Shocking Dark (1989)

An astonishing piece of work, even by the standards of 70s/80s Italian ripoff cinema, and a must see for schlock fans, Shocking Dark (AKA Alienators, AKA Terminator 2(!), AKA Death in Venice 2: The Deathening) pilfers from not one but two classics of James Cameron's filmography.

After a vaguely described apocalyptic apocalyptic event (something to do with mutant seaweed sucking the oxygen out of the water - not sure how this affects humans, but never mind) Venice is an abandoned, desolate shell, with a few survivors hiding in secure facilities deep underground. They're not alone though, as a gruesome mutant is roaming the city’s maze of tunnels. A team of soldiers, the Mega Force, go to dispatch it, along with civilian scientist Dr Sara Drumbull and Samuel Fuller (!), a representative of a company called the Tubular Corporation, who is as muscle-bound as he is mysterious.

Throw in a cyborg with half of his face torn off and already you can see some similarities with the work of Cameron. Italian exploitation cinema has a long and noble history of helping itself to ideas and plots from genre hits and writer Claudio Fragasso (the man who brought us the legendary Troll 2) and director Bruno Mattei (Hell of the Living Dead, Rats: Night of Terror), don't merely take the vibe or plotline of Terminator and Aliens, but lift whole scenes and lines of dialogue, shoehorning them in regardless of relevancy or coherence.

The few original elements make no more sense. Venice has been ruined so that property and art prices would (somehow) rocket in value. By the time a plot twist involving a time machine turns up, your brain has been pummelled into submission and will accept anything.

Halloween (2018)

The Halloween film series, just like main antagonist Michael Myers, refuses to stay dead. The eleventh outing has an excellent turn from original star Jamie Lee Curtis but fails to bring much else new or exciting.

Wisely ignoring the sequels (both old and new), the story starts Michael with locked up in an asylum, forty years after the events of the first film. The object of his stalking, Laurie Strode (Curtis) has spent the time suffering PTSD, which has cost her two marriages and the relationship with her daughter. One day she gets the news that she has been dreading - Myers is being transferred to a new facility, giving him the opportunity to escape and finish what he started.

It's always great to see Jamie Lee Curtis in anything, and here she brings a great mix of vulnerability and toughness to her character. The other characters are mostly forgettable, but that is not unusual for the genre. Kudos also to John Carpenter who, with his son Cody and Daniel Davies, has crafted a score that is as discomfiting and driving as his work for the original.

The film is competently made but never answers the question "What's the point of this?". Director David Gordon Green reverently copies many of the shots and tropes of the original, but misses the main thing that made the original work so well. The original’s director John Carpenter stripped nearly everything back to the bare minimum, from the story, to the score, to the fleeting appearances of Myers in tracking shots.

Green takes the opposite approach, overloading the film with themes and topics, (best represented by the two podcasters trying to re-examine Myers story and turn him into an object of fascination) and the inevitable throwbacks to the original film. All this does is remind you how lean and efficient the original was.