaker 2: but another totally unhinged performance that land somewhere between bad
Speaker 2: and transcendent.
Speaker 3: I could not believe what I was watching in the
Speaker 3: scene where he starts screaming at all of the Mega
Speaker 3: Force guys and they all start screaming, and everyone's screaming,
Speaker 3: It's like I nearly fell over.
Speaker 2: It's a lot of screaming in this film, a lot
Speaker 2: of shrill screaming. So this is This is an English
Speaker 2: born actor born fifty eight, also a composer. This was
Speaker 2: his first film credit, which I think is understandable, but
Speaker 2: he went on to a peer in ninety four Cemetary Man,
Speaker 2: two thousand and five's Casanova, the two thousand and seven
Speaker 2: HBO series Rome, Dario Argento's Mother of Tears in two
Speaker 2: thousand and seven, in the twenty twenty four series Those
Speaker 2: About to Die, along with various other I think Italian
Speaker 2: productions and productions that took place in Italy. I believe
Speaker 2: he's also a translator and a voiceover artist.
Speaker 3: M okay, well, hey, should we talk about those creature
Speaker 3: effects that Claudio was talking down on.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is the work of the Polucci brothers. So
Speaker 2: these are a pair of twin Italian monster suit makers,
Speaker 2: Francesco and Gaetano, active behind the scenes, or at least
Speaker 2: credited as such, because sometimes, you know, special effects people
Speaker 2: are kind of lost in the shuffle and aren't actually credited.
Speaker 2: But based on the databases, we know that they were
Speaker 2: active between eighty five and ninety six. They'd previously worked
Speaker 2: on nineteen eighty five's texts and The Lord of the
Speaker 2: Deep on some special effects, and then they followed this
Speaker 2: up working alongside the legendary Italian special effects master Carlo
Speaker 2: Rombaldi on nineteen eighty five Silver Bullet. This is the
Speaker 2: Stephen King scripted adaptation of King's Werewolf story.
Speaker 3: Does that Gary Busey in it?
Speaker 2: It sure does?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay? And also what's his name that played Stilgar in
Speaker 2: the David Lynch Dune.
Speaker 3: Oh Everett McGill, there you.
Speaker 2: Go, Yeah, Everett McGill's and that too, So anyway, this
Speaker 2: seemed to be like this. I'm guessing this was their
Speaker 2: big moment, like working with a legit master of like
Speaker 2: creature effects and creature building, and after this they seem
Speaker 2: to go their own way. Their creature work continues in
Speaker 2: Body Count in eighty six, The Barbarians in eighty seven,
Speaker 2: Top Line and Robo War in eighty eight, and Night
Speaker 2: Killer in nineteen ninety, and then their last picture came
Speaker 2: out in ninety six. But again, sometimes special effects workers
Speaker 2: don't end up being credited properly, so I'm not entirely
Speaker 2: sure where else they may have worked. Well.
Speaker 3: I think the monsters in Shocking Dark look a lot
Speaker 3: better than the monster in Robo War.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they look good. I feel like they're mostly lit
Speaker 2: pretty well. They clearly just had two suits, one of
Speaker 2: which looks kind of like a fishy frogman and the
Speaker 2: other one looks kind of like a cross between the
Speaker 2: alien space jockey and a giant cicada.
Speaker 3: That's what I was thinking. One is the cicada because
Speaker 3: it's got a oh, it's got kind of a hose
Speaker 3: running down the middle of its face that is space
Speaker 3: jockey ish, but could also be interpreted as the insects rostrum,
Speaker 3: and it has the red eyes of a cicada. It
Speaker 3: just looks very insecty. But then the other one is
Speaker 3: the one I was thinking of, is the bubblegum hippopotamus,
Speaker 3: because it's kind of a hippo. Then when it opens
Speaker 3: its mouth, it's got this stretchy, the bubblegum kind of
Speaker 3: the sticky stuff in between its jaws. That that's always
Speaker 3: like peeling up and I don't know what you call that,
Speaker 3: that physical effect, but it's like bubble gum stuck between
Speaker 3: two things that are peeling apart.
Speaker 2: It's always painfully obvious that they only had two monster
Speaker 2: suits in this film, like they're not really able to
Speaker 2: create that illusion of there being tons and tons of monsters.
Speaker 2: I always felt like there was Monster A and Monster B.
Speaker 2: But still they look pretty good.
Speaker 3: Though there are some surprise monsters later on of a
Speaker 3: different format.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, there is going to be a yeah, spoiler
Speaker 2: monster coming later. I guess not much of a spoiler monster,
Speaker 2: all right. And then finally, the music in this picture.
Speaker 2: The score is by Carlo Maria Cordillo born nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 2: composer and one time producer on Joe Diamato's ninety one
Speaker 2: fantasy film Quest for the Mighty Sword. He worked a
Speaker 2: lot in European exploitation and genre s. His credits include
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty one Joe Diamanto George Eastman Gorefest Absurd.
