Shocking Dark (1990)
As you know, so many of life's lessons can be learned in the arena of big time sports. Whether you learned them like I did on the field of Cub Scout softball or just by watching it on ESPN2, it's all the same. Sports gives youngsters a valuable leg up in not only surviving, but thriving in today's hectic world. For instance, boys are taught never to let their Little League coach give them a ride home alone and girls know almost instinctively that the baritone-voiced woman P.E. teacher with the short hair and season tickets to the local WNBA team shouldn't ever be invited over to the team slumber party. But where sports really shines is its ability to showcase the skills of the natural - that phenom from the cornfields just outside of Buttstink, Kansas who effortlessly triumphs against all comers and rewrites the record books in the process.
Film is no different than sports of course, which is why it's almost as cool. Only a lack of a meaningful postseason prevents it from being the equal of our great team sports. Don't believe me? I give you March Madness and Bowl Season versus the Golden Globes and the Oscars. That's what I thought. Apology accepted. Getting back on track though, there are naturals in the cinema just as in sports. For every Babe Ruth and Joe Montana, the Silver Screen counters with a Cary Grant and a John Ford. They've got Hank Aaron and O.J. Simpson. We've got Tom Hanks and Robert Blake. Them: Michael Jordan. Us: Bruno Mattei.
Jordan of course was the legendary Chicago Bulls basketball star who was so instrumental to the National Basketball Association that they ceased operations once he retired for the fifth time. The only thing number 23 did was win. Didn't matter where or how. On the nights when his shots were falling he'd hang 325 points on a team like the New York Knicks. Unless he was sick. If he was sick, he'd gut it out and get off for about 350. I can remember one game where he had been shot in the head the night before and was recovering from brain surgery. During every time out he would be slumped over on the bench with a cool towel over his head, but at the end of the night he dropped 336 points on his opponent (probably the Knicks). Then there were those nights when he couldn't find his rhythm. The shots would rim in and out and the Bulls would be on the brink of elimination! And what would MJ do? Find a way.
Find a way. That's what the greats do, isn't? Deep down inside them, they know they've got one last run, one last gasp, one final shot to get everyone else to the promised land. Stay in the game, just give me an open look before that clock hits triple zeroes, and I'll put us on my back one more time. That's what all of us legends do when it's not going our way, when it looks darkest, when lesser souls would've long since cashed in their chips and started playing half-speed wondering where dinner was after the game. And in the hands of anyone other than Bruno Mattei, Shocking Dark would have been the kind of movie where you'd not only be wondering about dinner, but about the next day's breakfast and lunch, too.
Venice before the year 2000 is a beautiful city of canals, museums and other neat stuff. I'm guessing the Venice after 2000 is pretty much the same since I haven't heard anything in the news about it sinking or anything. But what about the Venice of tomorrow? That Venice is a post-apocalyptic nightmare! Closed off from the world, that Venice is a dead city, the entrance guarded by three guys in gas masks standing in front of a "do not enter" sign! What could have happened to the Venice of tomorrow that it turned from the city of lovers (or whatever it was) into the city of hazmat suits? It was something about seaweed choking out all the oxygen. Pretty much the usual end of the world stuff from the Italians. I'm sure it made sense to them. 
From that nifty set up, I was surprised that a mystery movie began to play out. At least I thought it was a mystery movie. I mean, I spent the next thirty minutes trying to figure out what was happening. Let's see, we've some scientists that have gone crazy in some tunnels under the city and if that wasn't bad enough, they're getting killed by monsters! If it's not one thing, it's another! Then there's this special team of marines called...the Megaforce! You know they're Megaforce because of their uniforms that consist of ugly vests with pointy shoulder pads and the motorcycle helmets they wear. Oh, and the forearm guards, too. Very natty.
I think Megaforce was being sent on a mission through the tunnels to find out what happened to the scientists that went crazy, but Bruno was more interested in showing us the locker room antics of the racist black woman member of Megaforce which was fine since watching her and an Italian guy get into a shoving match while Megaforce was supposed to be getting ready for their mission was preferable to boring exposition about why some eggheads need rescuing. And it just isn't Megaforce going along. There's a scientist named Sara and a robot-like guy named Samuel Fuller who works for the Tubular Corporation.
The Tubular Corporation is a big multinational that built the tunnel between Venice and the outside world. Since there's absolutely no reason for Sam to go along on this trip, it's clear that Tubular is an evil company and that Sam will have to doublecross everyone at some time. And since Sara befriends the daughter of one of the missing scientists later on, it's clear that she and her kid will end up facing off against the evil Sam later on. 
