Now come on guys, I didn't "make a move" of any kind and you still opted to "screw me wicked"! You guys are jerks... I hate you and I want to live with mom and her girlfriend Tammy!

There are so many things wrong with this movie it's just too wrong to enjoy on my own, even under heavy drug abuse conditions. Hell, I don't even think a gang of lesbians rolling around on top of me and dripping stuff all over me while stuffing $100 bills in my pants as I watched could make this movie any good. Just from the stats you can tell it's gonna be one uncomfortable and agonizing minute after the next. The movie's directed by Vincent Dawn, alias Bruno Mattei, the Italian director responsible for such cinemasochistic journeys into pain as Night of the Zombies, Zombi 3 and The Other Hell, along with a slew of other atrocities to movie viewers. Mattei, obviously not wanting to embarrass his mother, has used 22 different aliases in his run as director... TWENTY-FUCKING-TWO!

But, he's not the only one with a slew of aliases, as his movies get name changes frequently as well. Take a look here at Shocking Dark. In addition to its alternate titles of Alienators and Contaminator, it's also been known under Alien 3 and Terminator II... "But there's already an Alien 3 and Terminator II!", and you're right, these sequels DO exist... in the US In order to capitalize on the popularity of the original titles when they were translated to the boot shaped nation, Mattei created this unofficial sequel, which will never be officially released here in the US for obvious reasons. Sound familiar? It should, because some dick named Fulci did the same thing when he made a little movie called Zombie to make money off of the popularity of Dawn Of The Dead... Boy, from these two examples the casual observer would think that Italians must not have much in the way of copyright laws... or originality for that matter.

Our tale takes place in the post-apocalyptic future, a popular setting for any low budget sci-fi flick that needs an excuse to dress people up in Salvation Army wardrobe and discarded sports equipment while beating the snot out of each other with pieces of scrap iron and rundown cars straight from the salvage yard of one of the producer’s childhood chums. However, not all "after the big one" flicks are that "ambitious", and Shocking Dark is a perfect example of just such an underachiever. The movie starts with a lovely image of Venice, Italy "Before the year 2000", from which we jump ahead to what's obviously "After the year 2000". What happens "After the year 2000" you ask? Since this is a movie about killer robots and man-eating mutants, I'd say what we had here was one of your textbook celluloid atomic holocaust dealies... see what happens when George W. Bush is made president?

Whatever the cause, Venice has been turned into a toxic wasteland (at least a bad matte painting of such a place…), where pollution has made it impossible for human lungs to breath the air and the canals have become filthy boiling pots of unnatural life and mutation... well, more-so than they were "Before the year 2000" anyway. These toxic atmospheric contaminations gives our creative staff the convenience of cutting down on the filming budget immensely by shoving 98% of the movie’s happenings underground, in the subterranean sewers and basements of the city, thus saving any need for elaborate wasteland settings or devastated cityscapes... not that those things helped prevent Battlefield Earth from sucking the dingleberries straight from my movie reviewing ass...

So, we all know the drill: it’s the end of the world and man struggles to blah blah blah against yada yada yada with nothing more than etcetera etcetera etcetera to guide the future of nadda to nowhere. The once proud city of floating stereotypes and drowned rats now plays home to a race of savage mutants who have a tendency to take their frustrations out on any and all scientists and security officers who trespass into their domain of pinched ass loaves, a veritable rainbow of gurgling sludge and fleets of half-digested vermin carcasses. Keeping up to trend with about 2/3 of the killer mutant populace in Bad Movie Land, these mutant beasts are the product of a failed government experiment, in this case to clean the waters of the Venice canals... that's right ladies and gents, don't let your dog anywhere near your Brita™, because you never known when a Roger Corman movie might break out.