Speaker 2: He did one Picer Simon's eighty two slasher pieces, along
Speaker 2: with Joe Diamanto's A Tour The Fighting Eagle, and his
Speaker 2: eight nineteen eighty three post apocalyptic film Endgame Bronx Lota
Speaker 2: Finale eighty seven, z Iron Warrior, Fulchi's Enigma the same year,
Speaker 2: Night Killer, Troll two, and various other schlocky titles. His
Speaker 2: work typifies that kind of like fun and atmospheric synth
Speaker 2: work you find in a lot of these films, which,
Speaker 2: along with, you know, the work of bigger name players
Speaker 2: in the game, helped inspire whole modern subgenres of like
Speaker 2: hard disco and you know, sort of like retro dark
Speaker 2: synth wave stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The soundtrack here is not super original, but I think
Speaker 3: it fits well and is quite fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. You can find some of these tracks on
Speaker 2: Cordeo's official streamable releases under the title Alienator, which was
Speaker 2: one of the alternate titles for the film if you
Speaker 2: look for the album The Bite of Fear, So yeah,
Speaker 2: I thought it sounded pretty good. Special edition vinyls of
Speaker 2: his scores have been released before, I don't think for
Speaker 2: Shocking Dark, but Patrol Too and Absurd definitely have come
Speaker 2: out on vinyl. And finally, I should note that IMDb
Speaker 2: lists the use of stock music on this film by
Speaker 2: none other than legendary Greek progressive and electronic composer Evangelists
Speaker 2: who live forty three through twenty and twenty two. But
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what where and to what extent we
Speaker 2: hear evangelists in Shocking Dark. But I know he did
Speaker 2: a lot of major compositions obviously, you know Oscar winning
Speaker 2: stuff like eighty one's Chariots a Fire or you know
Speaker 2: the legendary score to eighty two's Blade Runner. But he
Speaker 2: also did stuff like a twelve hour private score for
Speaker 2: some surgery instruction videos that the Tacos tapes. So I
Speaker 2: don't know. I'm not a vangelist expert, so I'm not
Speaker 2: sure like what all he got into outside of like
Speaker 2: his main work. So maybe there is some like you know,
Speaker 2: straight up you know stock music that he did that
Speaker 2: they're sampling here. But but again I'm not sure. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure on the details of where we hear any
Speaker 2: of his work in his picture Let Me Let Me
Speaker 2: Stress though, score by Cordillo not a score by Evangelists.
Speaker 3: Evangelists directed shocking everybody remember that. Okay, is it time
Speaker 3: to talk about the plot?
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's get into the plot now.
Speaker 3: I think once we sort of hit a certain point
Speaker 3: in the progression of the story here, the plot recap
Speaker 3: may become thinner or more cursory than usual, since it
Speaker 3: just did not make sense to me to like after
Speaker 3: Act two begins, to try to narrate in detail. This
Speaker 3: is one of those movies where when I started playing
Speaker 3: the stream, I had to stop and make sure I
Speaker 3: had selected the right title, because if you know that
Speaker 3: the premise is it's a ripoff of Aliens and Terminator,
Speaker 3: the first scene does not make any sense. We open
Speaker 3: on tourists in Venice. Yes, so we're in some piazza
Speaker 3: with cathedrals in the background. You see tourists wandering around
Speaker 3: with cameras taking pictures of stuff. They're pigeons everywhere. Somebody
Speaker 3: strikes up some soft Italian mandolin music, and then a
Speaker 3: voice over comes on sounding like the narrator of a
Speaker 3: slasher movie trailer, and says Venice before the year two
Speaker 3: thousand and it goes on to say squares, museums and churches,
Speaker 3: Tourists crowd the streets. Venice is threatened by the high tide.
Speaker 3: The seaweed is killing the oxygen in the waters, and
Speaker 3: the putrid waters are corroding the foundations of the city.
Speaker 3: So we're treated to some shots of Venus from the water,
Speaker 3: from out on the ocean, looking at the at the
Speaker 3: coastline and the buildings, and then the narrator says, this
Speaker 3: is Venus today, and then it grows softer and it
Speaker 3: says what will happen tomorrow? We cut away from the
Speaker 3: waters and the pleasure boats to a shot of the
Speaker 3: city with soft, fuzzy lens. Now it looked very clear beforehand.
Speaker 3: Now we got the fuzzy lens. So the camera operator
Speaker 3: has activated conquest mode. I don't know how exactly they
Speaker 3: do that. I mean they smear some vasoline on the
Speaker 3: lens or something, but we're in that mode, and in
Speaker 3: front of the city there is now a red sign
Speaker 3: that says Venus off limits. And here we get our
Speaker 3: first glimpse of the Mega Force. Now, these costumes are
Speaker 3: I don't know, they're a big part of what makes
Speaker 3: the movie funny because they're just funny looking costumes. From
Speaker 3: the bottom to the top, the Mega Force wear heavy boots,
Speaker 3: baggy cuffed up nylon pants, a Batman utility belt, golden
Speaker 3: yellow longsleeve shirts, and then I don't know what you
Speaker 3: call these this like shoulder formation or sleeve type, but
Speaker 3: they're like a V shaped gray vest with sort of
Speaker 3: arched cap sleeves. You know, it's like where the sleeve
Speaker 3: comes out from the shoulder over the arm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks kind of like the things that the
Speaker 2: Ninjas wear in Mortal Combat.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, yeah, and then a gas mask and a
Speaker 3: bicycle helmet.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. So basically so, yeah, Venus is off limits. Now.
Speaker 2: Future Venus is kind of like New York City and
Speaker 2: Escape from New York, only it's a biohazard zone instead
Speaker 2: of a penal colony. Will learn.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not even any prisoners in there. There is no
Speaker 3: Duke of Venice. There is only slime, which, by the
Speaker 3: way they show us, we're just getting at this point.
Speaker 3: They're showing us pictures of the water and they're slime
Speaker 3: in the water, and then another narrator comes on. I
Speaker 3: think this is a different voice who says the situation
Speaker 3: in Venice is now critical. A giant toxic cloud has
Speaker 3: settled over the city and is slowly destroying every form
Speaker 3: of life. The government has declared it a disaster area
Speaker 3: and has ordered the evacuation of the few remaining survivors.