Once the infighting in the locker room is finished and everyone suits up for the mission, the movie starts shooting airballs for about the next 45 minutes. I will say this about the movie though. If you are a fan of films where people just wander around corridors alternately shouting and shooting, you will love this freaking movie! Bruno shot almost the entire thing in the bowels of a big power plant. Exposed pipes, wrought-iron stairs, platforms, and railings, hissing steam and the occasional research lab are the order of the day in Shocking Dark. Throw in some guys in slimy rubber monster suits and Megaforce constantly checking their scanners to track each other and the monsters and you got Alien set in your local electric company's basement! But with like ten times more monsters than that one wimpy alien in Alien!
If you're still awake by the time they hit the lab, you'll learn of some diabolical scheme by Tubular to poison Venice for two years so that they can re-sell all the real estate and valuable works of art (huh?) that they've somehow gained ownership of for "70% of current value!" I love an Italian sci-fi/horror/post-apocalyptic movie that hinges on re-sell value! It's like a project from The Apprentice, but with Bruno instead of The Donald!
But just when it seems as if Tubular's real estate scheme and art auction plans appears to be the most dastardly of all schemes, the robot-like Sam is revealed to be a robot! And even worse, he's gone and initiated the self-destruct sequence! On what, I have no idea, but we are assured that whatever is going to self-destruct is going to blow up everything real good and spread the enzyme that has created the monsters all over the Earth! It doesn't seem to bother Sam that this latest scheme will probably make it tough for Tubular to peddle all their Renoirs and Matisses, but what do you expect from a bucket of bolts who matter-of-factly announces that this new enzyme that's created these monsters is just like a floppy disk and that humans are the computer! Thank God most of us don't come with floppy drives anymore!
As preternaturally dull as most of all this was, I never wavered in my faith that somehow Bruno would find a way to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. And just as coolly as you would expect from the man who made 26 movies from 1980-1990, Bruno nailed a jumper just before the buzzer sounded and pulled out a most satisfying victory! Despite Tubular Corp.'s plans to corner the Venetian real estate market, despite their research into monster-making enzymes/floppy disks, despite being able to design killer cyborgs who uncannily mimic wooden actors, they also found time to work on a little something called the Tubular Time Pod! 
Sara and her kiddie friend accidentally find themselves inside the time pod and thrust back into the past, thus averting certain death in the future! But wait! There wasn't just one time pod! Oh no! There were TWO! And guess who hitched a ride in time pod number two? The Terminator! I mean Sam! And wouldn't you know it, but his time pod thrusts him into the exact same moment and location in the past as Sara! What are the odds of that happening with two experimental Tubular Time Pods? As it played out, about 1:1.
Remember in The Terminator when a killer cyborg from the future menaced a woman named Sarah? And remember that one scene where they showed the Terminator running over a child's toy truck? Well in this movie, a killer cyborg from the future is menacing a woman named Sara and the cyborg steps on a child's remote control car! It's really more of an homage than naked thievery. Besides, when they were calling this movie Terminator II back when it came out in 1990, that was a whole year before James Cameron's Terminator II: Judgment Day!
It would be unfair though to give sole credit for this amazing turn of events solely to Bruno Mattei because where's there a Mattei, there's also a Fragasso! Claudio Fragasso, whom I realized in a moment of sheer brilliance is the poor man's Dardano Sacchetti (does that make Bruno the poor man's Lamberto Bava? - Egads!) turned his prolific scripting abilities on this project just as he did with several of Bruno's other babies, including Rats: Night Of Terror, Hell Of The Living Dead, Strike Commando, Strike Commando 2, Robowar and many others. Making this feat even more incredible is that Fragasso did so during the same year he wrote and directed three of his own movies including Troll 2 and House 5!
It's almost like Bruno and Fragasso (or Brugasso as the tabloids like to call them), knew how good they were and were challenging themselves by having Shocking Dark sit there like an ignored dog turd on your living room floor for an hour and then just flipped the schlock switch and went to town on us! And how impressive was it that they managed this without Reb Brown or a jungle location? Simply put, an awesome save guys. And the scene where Sara stabs Sam in the face with a broken bottle so that he could run around with half his cyborg skull exposed is just that right touch of rip-off that makes a cold dog turd taste just a little warmer. Another tacky triumph for Brugasso!
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