After "the man" fucks things up for the rest of us, whose job is it to play janitor (or "custodial engineer" as only the janitors put it) and apply the scented saw dust to this growing pool of post-mystery meat lunch special vomit? Why, it's a job for Bucky O'Hare! No, wait, he was trapped and skinned in an intergalactic rabbit trap and stewed up for Darth Vader's dinner. Okay then, how about Mega Force! Yes, Mega Force of course of course! Cuz a force is a force of course of course, unless it's Barry Bostwick's Mega Force!... sorry, I just got this new Alymer and he tends to “juice” me when I’m not looking if I don’t keep an eye on him. Uhm, what was I doing? Oh, right, the janitors. Actually, the good guys here really are called Mega Force, thought sadly are not the “Starring Barry Bostwick as ‘Ace Hunter’" product of the same name. Don't count your transvestites before they crap on your chest though, because though the bearded Barry ain't around, the Mega Force in question obviously wasn't chosen for their ability to act out of a paper bag... because they can't!... hence the joke… right.

Can this Italian in-name-only knock-off succeed in "Operation: Delta Venice" without an Ace (Hunter) of their own up their sleeve? Well, who needs airborne Hondas when they've got the racist Italian answer to Grace Jones on their elite squadron! Come to think of it, I really don't like their odds here, but I might just be a dumb cracker... The odds I DO like though are that these clods have a 99% chance of being rended into bacon strips before this nightmare is over with! Wahoo! The standard issue uniform for this pussy posse? Grey tunics with the additionally standard issue "futuristic" shoulder pad accessories; matching slacks and combat boots; a vulgar, homoerotic and racially slurred vocabulary that would make Jason Mewes whimper; and whatever piece of headgear may be available at the time, whether it be a motorcycle helmet, bandana, Jerri Curl™ or a combination of the three... basically, the height of Italian commando wear. Anyway, enough with the fashion show, let's get this "elite" super team of mercenary muscle on the way to their death beds... I mean, uhm, their, err, "mission".

Upon arrival in the sewers of Venice, Mega Force locates an assistant from the failed water purification operation named Drake, who paralyzes the 'Force with his shrill womanly screams, then kidnaps one of the troops and exits stage left! This leaves the m'f'n m'f'ers (motherfucking Mega Forcers) with more work to do as they seek out their missing comrade, finding him gooped-up in near-infringing-on-copyright slime trap situation ala Aliens, that goes all the way and includes a siege of slime drooling, razor-toothed beasties to complete the otherwise illegal illusion. While escaping the monsters, the team also finds a young girl in the subterranean maze (which looks like the basement of the industrial complex I used to work in)... okay, this is overstepping the line of infringement and doing a Mexican hat dance into the Blatant Plagiarism Zone!... a zone of carbon copy sight and of badly synthesized sound... sorry, I always wait for the opportunity to throw down a good “Twilight Zone” joke and they come along so rarely... not that that was anything LIKE a good “Twilight Zone” joke mind you...

Since these so-called military types aren’t disciplined enough to run away like little girls as a cohesive unit, the Forcers are split up. Fuller, Mega Force's corporate representative member (you know, the guy sent by the big wigs to make sure the grunts don't find incriminating evidence other than their jugulars being ripped out and a fountain of blood spouting forth), discovers the science crew's biogenetic mutations formula, which can mutate people Being style via airborne contagion. Meanwhile, the Grace Jones clone (aka the understudy for that Vasquez butch from Aliens) gets assaulted by the roving monsters while her partner takes a long dive over a short railing... what the fuck is this now, Space Mutiny?! Oh no, wait a sec, the next victim also takes a sailing header over another railing! This IS Space Mutiny! Damn it, does this mean Mattei can't even stick to ripping off GOOD movies anymore?! Where does this guy get funding for this shit, a secret cabal of cinematic terrorists whose sole mission in life is to subvert humanity with brain fucking shit-tastic sci-fi movies!?

Hey, I just noticed that 'this' is 'shit' when you rearrange the first and last letters... heh heh, I think everything's gonna be alright boys and girls...