Speaker 3: Venice is now a dead city. And then like the
Speaker 3: camera pans around looking at the canals, filming places where
Speaker 3: there's like a lot of algae on the bricks around
Speaker 3: the canal, or just some litter, and it kind of
Speaker 3: reminds me of something we talked about in our Weird
Speaker 3: House episode on Frogs from nineteen seventy two. When you've
Speaker 3: got a movie scene, it's supposed to be showing that
Speaker 3: a place is filled with litter and pollution, but the
Speaker 3: trash and the scene looks too fresh. They do not
Speaker 3: have that problem here, because I think they're just I
Speaker 3: think they got these shots by just going around in
Speaker 3: filming places where there was actually trash piled up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they just like picked out the worst spots in
Speaker 2: Venice and like, here's your dystopian future.
Speaker 3: Right, so it doesn't actually look that futuristic just looks
Speaker 3: like they were cruising for trash and they found some
Speaker 3: and you know, got some shots. So we go around
Speaker 3: looking at these fuzzy scenes of a desolate, abandoned Venus.
Speaker 3: There's like crumbling. There are crumbling buildings hanging over the canals,
Speaker 3: old wooden scaffolding, and various stages of rot bricks falling
Speaker 3: into the ocean. Rats living in old water logged mattresses.
Speaker 3: The idea is Venus stinks. Now, it's no good. Next
Speaker 3: we go inside a secure facility to a control room
Speaker 3: of some kind with huge banks of lights and monitors
Speaker 3: and dials all beeping, and in here we meet some
Speaker 3: Megaphorce guys. And as soon as I saw this, I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, this is not a set. They couldnot
Speaker 3: afford to create a set like this. This is some
Speaker 3: kind of actual industrial control room.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very functional looking, like especially in the still
Speaker 2: that you popped into our notes here, it's like you
Speaker 2: can see computer screens online in the background, like all
Speaker 2: the lights are on. Presumably they did not fire the
Speaker 2: plant back up again in full, but everything looks very operational,
Speaker 2: like this is not a this is not a power
Speaker 2: plant that was taken off line because it had completely
Speaker 2: worn out. No, it came offline because of you know,
Speaker 2: other other reasons.
Speaker 3: I'm just imagining Bruno like that guy in Chernobyl where
Speaker 3: he's like, no, get my reactors started again.
Speaker 2: But yeah, these are some great spaces that that we
Speaker 2: see throughout the picture at times, like huge vault doors
Speaker 2: in this case, you know, big control banks, some great
Speaker 2: hallways and yeah, so some and it feels significantly different
Speaker 2: compared to a lot of the grimy industrial spaces that
Speaker 2: we've seen a lot of it our other movies that
Speaker 2: we watch for Weird House Cinema. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So a guy from wearing the Mega Forest uniform
Speaker 3: comes into this room. He says, what's going on here?
Speaker 3: And the guy manning the computer says, there's an SOS
Speaker 3: from Venice, sir. And before the guy even finishes saying Venice,
Speaker 3: we hear people screaming from somewhere and then we realize
Speaker 3: they're screaming on the TV that they're watching. So let's
Speaker 3: watch and we get to see the closed circuit camera. Uh,
Speaker 3: and it's like some workers in a steamy tunnel somewhere
Speaker 3: and they're looking up at the camera in the tunnel
Speaker 3: and screaming for help. And the performances of these guys
Speaker 3: is so strong. So they're like overacting in one sense
Speaker 3: where they're like a just screaming at the top of
Speaker 3: their lungs. You can see their uvulas, you know, teeth out,
Speaker 3: just shrieking. But then there are also moments where they'll
Speaker 3: like pause and look at the camera for a second
Speaker 3: and then scream for help again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we.
Speaker 3: See a look of grave concern on the face of
Speaker 3: the Mega Force leader. I think this guy is technically
Speaker 3: the Kernel, but this guy is great. He's got a
Speaker 3: very Charlton Hesteny stab you with his Adam's Apple quality.
Speaker 3: But he also I don't know exactly why, maybe because
Speaker 3: of the yellow shirt. He just reminded me of corn,
Speaker 3: Like he's a big old corn corn on the cob,
Speaker 3: just yellow, sweet summer corn. And he also is a
Speaker 3: really funny character because the Corn guy here stares into
Speaker 3: space for several seconds before saying his lines. It does
Speaker 3: it repeatedly, like it'll cut to the Megaforce guy and
Speaker 3: then engage the emergency protocol.
Speaker 2: I want to say that he's also one of these
Speaker 2: characters that is often clearly reading lines off a screen,
Speaker 2: whether they're actually on the screen digitally or they are
Speaker 2: pasted there probably and we just can't see it from
Speaker 2: a dude to the camera angle.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So in the scene, Corn commander here wants to
Speaker 3: get in touch with somebody named Raffleson, who is the
Speaker 3: scientist in charge of whatever they're looking at, but they're
Speaker 3: unable to raise him. Communications have been cut. As I
Speaker 3: alluded to earlier, it's kind of hard to describe what
Speaker 3: makes this so funny, but all throughout here there is
Speaker 3: pretty high level hilarity in like everyan aspect of the movie,
Speaker 3: from the physical blocking and posture of the actors to
Speaker 3: the facial expressions, to the lines as scripted, to the
Speaker 3: line deliveries, Like everything on that level is super awkward
Speaker 3: and funny and sometimes adorable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's at that level that is I think
Speaker 2: ultimately very difficult to reproduce for comedic value. Like, yes,
Speaker 2: it's a rarey. You see something like Garth Morange's Dark
Speaker 2: Place that was able to so perfectly capture the sort
Speaker 2: of vibe that was achieved organically in this picture.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, Okay, So we go into the facility that
Speaker 3: we were just watching on the closed circuit and we
Speaker 3: follow around a couple of the workers in jumpsuits as
Speaker 3: they run around the tunnels. Occasionally they remember to act
Speaker 3: scared and then they you know, and they'll have lines
Speaker 3: about how it seems like it's curtains for us. And
Speaker 3: eventually they wander up on a monster hidden by fog,
Speaker 3: so we don't get a good look at it yet,
Speaker 3: but you know that they're like, oh no, it's our time,
Speaker 3: so you know, they know they're done for. Then we
Speaker 3: cut back to another guy. It's this curly haired guy
Speaker 3: we follow as he runs around the tunnels. He makes
Speaker 3: some really good faces if you pause it at essentially
Speaker 3: any moment, and then he gets assaulted by this other guy, Drake.
