SHOCKING DARK ...a.k.a. "TERMINATOR 2" ...a.k.a. ALIENATORS
The movie begins with an "Ed Wood, Jr." style voice-over introduction with stock footage of Venice, and some muzak. A giant toxic cloud is detroying life in Venice, we are told it is a dead city. Men in gask masks patrol an empty city, with signs in english which read "Off Limits." Three guys in a control room wearing 1950s style mod alien uniforms with pointy shoulders watch some people on a tv monitor screaming for help. "Its curtains for us if we don't get back to base!"
The men are being chased by someone...or someTHING! Some sort of alien creature or mutation rises up out of the smoke in an underground tunnel... Samuel Fuller (!!!) from the 'Tubular Corporation,' an ex-marine and martial arts expert and several other people are gearing up for 'megaforce' Operation: Delta. A black lady (who likes to hand out old pictures of 'Old Venice') then starts yelling at people calling them 'pussies' and insulting them in a locker room, except for some sort of hippie-surfer dude with a shotgun who she happens to like. Then she and an italian guy start exchanging racial insults at eachother. She keeps pointing her gun at everyone until Samuel Fuller and his small part of the team show up. The 'megaforce' as they keep referring to themselves then proceed down another boiler-room tunnel of some kind I can only assume to possibly 'hunt' whatever it was that was chasing the guys at the beginning. Nothing is specified, but it appears that this was the plan. People in the control room with lots of flashing lights shake their heads at eachother, and the 'megaforce' continue to insult with racial epithets until somebody starts shooting at them. The dialogue here is completely ridiculous...the acting is bad in an epic sort of way. This movie may be the ultimate
'get drunk and watch a really bad movie' experience. Some insane guy with a sing-songy voice named Paul Drake sceams at them with some sort of super-scream and then they all scream, until it stops...Drake has disappeared. This movie has so much potential...for ultimate mockery...
"Hey listen to this." (There's no sound, and nothing to listen to...) Oh boy this movie is bad, but it is one of those Ed Wood, Jr. kind of bad movies, so its status as a 'legendary bad movie' is ultimately justified. It steals the plot from 'Aliens.' It has the production value of an episode of the old Ultraman series, which it constantly reminds me of throughout. The 'megaforce' runs down the tunnels from room to room screaming "what the fuck was that?" Back and forth until more people get killed. The acting is so bad, it almost seems fake...could actors really be this bad? The reactions and expressions of these people are so 'off' and bad, it becomes fascinating to watch. "The next one to back talk my orders gets a bullet between the eyes," says the leader of the 'megaforce marines.' You can only rate these actors as 'the best worst actor' you have to reverse the way you look at their performances. It could be the guy who plays Drake. The better the actor, the more boring the movie becomes... So when something happens, when an actor speaks, it instantly becomes amusing again. Almost every line of dialogue
is so stupid that you can't wait for the next line to be uttered. Somebody did put some effort into the soundtrack however, though derivative of 'THE TERMINATOR' it is actually pretty good.
This movie is such a bad 'remake' of Aliens, that it even has the little girl who bites one of the marines when they discover her, only, the 'little' girl looks to be about 16 years old... Why is there always a 'Kowalski" on every sci-fi action team? They also re-enact the scene where one of the Marines comes up on 'Bishop' while he's looking at a microscope...you know, and he's totally spaced out. So this film is entirely devoid of originality, and quite the juvenile rip-off of Aliens, but my question is, if you're going to remake Aliens, shouldn't you have a budget of more than $5000? What am I thinking?
As it turns out, the "Tubular Corporation" has been perpetrating a scam, and they were the ones who poisoned Venice. Fuller turns out to be a 'replicant.' "I'm the most perfect thing ever constructed by the Tubular Corporation." So then the plot twist turns the movie from Aliens into a Cyborg action flick. Its funny of course, as soon as Samuel Fuller is discovered to be a cyborg, he begins talking like a robot... in this shitty monotone 'robotic voice.' Fuller then must carry out the rest of the mission
or agenda of the "Tubular Corporation," and Ripley, er, I mean "Sarah" and the 'little girl' must then escape from the TUBULAR-NATOR! IN A TIME MACHINE!
Hilariously enough, this movie does have a plot, and a point to it in the end...Venice must be saved from pollution and the evil corporations who are behind poisoning it! Damn straight! They end up in the past, or rather 'present day Venice' so they can warn everyone about what's to come... Its an ecological warning about the dangers of polluting the water. Well, this movie, if you can find it, is B-Movie gold if you can find it ANYWHERE... its pretty damn bad, but one in which that makes it 'good.' This is also one which truly needs a cleaned up DVD version. The VHS versions from Japan and elsewhere are terribly dark, fuzzy and dirty, and it would be nice if at least someone with perhaps a Laserdisc version would release it on the net. If you are indeed looking for this movie, you will be hard pressed to find it anywhere but through some pirated download. Don't feel bad about downloading it though, since the entire movie is a blatant rip-off of James Cameron movies, and probably would be sued today if they released it on DVD...then again, James Cameron is one of the world's biggest plagiarists too isn't he? Well isn't that one big irony? It kind of is one of those must-see bad films... I certainly don't recommend this as a good movie, but if you're a fan of Aliens, you'll enjoy watching how they do a hatchet job on the plot, and if you like TERMINATOR, you'll see them blend ALIENS with TERMINATOR 2 somewhere towards the end, and if you enjoyed ULTRAMAN, you'll enjoy the cheesy helmets and outfits these people wear, the rubber monster, and the ecological warning.
No comments:
Post a Comment