On May 29th Severin Films will release Shocking Dark on Blu-ray. Released in 1989 and from Italian shlockmeisters Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso, this is a movie that even if you haven’t seen it, it will be very familiar. To clarify, this is a movie that rips of James Cameron’s Aliens and then tosses it The Terminator in the film’s second half. In fact, this movie “borrowed” so much from Cameron’s films that it was actually released in Italy as Terminator 2 — a solid two years before Cameron would make his own follow-up.

For those of you well versed in Italian genre cinema from the 70’s and 80’s this should come as no surprise. Italian filmmakers ripped off American films all the time and while the results would vary from time to time they were largely successful. The ripping off wasn’t strictly limited to the Italians either. Sometimes the Italians would be the victim, as was the case when Ridley Scott and Dan O’Bannon ripped off Mario Bava to create Alien. So when you think about it, an Italian filmmaker ripping off the sequel to Alien to create their own film makes sense. Life is a flat circle or something.

In support of the upcoming Blu-ray release of Shocking Dark, Severin decided to have a little fun. Using an original Terminator 2 home video promo starring Robert Patrick as a reference point, Severin has created a copycat promo starring Shocking Dark actor Geretta Geretta (Demons, Rats: Night of Terror) as her badass onscreen character from the film.

Both promos are below for your viewing pleasure and I must say Severin did a stellar job with this. The most impressive part may be recreating Geretta’s costume from the film. I wonder if she had that laying around somewhere? At any rate, this is an awesome promo and a lot of fun. Here’s to hoping we get more promos like this in the future!