Speaker 3: Drake is the scientist who we mentioned earlier who gives
Speaker 3: the just really astoundingly unhinged performance. When he first sees him,
Speaker 3: he's like, oh, Drake, it's you. What happened to the others?
Speaker 3: And then Drake puts a hand on him and he's like, gooss.
Speaker 3: Drake starts I think, sort of choking him, and I
Speaker 3: don't know, probably eats him or something. We like Drake,
Speaker 3: by the way, So next we cut back to headquarters
Speaker 3: and we got the corn commander, this other kind of
Speaker 3: dorky Megaporce guy, and a lady. Now. Also, she's wearing
Speaker 3: a vest with arched caps leaves, but hers is a
Speaker 3: leather vest to for a jumpsuit, so I think she's
Speaker 3: supposed to look cool. And these three people are Sarah Drumble,
Speaker 3: the scientist. We've got Bond, who is the captain of
Speaker 3: the Megaphore Strike Team, which will be our colonial space
Speaker 3: Marines for the film. I recall Bond being quite unremarkable.
Speaker 3: I don't know what to say about him. He's just
Speaker 3: like leader Man. And then of course there's Commander Corn
Speaker 3: who is some kind of some kind of colonel. He
Speaker 3: stays back in the command center for much of the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's played by one time actor Bruce McFarland, and
Speaker 2: Raffleson on the screen is played by Al McFarland. So
Speaker 2: I don't know if these two were like father and son,
Speaker 2: if they were related, or they're just having to be
Speaker 2: a couple of McFarland's in Italy at the time.
Speaker 3: So the three of them are in what looks like
Speaker 3: one of those featureless rooms attached to the side of
Speaker 3: a church where you do Sunday school and they are
Speaker 3: watching a videotape of the scientist Raffleson. He's the big
Speaker 3: science guy in charge of all the dudes in the tunnels.
Speaker 3: And Raffleson on the tape is saying, well, yeah, one
Speaker 3: thing's for sure. Our group here seems to be condemned
Speaker 3: to certain death, a hideous death. And he could not
Speaker 3: sound more bored. But Raffleson says he wants to create
Speaker 3: a record of what happened here. He says, about a
Speaker 3: week ago, strange things started to take place. Several of
Speaker 3: his team disappeared, and others showed signs of mental disturbance.
Speaker 3: And then Drake, who's the guy we met in the tunnel,
Speaker 3: has begun to insist that he is in touch with
Speaker 3: a community of strange creatures, almost as if he were
Speaker 3: and then the signal cuts off, cut to static.
Speaker 2: Now, at this point, I feel like the movie is
Speaker 2: starting to fire on all cylinders, and you're and to
Speaker 2: be fair, like doesn't feel particularly aliensy at this point,
Speaker 2: doesn't feel like a huge rip off. You know, it's
Speaker 2: kind of like, all right, some sort of weird creature
Speaker 2: community has emerged in post apocalyptic Venice.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, you could imagine it going in other directions.
Speaker 3: But so okay, here the corn commander tells Sarah Drumble that, uh,
Speaker 3: she's gonna have to go on a mission into the
Speaker 3: lab facility to see if they can rescue any survivors.
Speaker 3: And then there's a guy who pipes up from the
Speaker 3: back of the room who's he says something like, you know,
Speaker 3: to heck with the survivors, I need Raffleson's secret diary.
Speaker 3: Who is this guy? Well, he introduces himself as Samuel
Speaker 3: Fuller from the Tubular Corporation.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I love the Tubular Corporation. And they
Speaker 2: say it a lot.
Speaker 3: They never stopped so many references to the Tubular Corporation,
Speaker 3: So I'm trying to think, is there something that refers
Speaker 3: to Like, where does that title come from? Obviously this
Speaker 3: is either Wayland Utani or Cyberdine, But where does where
Speaker 3: does what is the source of tubular?
Speaker 2: They made tubes, I guess, or they were just like
Speaker 2: totally tubular.
Speaker 3: They did like tunnels. We learned that, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Tubular tubular. It's just so funny. But I did find
Speaker 2: it hilarious. Did someone out there on one of these
Speaker 2: like there's like a Terminator Wiki had added a page
Speaker 2: for the Tubular Corporation, and it's stressed that it was
Speaker 2: non cannon, that it was not officially part of the
Speaker 2: Terminator universe. But I'm sorry you've put it on the
Speaker 2: Terminator Wiki, so it kind of is at this point.
Speaker 2: It's just like an Italian company that is in the
Speaker 2: same world.
Speaker 3: Tubular Corporation is Terminator Dutero canon. Yeah, it's like how
Speaker 3: some Christians feel about like the Book of Enoch or something. Okay,
Speaker 3: but anyway, this guy, Samuel Fuller, he is like our
Speaker 3: Burke from Aliens, except it completely misses the thrust of Burke,
Speaker 3: which is that Burke is charming at first and then
Speaker 3: is revealed to be a snake. Samuel Fuller is mean
Speaker 3: and explicitly evil from the very first moment. He is
Speaker 3: like if the abstract notion of contempt became flesh and blood.
