RETRO REVIEW: ALONE IN THE DARK (1982)
By 1982, the country was fully engulfed in the slasher film craze. That year alone, films like Pieces, The New Yorker Ripper, The Slumber Party Massacre, Tenebrae, Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, Basket Case, and Friday the 13th Part III were all released (more on that last film later). America was in the grips of slasher fever. So when writer/director Jack Sholder (who worked as an editor on the classic slasher, The Burning the year before) decided to make his own slasher film, he went full-on Avengers style with it, enlisting some of the most well-known (and to be fair, slightly washed-up) tough guys and horror icons of the time to star in it. And just like that Dilbert-looking, Joss Whedon douchebag, Sholder’s gamble paid off, because ALONE IN THE DARK never disappoints when it comes to its own weirdness. It’s not a plausible story, but it is set up and executed in such a satisfying way that you can’t help but go along with the insane, scenery-chewing excursion.
PLOT:
At a private mental institution, Dr. Leo Bain (Halloween’s Donald Pleasence) has developed a more humane method of dealing with his most dangerous patients, using electricity instead of steel bars in service of the asylum's hi-tech security system. The idea is to keep the nearby neighborhood safe from menaces like Frank Hawkes (Academy Award-winner Jack Palance, City Slickers) and "Preacher" (Academy Award-winner Martin Landau, Ed Wood). Meanwhile a new doctor, Dan Potter (The A-Team’s Dwight Schultz), arrives in town with his family, but the inmates don't take kindly to his presence and believe he has killed off their former therapist. Suddenly a power outage leaves the town in chaos, and now these disturbed and violent patients are free to roam the streets and hunt down the man they believe has invaded their lives, leaving a path of riots and pandemonium in their wake.
KILLS:
After a rather David Lynchian opening (more on that later) we meet Dr. Potter, who is coming to Dr. Leo Bain’s facility to replace a colleague of Bain’s who recently took another position out of state. Side note: his first interaction within the hospital is with a young mental patient played by Lin Shaye (Insidious), who’s dad, Robert Shaye, produced the film. We get a good amount of set up in this early scene, including Dr. Bain’s philosophy on treatment, which is employing more empathetic and humane methods, eschewing barbaric practices like bars on windows and electroshock in favor of electrified windows and encouraging their impulses. If they want a match to light something on fire, well, he gives it to them. Why not? To Leo, they are no different than the other humans walking around in society. He believes they are safer within his walls because it's too scary for them on the outside, remarking, “they wouldn’t survive.”
One of the patients, Frank Hawkes (not to be confused with Lincoln Hawkes from Over the Top) is immediately convinced that Dr. Potter is not to be trusted and that he killed and replaced the old doctor. Along with fellow patients The Preacher (Martin Landau), Ronald 'Fatty' Elster (Erland van Lidth), and “Skaggs” (Phillip Clark) who we only see from the back because, as Leo explains, he doesn’t like to show his face to strangers, Hawkes devises a plan for them to escape and kill the new doctor. We also find out from Frank that “Fatty” is a pedophile, The Preacher is a pyro, and Frank himself says he’s here just because he enjoys the social life: “there’s no crazy people here doc, we’re just on vacation.”
Thanks to a rather fortuitous issue at the local nuclear power plant that plunges the entire town into darkness, the patients are able to escape and head into town, but not before Fatty kills the security guard by breaking the guy’s back over his knee and The Preacher kills another doctor and steals his car. Once the men happen upon a mass looting at a sporting goods store, they secure their weapons (with Skaggs donning a hockey mask, a’la Jason Vorhees). It’s a common misconception that Friday the 13th ripped the idea for the hockey mask off from this film. Jason started wearing his mask in Friday the 13th Part 3, which was released in 1982, the same year as this movie, however, Friday the 13th Part 3 came out in August, while this film came out in November, so that’s that. Skaggs scores a gory kill with a handy little garden cultivator to a guy’s throat and the guys leave him behind to go after Dr. Potter.
Perhaps not surprisingly for a slasher film, the most memorable kill comes at the expense of a babysitter. During the chaos of riots and protests of the nuclear power plant, the youngest Potter daughter comes home from school to see Fatty standing there in the house. When she asks where her mom is, he quickly explains that she went out for a bit and that he’s here to babysit her. He then suggests that they go up to the girl’s room until her mom comes home, a moment made all the more unsettling and creepy as we know that he is a pedophile. What makes it even more unnerving is that the young girl seems more put out than scared of him. Meanwhile, the mom calls the regular babysitter to go over there and look after her, and when the babysitter does, she finds no sign of Fatty, only the daughter asleep in her bed. Naturally, a quiet house means she invites her boyfriend over so she can ride the ole’ baloney pony. Once they start going to pound town, she hears a noise from the closet and asks her boyfriend to investigate. He does and gives the all clear, but is suddenly grabbed by the Preacher from under the bed, who then starts stabbing up at the babysitter from underneath the bed with maybe the most enormous bowie knife I’ve ever seen. She tries to make a run for it after a rather symbolic stab comes right up between her legs, only to be hoisted up by the neck with one hand by Fatty and choked to death (incidentally, that scene was done without any special effects - Erland Van Lidth who played Fatty was an incredible weight lifter and actually seized actress Carol Levy by the neck and lifted her for the shot).