NO! NO! THAT'S NOT GOING TO FIX THIS MOVIE DAMN IT! THAT WILL NOT FIX WHAT BRUNO MATTEI IS DOING TO MYSELF AND COUNTLESS OTHERS WITH THIS DRIVEL THAT MAKES ED WOOD LOOK LIKE STEVEN SPIELBERG! NOOOOOOOOOOO! I DEMAND THE DEATH PENALTY! GIVE ME SOMETHING BETTER TO WATCH OR GIVE ME DEATH! ARRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!....

It's okay… I'm okay kids… the tranquilizers are kicking in and the world… the world is one big… runny nose of… of blues and… and reds and greens and… and yellows again. Everything’s okay. This isn’t your fault. You aren’t the ones that make daddy angry. I love you all very much and this is not your fault.

Where was I now? Oh, right, people dying. That's good, right? Yeah, this is what I'm talking about: hating the cast and gettin' wood when they die. Yep, I'm groooooooovin' on a Sunday afternoon, heh heh... or in this case, Tuesday... I think. Ah, who cares, because drugs are good and the world is at peace, so let's continue on this wacky stage play of love and happiness called life.

When our fearless Mega Force squadron of ignorant and racist meatheads finally makes their stand against the monsters, we discover something interesting about their biological structure. Instead of a brain, their big crunchy mutant skulls are filled with delicious nougat! Yes, not only are the mutant disasters of future Venice a by-product of water purification gone wrong, but they were created by a joint coalition with the Mars Corporation! Those talking M&Ms™ are just a prototype for the true horrors the future of sugary confections hold for us... It's like a supermarket check out version of SkyNet™ people! Take a cue from Terminator 2 (no, not this one, the real one) and throw all the M&Ms™ of the world into a vat of molten steel while we still have a chance to save the Venice waterways for obnoxious American tourists who think they own everything they set their fat feet on!... come to think of it, never mind. Go on eating your Mars products. In fact, I’ll buy a pack of M&Ms™ for anybody who wants ‘em, just drop me an e-mail.

Back to our "movie", sadly no one else dies in this stand-off against the delicious beasts and their chewy centers, as Newt the-dirty-orphan-girl-who-isn't-kidnapped-from-the-Aliens-set leads the grunts to the safety of the abandoned Tubular Corporation facility nearby. For those unaware, Tubular is the evil corporate warlord dynasty responsible for this mess, and not a manufacturing plant for '80s and '90s slang or Nintendo games about white water rafting in big inner tubes... chances anybody picked up that last reference joke? Forecast says 98% chance of mental hazing and bong resin. Here, just check this link out when you get a chance and hopefully you can lead yourself to the punchline without me.

On another note, the further this movie drags it's crippled ass along, the more apparent it is that the group's Tubular Corp representative is living up to the part of Paul Riser as the "protect the company's interests at all costs" go-to-guy, when he encourages the remaining members of Mega Force not to delve further into the mystery, also ignoring cries of help from soon-to-be-dead 'Forcers. Speaking of further delving, a excessively convenient video made for Tubular investors is discovered in the facility that, upon viewing, outlines the corporation's plan to pollute Venice beyond habitability, making it a dead city with real estate that will go for a song… and not one of those good money-making type songs either, I mean something along the lines of Warrant doing a cover of “Afternoon Delight”. Yeah, think about that for 5 minutes and see if it doesn’t make your brain bleed a little.

The remainder of the evil corporate scheme involves buying up every square inch of the city once it’s been ecologically devastated and then going in, cleaning it all up, and selling everything for a massive profit. Hmmmm, for a top secret, covert, illegal operation, the Tubular Corporation sure made a professional looking presentation for said top secret, covert, illegal opperation... including a constantly smiling and disturbingly chipper video hostess! Following this discovery, the Mega Force team decides to call their mission a bust and turn their attention (and their firearms) on Mr. Fuller instead; pumping him with enough lead to fill a thousand pencils or poison the Tromaville reservoir. The bullets have no effect though, because Fuller's not just a broad caricature of an Aliens Paul Reiser, he's actually a broad caricature of an Alien Ian Holm!... because Ian Holm played Ash in Alien... and Ash was revealed to be an evil robot... and Fuller's an evil robot... where'd I put those tranquilizers? What, I've only got darts left? Somebody get the gun while I drop my ceremonial "reviewing and sacrificing" robe…

Of course it's now Fuller's job to rub out the remaining Mega Force chumps, leaving Sarah and Samantha (NOT Ripley and Newt mind you, so stop thinking that... like I am) to scamper away in panty pissing terror as Fuller does his Terminator power walk in menacing pursuit fashion. And boy does he power walk with the best of them! Fuller could easily compete professionally with Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers in the annual "International Bad Movie Power Walk Championshits"!... yes, that's a 't', it's a joke... kinda.