Speaker 3: He's sneering in every single scene. You know. He comes
Speaker 3: up and he's like, I'm going on the mission. And
Speaker 3: then the Strikeforce guy Bond, he says, it's only right
Speaker 3: that the lady here comes along. She's a scientist, but
Speaker 3: I don't want any other civilians on the mission. And
Speaker 3: then Fuller comes up and sneers at him. Fuller, by
Speaker 3: the way, is wearing like a like a black and
Speaker 3: red jacket with these big pouches on it, like a
Speaker 3: cargo pockets jacket and a black and red hat. So
Speaker 3: again very terminator color scheme. And he comes up and
Speaker 3: sneers at the guy, and he says, eleven years in
Speaker 3: the Marines were enough to teach me that whoever talks
Speaker 3: a lot doesn't get much done, and you seem to
Speaker 3: talk a lot. So Bond is he gets mad and
Speaker 3: he's gonna lunge, but the corn commander holds him back
Speaker 3: and says, easy, Bond. Fuller here is an expert in
Speaker 3: martial arts. So the colonel explains that Bond doesn't really
Speaker 3: have a choice because the Tubular Corporation is the one
Speaker 3: that ordered the mission that they've got to go in there,
Speaker 3: and they're the ones that constructed the viaduct leading to
Speaker 3: the underground venus, which is like where they're headed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that is, to your point, basically a tube.
Speaker 2: It is, right, Yeah, it's a tube. So Sneerman here
Speaker 2: is with the company and he gets to come along
Speaker 2: with the Mega Force because he's with the company, and
Speaker 2: because he knows karate. Oh.
Speaker 3: Also here the scientist Sarah Drumbel speaks up and she
Speaker 3: says the project was supposed to purify the city's polluted waters.
Speaker 3: As things stand, it appears that all of your millions
Speaker 3: have only gone to worsen the situation and looks at
Speaker 3: her ego that remains to be seen. So then they're like, Okay,
Speaker 3: we've got fifteen minutes to get ready. So instead of
Speaker 3: the whole like drop ship situation in Aliens where we
Speaker 3: get to know everybody, instead we get like a locker
Speaker 3: room scene where we get to know the Marines before
Speaker 3: they go through a door. So let's meet our Mega
Speaker 3: Force team. They are strongly trying to recreate the competitive
Speaker 3: swagger and bravado of the colonial Marines when we first
Speaker 3: meet them in Aliens, but there once again is a
Speaker 3: malfunction in the photocopier, so these Marines do not feel
Speaker 3: like the tough, cocky space warriors that they're trying to emulate.
Speaker 3: This is not Vasquez, Drake, Hudson, Hicks and Apone. Instead,
Speaker 3: these Marines are They are trying to be cocky and
Speaker 3: aggressive at one another, but they just come off as
Speaker 3: incredibly weird. Like off the charts, bizarre energy. The first
Speaker 3: one we meet is my favorite by far. This is
Speaker 3: cost Her. We talked about her earlier, but she is
Speaker 3: just a gift from Heaven. I love her. When we
Speaker 3: first meet her, she's looking straight into the camera and
Speaker 3: breathing heavy. Her first line is when we can't repeat
Speaker 3: on the show or we're gonna get tagged explicit by
Speaker 3: the platforms. But she's just wandering around the Megaporce locker room,
Speaker 3: playing with guns and suggestively taunting the other MEGAPHCE dudes
Speaker 3: about not sweating enough and.
Speaker 2: Not being real men.
Speaker 3: In her interro monologue, she talks about how she's back
Speaker 3: and she's ready to kick butt, but like, where is
Speaker 3: she back from? Yeah, I don't think we ever learned that.
Speaker 3: There's also so much just unreal levels of forced hostility
Speaker 3: between these people, Like you don't feel tension in the
Speaker 3: room at all, but they just start insulting each other.
Speaker 3: Out of nowhere. There is there's out of nowhere and
Speaker 3: for no reason, ethnic antagonism that arises and then dissipates
Speaker 3: where somebody's like, you're Italian and they get real mad at
Speaker 3: each other and then it just goes away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's just such an unhinged feeling of what is
Speaker 2: going to happen next in this scene, And it just
Speaker 2: feels completely off the rails from the very start, because
Speaker 2: you have like the apparent fourth wall breaking in the beginning,
Speaker 2: because who else is she talking to looking right into
Speaker 2: the camera us, I guess yeah, And I felt kind
Speaker 2: of put on the spot by it. Then there are
Speaker 2: all these like weird like first draft insults being thrown around,
Speaker 2: and just an overbearing sense of wandering and scene filling,
Speaker 2: especially as Coster like walks. It's a huge locker room
Speaker 2: Nicken like, this is clearly one at this nuclear facility,
Speaker 2: former nuclear facility, and she's just like walking from one
Speaker 2: marine one Mega Force member to another to insult them
Speaker 2: and or encourage them, and the camera is just just
Speaker 2: tracking her as she goes. So this definitely feels like
Speaker 2: a scene where they're like, well, we've got to fill
Speaker 2: we got to fill some time up here, guys, so
Speaker 2: get out there, do the lines, maybe add a little
Speaker 2: bit extra, but we're absolutely not going to stop rolling.
