Terminator II

Shocking Dark
Alienators / Aliens 2 / Contaminator

Italy 1990
produced by
Franco Gaudenzi for Flora Film
directed by Bruno Mattei (as Vincent Dawn)
starring Christopher Ahrens, Haven Tyler, Geretta Geretta, Fausto Lombardi, Mark Steinborn, Dominica Coulson, Clive Riche, Paul Norman Allen, Cortland Reilly, Richard Ross, Bruce McFarland, Richard Berkeley, John Champion, Massimo Vanni, Elain Richmond, Al McFarland, Jim Pelot, Patricia Sedoc, James Sampson, Robert McFarland, Lorenzo Piani
written by Claudio Fargasso (as Clyde Anderson), music by Carlo Maria Cordio, special makeup effects by Franco Di Girolamo, special creature effects by Francesco Paolocci, Gaetano Paolucci

review by
Mike Haberfelner

The future: All that's left of Venice, Italy, is a giant underground lab owned by the Tubular Corporation - and now it seems something's wrong with the lab, too, as communication has broken off, and thus the corporation sends in the marines along with one of their people, Fuller (Christopher Ahrens), as guide and an independent scientific advisor, Sarah (Haven Tyler).

Soon, our group of heroes learns what it's up against, homicidal mutants, results from an experiment gone bad, and the marines start to die like flies - but the group also picks up a girl, Samantha (Dominica Coulson), who must have lived here for a while and thus must have been pretty good at avoiding the creatures. She soon becomes friends with Sarah.

It soon turns out that Fuller had his own agenda going into the lab with the others, to bring a sample of the mutant DNA back to Tubular Corp for reproduction, something which Sarah can't allow - so he locks her and the girl in with a mutant to get rid of them - but Sarah and Samantha are saved.

Soon enough, the mutants have killed off all the marines, and that alone would be bad enough for Sarah and Samantha, but now it turns out that Fuller is an indestructible cyborg, and he wants the two women dead as well. Bollocks! And the lab will self-destruct in only a few minutes. Well, good thing then Sarah and Samantha find a time machine just in time and are taken back to present day Venice. However, Fuller has found a second time machine and followed them back. In present day VEnice though, the two women manage to destroy the cyborg for good ...

Stupid science fiction/action flick that poses as a sequel to James Cameron's Terminator (copyright laws are somewhat lax in Italy, hence the misleading original title), but aprat from the ending the film is actually mor of an unofficial remake of another Cameron-film, Aliens. Of course, this low budget flick comes nowhere close the quality of these two films, but it is fun in a trashy sort of way: The characters are mostly cannon fodder, the actors are uniformly less than great, the location, a rundown powerstation, is less than convincing, and the final time machine plottwist is utterly ridiculous. All of this makes up for a bad movie - but if consumed with a couple of beers and a couple of mates, it might also be the ideal party flick.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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