VISUALS/SFX:
The visual style of ALONE IN THE DARK could overarchingly be classified as solid, but nothing all that remarkable. That is, however, with the exception of that opening scene. In a diner straight out of David Lynch’s wet dream called “Mom’s” (helloooo, Oedipus), Martin Landeau’s Preacher comes in and sits at the counter. He’s approached by a waitress, who looks like she has the pizza oven from hell behind her. He says he’ll have his usual, and she sets down a fish on a plate in front of him, out of which a live frog jumps out. Suddenly, we see Donald Pleasence appear in a diner uniform, holding a giant meat cleaver and intoning ominously: “I will cause distress to man, for they have sinned against the Lord and their blood shall run out as the dust, and their flesh as dung.” Just as Donald goes to chop the Preacher in half with his cleaver, the Preacher wakes up screaming in the hospital.
The symbolism and words of this opening scene are no accident. Sholder’s goal for the film was to give a humane and sympathetic eye to the mentally ill, who are historically marginalized, to show that these “psychotics” were actually people having difficulty adapting to an already psychotic world. Having the words of Zephaniah 1:17 intoned by Pleasance enforces the idea of that biblical passage that people in places of power (Dr. Potter, Dr. Bain, society, whatevs), will suddenly find themselves powerless against God’s judgment, as helpless and defenseless as the mentally ill they have exploited and shunned.
It should also be mentioned that makeup effects artist Tom Savini was brought in specifically to create the horrific monster apparition that Dr. Potter’s sister, Toni has. Savini achieved the unexpected effect by covering an actor in a concoction of soap and Rice Krispies cereal. That’s all fine, but if you are going to bring Savini in on a movie, I would have personally liked to have seen some more gore with the kills.
PERFORMANCES:
It’s hard to deny the caliber of this cast. Martin Landau won an Oscar for his performance in Ed Wood, but besides that, he garnered an impressive 23 nominations and 29 wins during his life, including Golden Globe and New York Critics Circle wins. Jack Palance also garnered multiple Oscar nominations through his career, winning for his iconic role in City Slickers, and Donald Pleasence is basically horror’s Al Pacino (my one regret in life is not seeing Donald Pleasence enact my fantasy of him doing all of Pacino’s lines from Heat).
None of these guys pull any punches with their performances, resolute in their blatant thirst to outdo the other guy in terms of scenery-chewing. Make no mistake, this is not a knock on them by any means. It is fantastic and compelling to see each manic, twitching performance by these veteran actors unfold and is what really elevates the material beyond the usual maniacs-on-the-loose fare.
OVERALL IMPRESSIONS:
Writer/director Jack Sholder said that with ALONE IN THE DARK his ambition was to articulate a point about society and what is considered normal and what isn’t. “What if we break through the thin veneer of civilization?” he said. “You have a bunch of people who are so-called crazy, and they’re out into the world and they fit right in.”
Sholder uses the character of Dr. Leo Bain as a mouthpiece for his rather trite societal statements. At one point in the film, Leo is counting heads at the hospital and is upset when he figures that the hospital will be shut down because of the patient's escape, saying that “their violence is a cry of pain but nobody hears it.” Dr. Potter points out to him that several people are dead already by their hands and suggests that perhaps Leo needs to have some perspective. Leo, refusing to backpedal on his ideology, quips back, “well alright…they’re crazy. Isn’t everybody?” Ironically, what ends up saving the Potter family is a moment of rationality on Frank Hawkes' part, a man perceived by the outside world as crazy and dangerous. But when he is confronted by an indisputable fact, by pure rationality, he simply deflates and says, “sorry, I guess I was wrong.”
ALONE IN THE DARK tries to make a statement about mental illness and society, but it doesn’t quite hit the impactful notes that perhaps Sholder aspired to. Regardless, Sholder made an extremely entertaining slice-and-dice B-movie, with an assured and controlled eye, very much in the style of a Carpenter siege movie. The film even manages to pull off a pretty decent twist in the third act, that, when I first saw this film at age 19, managed to make me gasp in surprise. Although on the gimmicky side, even 40 years later this film still manages to be a manic joy ride of psychotic energy, with performances that push the level of acting to ACTING!
THE GORY DETAILS:
Publicity for this picture boldly declared on promotional materials that this movie was: "From the Makers of the The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)."
This theatrical feature film was an early filmed cinema movie production of the New Line Cinema production house.
One of the members of the punk band in the film, The Sick F*cks, ran into star Jack Palance years later in the streets of New York. He said to Palance that he was one of The Sick F*cks in the film and Palance replied 'we were all sick fucks in that movie.'
MY RATING: 7.5/10
WHERE TO WATCH:
YouTube, Sling, Amazon Prime.
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