Speaker 3: Oh it feels so stretched out. It's like it's like
Speaker 3: a jam band improv so low, but just marines yelling
Speaker 3: at each other but it's so good.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh but then after Costa is insulting everybody, she finally
Speaker 3: meets the one other marine she likes, the Megaphes guy
Speaker 3: named Cain, who is a shirtless guy with long blonde
Speaker 3: hair and sunglasses and a bandana on. So he's like
Speaker 3: a surfer. Yeah, and he's the only guy that cost
Speaker 3: Her seems to respect. And Cain is really weirdly like
Speaker 3: soft spoken, like he just doesn't seem to be playing
Speaker 3: one of these, like, you know, marine types. So I
Speaker 3: think they're trying to reproduce like the Vasquez and Drake
Speaker 3: friendship from Aliens, but it just doesn't it's not working.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm gonna shock everyone with the fact here that
Speaker 2: the actor playing Kine Cortland Riley, this was his only
Speaker 2: acting role. So I don't know the details on it,
Speaker 2: but I imagine it's another situation of here's a guy who
Speaker 2: happened to be in Rome. Maybe he was doing some
Speaker 2: modeling work or something and got picked after this picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah that sounds about right. I mean, he is barely acting,
Speaker 3: He just kind of says his lines. He then in
Speaker 3: this scene in the locker room, he like hands cost
Speaker 3: Her a shotgun and he's like, play with it, and
Speaker 3: then she does. She like runs around the room pointing
Speaker 3: it at dudes in the locker room and then gets
Speaker 3: into a fight with this guy Franzini. It's nuts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like Franzenians of pulling a switchplay, doesn't he
Speaker 2: it's I recently rewatched Aliens, and I did think that
Speaker 2: there were times where the Colonial Marines, again to be sure,
Speaker 2: under significant stress, were lacking in discipline in some key moments.
Speaker 2: But Mega Force is just pure anarchy. They haven't even
Speaker 2: gone out in the field yet, there's no additional stress
Speaker 2: other than what they brought to the locker room, and
Speaker 2: they're already at each other's throats.
Speaker 3: Okay, So the Mega Force they meet up with the
Speaker 3: characters we've already met, you know, doctor Sarah, Drumbull and
Speaker 3: Fuller from the Tubular Corporation. So they opened the door
Speaker 3: to the secure facility and kickstart the action. And I
Speaker 3: think here is a good place to kind of shift
Speaker 3: gears in how we're talking about what happens, because much
Speaker 3: of the rest of the movie is very action focused
Speaker 3: and is very much a copy of the plot of Aliens,
Speaker 3: but with variations. So speaking, more loosely. From now on,
Speaker 3: I think we should just talk about things that stood
Speaker 3: out from this copy of the Alien's plot as it
Speaker 3: goes forward. So there is generally the shape of things
Speaker 3: to come is that they go into this facility, they
Speaker 3: discover the monsters inside, the monsters attack them, They discover
Speaker 3: what happened to the previous occupants there. They were attacked
Speaker 3: by monsters, and then there is a betrayal where the
Speaker 3: company man tries to I don't know, monster infects some
Speaker 3: more people, and there's just general fighting. Then there's progression
Speaker 3: into another location. There's discovery of a survivor, which is
Speaker 3: the NEWT type character, the daughter of what's his name
Speaker 3: Raffles and the guy who was running the facility, and
Speaker 3: then there is progression to another location where they learn
Speaker 3: some more stuff about a conspiracy to create monsters I
Speaker 3: think as a weapon or something. It's your standard, you know, Oh,
Speaker 3: the evil Corporation was trying to make trying to make
Speaker 3: giant monsters as I don't know, for military contracts or something.
Speaker 3: I don't know why they'd be all that useful. And
Speaker 3: then there is a self destruct sequence. You have ten
Speaker 3: minutes to achieve minimum safe distance. Now do we have
Speaker 3: anything to say else to say about the scene and
Speaker 3: the tunnels where they come across this guy Drake, who
Speaker 3: is giving a really a plus performance, like so hyperactive,
Speaker 3: where he's like, if you enter the city, you're going
Speaker 3: to die, and then he screams. He does a scream
Speaker 3: kind of like in the end of Invasion of the
Speaker 3: Body Snatchers, and then everybody starts screaming and covering their ears,
Speaker 3: and I don't know, that was one of the moments
Speaker 3: that really got me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't know what exactly was going on
Speaker 2: in that sequence, but it's like it's so over the top.
Speaker 2: Sometimes less is more, but sometimes you've got to be
Speaker 2: a little more experienced to find that correct level.
Speaker 3: I guess I think we could continue to think about
Speaker 3: the question of like what is it that made them
Speaker 3: copy certain elements from Aliens and not others. One thing
Speaker 3: that they definitely took from Aliens is the motion trackers. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they really like these handheld devices that look kind of
Speaker 3: like a remote control where they're scanning for motion in
Speaker 3: front of them and it's making that pulsing beeping sound
Speaker 3: that is a very effective thing in Aliens because there's
Speaker 3: like a sound cue that lets you know something is approaching,
Speaker 3: but you know you can't hear it directly, so it's
Speaker 3: it's very creepy like that, and they use that to
Speaker 3: the best effect they can in this movie, too, so
Speaker 3: it kind of makes sense why they lifted that element.
Speaker 3: They also lifted the element of the monsters cocooning their
Speaker 3: victims in the walls. So they're like going through these
Speaker 3: tunnels and they find people who were part of this
Speaker 3: science mission sort of wrapped up in the slime and
Speaker 3: stuck to the walls, and you know, they act a
Speaker 3: lot like the cocooned people in Aliens.
Speaker 2: Do, except what bursts out of them not they larval
Speaker 2: monster of any form, but the monster glove hand of
Speaker 2: a full sized monster. Yeah, yeah, which I liked, but
Speaker 2: it is also stupid.