Elsewhere, a second Mega Force team is dispatched to the Venice toilet waterways, more or less to serve as meat for the mutant infestation food processor. In Italy, it's a requirement that a certain amount of blood and assorted bits of gore MUST be put into a movie before it can receive approval for release, hence this second patrol. In his "chase", Fuller too takes the Nestea™ plunge, falling backwards over, you guessed it, another railing... deep breaths Anubis, deep breaths. While all this is going on, there's a self-destruct sequence in the running too, which is always good because that usually sets a limit for the movie's remaining running time. The current count? 10 minutes! Alright boys and girls, I see a light at the end of the sewer! This Willy Wonka type nightmare boat ride of agony is almost over! In this ten minutes, Sarah must rescue Sam from a nest of mutants that she fell into (a scene that read “Aliens Plagiarism Case Evidence #17” on the clap board…) before the plant goes *POP*. The second class of 'Force members were meant to cut the self-destruct wires, but like I said, they become monster chow.

Pulling off the heroine gig, Sarah saves Sam and the two happen upon a conveniently placed Tubular Timepod™, complete with easy to view instructional video hosted by the same tooth-achingly pleasant woman from the “deviant pollution land grabbing plot” video made for the company’s shareholders. Using the pod, the girls beam themselves into the past, to a world that doesn’t consist of paintings about hyper polluted cities, industrial basement mazes, monsters with candy-coated cerebral cortexes and homicidal hand railings. Yes, they've gone back to the Venice of our time, "Before the year 2000". Never fret all you fans of brainless slasher fare out there, as you will be glad to know that RoboFuller, in movie killer fashion, also goes back in time via a second Timepod™ to complete his mission. That's right, because it'll take more than a railing with a murderous disposition to stop this bad guy! Using the ‘pod's remote control (yes, even the developers of time travel devices are thinking with the lazy man in mind), Sarah and Sam outwit the machine man and send the tin-plated terrorist to a random point in the timeline to who-knows-where, leaving the ladies to live in a world where Venice is a nice place to live OR visit, and spend their lives as activists trying to prevent the world of "After the year 2000". Oops, too late, we're already post-2K, so it looks like they failed... or succeeded... either way I'm glad this shit is finally over... heh heh, "this" and "shit".

As you can guess, this movie is swimming in a very deep cesspool of ass candy and monkey vomit. Everything's bad, so I won't take the precious time or space to list everything that I thought just outright sucked to behold. Besides, I've gotta be to work in the morning and can’t be up all night filing grievances. Aside from all the story elements blatantly stolen from a certain Sigourney Weaver movie series featuring phallic looking space creatures with a lust for blood and that handy "second jaw", the second worst offense of the accused was the cast's soul suckingly (though "soul" wasn't the word I'd usually associate with a movie's suckitude in this case…) horrible lack of any and all ability to convey any type of acting prowess. With all the broken lines and frequent stuttering, I'd say it's a good bet that probably 75 minutes of the dialogue was taken from the first take to save on film, with 60 of those dedicated to entirely unprofessional ad libbing. Few movies can make me beg for a long and painful death by testicular cancer as an alternative, but the Italians seem to hold the record for the biggest number of entries into said category. I feel no need to continue on, as any further comments would simply serve to insult my intelligence and that of you, the viewer, threatening both of our futures as sane members of society. As such, it's time to get out the hedge clippers and cut this piece of dick off as the hilt before it can infect anyone else with its cinematic STDs. Chop chop!