Speaker 3: There is a scene a lot like the the assault
Speaker 3: on the Hive in Aliens, where you know, the Marines
Speaker 3: are going through these dark tunnels and they get confused
Speaker 3: and attacked by monsters in the dark.
Speaker 2: And this this sequence, the sequence where they're actually fighting
Speaker 2: the monsters, I thought, is way better than it had
Speaker 2: any right to be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty good.
Speaker 2: The monsters look pretty good. They're like throw they throw
Speaker 2: a dude over a rail. There are a lot of
Speaker 2: scenes of monsters being shot with these shotguns. So it
Speaker 2: all came together pretty well, and it kind of matches
Speaker 2: up with something Tyler had to say about the production
Speaker 2: that that basically Bruno is really focused on the technical
Speaker 2: aspects of the shoot, and meanwhile the dialogue was maybe
Speaker 2: you know, second or third in everyone's priority. In that
Speaker 2: Fangoria interview, she said, quote, there was a lovely woman
Speaker 2: on set. I believe she was Australian who was supposed
Speaker 2: to be the dialogue coach, if you will. So if
Speaker 2: she wasn't there, you could say whatever you wanted and
Speaker 2: Bruno would have no idea. Bruno didn't speak English.
Speaker 3: Oh man, I actually can't even imagine that directing a
Speaker 3: film and a language that I don't speak, that that's
Speaker 3: like a difficult task.
Speaker 2: But directing this film in a language you don't speak,
Speaker 2: maybe maybe you know, especially I mean I can maybe
Speaker 2: see where like Bruno is coming from. It's kind of like,
Speaker 2: all right, I've got all I can handle is the
Speaker 2: technical stuff here. Someone else is going to have to
Speaker 2: handle this script and talking to these actors because there's
Speaker 2: just not enough time.
Speaker 3: So onto more elements they copy from Aliens. There's, of course,
Speaker 3: the Newt character and the discovery of her. That scene
Speaker 3: is similar to how it is in Aliens. They've got
Speaker 3: the scene where they sort of create a defensible position
Speaker 3: and they're trying to they're trying to prevent the monsters
Speaker 3: from coming in getting them, and it's it's very similar
Speaker 3: as it is in Aliens. It's like, oh, they're inside
Speaker 3: the perimeter. They cut the power, but they don't say
Speaker 3: how could they cut the power? Man their animals. I
Speaker 3: think they just say how could they cut the power?
Speaker 3: I don't recall anybody saying game over man, game over?
Speaker 2: No they didn't. They they showed some restraint. But there
Speaker 2: are plenty of lines that are just copied wholesale, Like
Speaker 2: there's the pull back and forth where the Newt character
Speaker 2: in Aliens is like my mother said, there weren't monsters,
Speaker 2: but there are you know that effect. Basically have that
Speaker 2: here as well. The scene where Newt is separated from
Speaker 2: from Ripley, that's pretty much directly copied here, but without
Speaker 2: without the as effective a set being utilized. So yeah,
Speaker 2: there are multiple places like that.
Speaker 3: I already mentioned this earlier, but one scene that is
Speaker 3: copied almost exactly is the scene in Aliens where Burke
Speaker 3: is trying to infect Ripley and Newt with face huggers
Speaker 3: while they're taking a nap. He like releases them into
Speaker 3: the room with them and then turns off the monitors
Speaker 3: so none of the soldiers can see. That happens almost
Speaker 3: exactly the same in this with Fuller like sitting there
Speaker 3: watching coldly as you know, they're screaming for help and
Speaker 3: what is it? Though it's Ripley. She manages to get
Speaker 3: everybody's attention by holding a lighter up to the sprinkler
Speaker 3: system so they think there's a fire. Very clever on
Speaker 3: Ripley's part. I love that. It's a good, good moment
Speaker 3: of fast thinking and Aliens. But she does something different
Speaker 3: in this movie. What does she do?
Speaker 2: Oh, this is a great question that I don't know
Speaker 2: they answer to. I'm not sure how they wrap this sceneau.
Speaker 3: It's like she I think she just like presses an alarm,
Speaker 3: but it's a little more direct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds I believe you're correct on that. But
Speaker 2: then they have basically the same outcome where they're like,
Speaker 2: well, we should just execute this guy. He's not on our side,
Speaker 2: But unfortunately for them, it becomes apparent as we proceed
Speaker 2: through the plot here that our company man is not
Speaker 2: a man. He's maybe a little more like Ash from
Speaker 2: Alien by way of Terminator.
Speaker 3: That's right, So yes, it's more like the Ash reveal,
Speaker 3: but the format is Terminator.
Speaker 4: Like.
Speaker 3: He gets part of his face scraped off and he's
Speaker 3: got a metal indo skeleton, so he looks like a
Speaker 3: T eight hundred, yeah, and has revealed that the company. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the company man is here to ensure that their profits
Speaker 3: are secured and I don't know, to erase any evidence
Speaker 3: of what happened here. I don't remember the exact details,
Speaker 3: but he just turns out to be a bad guy
Speaker 3: and he's chasing our heroes around. You know, all of
Speaker 3: those space marines get wiped out by the monsters. But
Speaker 3: then the Fuller here is chasing Sarah Drumble around in
Speaker 3: this facility, much like the scene where the Terminator is
Speaker 3: chasing Sarah Connor in the computer factory at the end
Speaker 3: of Terminator there, Oh, when Fuller gets kind of semi
Speaker 3: defeated several times, but they comes back. You know, there
Speaker 3: are people who are trying to shoot him, and he's like,
Speaker 3: you fool, I am immune to bullets. But then Sarah
Speaker 3: defeats him with an with a fire extinguisher.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, yeah, she's like praising with a fire extinguisher.
Speaker 2: And they not only need to escape the terminator, they
Speaker 2: need to escape the facility, which is going to explode.
Speaker 2: And just when he struck, Yeah, just when you think
Speaker 2: this film is out of jaw dropping choices, they escape.
Speaker 2: I think we reference this already via time machine. They
Speaker 2: find a Tubular Company time machine they also make tubes
Speaker 2: through time and space apparently, and they climb aboard that
Speaker 2: and escape into the.
Speaker 3: Past, Yes, into the past, into you know, Venice of
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 2: I would have also settled for escape into the future
Speaker 2: where they land up in the background of a Stanley
Speaker 2: Tucci documentary and Stanley Tucci has like jump in and
Speaker 2: help defeat the enemy here, but they went in the
Speaker 2: past instead. I'm making you zucchini pasta.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So this coda is there are a lot
Speaker 3: of like jaw on the floor things in Shocking Dark,
Speaker 3: but this was the one for me. I could not
Speaker 3: believe it that the ending involved a twist with time travel.
Speaker 3: There's no hint earlier on that there's time travel. They
Speaker 3: just like go into a room while they're trying to
Speaker 3: escape the blast, and it's like, welcome to the Tubular
Speaker 3: Corporation time machine. Yes, use the following controls to go
Speaker 3: into the past, and they do. And then it turns
Speaker 3: out that Fuller, the Terminator also took a time machine
Speaker 3: into the past. To chase them, you.
Speaker 2: Have to chase them through the streets of Venice.
Speaker 3: Yes, chases them around Venice while they're asking just Italians
Speaker 3: for help, you know, and so the Terminator's like throwing
Speaker 3: them into the canals anybody who tries to help them.
Speaker 3: And then also they defeat. So Sarah defeats the terminator
Speaker 3: by tossing him a remote control that is somehow associated
Speaker 3: with the time machine. I don't understand why this defeated him,
Speaker 3: but she's like catch and throws him the remote and
Speaker 3: he catches it. Then just electricity shoots all over the
Speaker 3: place and he's dead.
Speaker 2: I guess, yep, enemy defeat it. It felt a little
Speaker 2: pressed for time perhaps, and I have to say, no
Speaker 2: gondola chases. I think we needed a gondola chase here,
Speaker 2: But you know, last five minutes of the picture, I
Speaker 2: guess they didn't have time.
Speaker 3: That's what a Roger Moore era James Bond a movie
Speaker 3: you would have done, but not Shocking Dark. But so
Speaker 3: it's interesting that you were like watching Shocking Dark and
Speaker 3: it's a ripoff of Aliens, and you forget that it was,
Speaker 3: according to the poster and the box art and the
Speaker 3: title supposed to be a ripoff of Terminator, and you
Speaker 3: just forget that that's even what you signed up for
Speaker 3: until the last fifteen minutes of the movie and then oh,
Speaker 3: you're like, oh, now it is a ripoff of Terminator.
Speaker 3: We're done with Aliens now. Now for the rest of
Speaker 3: the runtime, it's Terminator. We got time travel, killer robots,
Speaker 3: uh and Sarah Sarah Connor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, certainly by that point to pick you
Speaker 2: forgotten Terminator was really in the mix, so that the
Speaker 2: time travel comes out of nowhere. But I guess makes
Speaker 2: sense if you realize, well, it was a Terminator rip
Speaker 2: off all along as well.
Speaker 3: So I'm so glad you picked Shocking Dark for the show.
Speaker 3: This was a beautiful experience and I know I'm going
Speaker 3: to watch this one many times to come.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I say, it's been a while since we
Speaker 2: watched something this schlocky, so it was a nice return.
Speaker 2: I don't think we could cover a film like this
Speaker 2: every week. I don't think there are enough schlocky films
Speaker 2: of this caliber out there ultimately, but it's great to
Speaker 2: return to them. Rob.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you've had the experience, but in
Speaker 3: my I feel like movies of this sort that are
Speaker 3: extremely pleasing to watch and have this kind of awkwardness
Speaker 3: to them are actually harder to cover and explain on
Speaker 3: the show than some technically duller films are.
Speaker 2: Well, sometimes those technically dull films have also have plots
Speaker 2: that you can really follow because they're like bullet points,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, and or there's not a lot happening
Speaker 2: this one. There's always a lot of things happening. There's
Speaker 2: like to the point where I have difficulty remembering exactly,
Speaker 2: you know, what all the plot points are. I just
Speaker 2: remember the spectacle of the acting, and then sometimes the monsters.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I see what you're talking about. But luckily,
Speaker 2: Shocking Dark is a film that invites you to view
Speaker 2: it over and over again.
Speaker 3: Yes, I do feel like I have somewhat fallen short
Speaker 3: in describing its virtues, but it I hope I can
Speaker 3: at least say, if you like schlock movies, you should
Speaker 3: see it. It needs to be you need to see
Speaker 3: it for yourself. You've got to have the experience.
Speaker 2: Absolutely all right, We're going to go ahead and close
Speaker 2: the time machine hatch on this selection of Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 2: but we'll be back next week with something else. I'd reminded.
Speaker 2: The Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science
Speaker 2: podcast Science and culture podcasts with core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 2: and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most serious
Speaker 2: concerns and just talk about a weird film on Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema. If you want to see a list of
Speaker 2: all the movies we've covered over the years, go to
Speaker 2: letterbox dot com. That's L E. T. T Er dot com.
Speaker 2: Our username is weird house and there you will find
Speaker 2: the list and sometimes you'll get a peek ahead at
Speaker 2: what's coming out the following week.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: Your Mind dot com.
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