REVIEW - Alone in the Dark (1982)

Alone in the Dark

USA - 1982

Directed by - Jack Sholder

Starring - Jack Palance, Donald Pleasence, Martin Landau, Dwight Schultz

Color - 92 Min - Rated R for violence, nudity, and frightening and intense scenes

Dr. Dan Potter (Dwight Schultz) has just accepted a new job at the Haven Institute in New Jersey, a psychiatric hospital run by the eccentric Dr. Bain (Donald Pleasence). Potter quickly discovers that Bain's methods are somewhat unusual - he believes that the utmost leniency is required to heal a sick mind, eschewing crude methods of treatment such as electroshock therapy. Dr. Potter is somewhat off-put by Bain and his bizarre rapport with his patients and the manner in which he indulges their various psychosis, but remains open minded and optimistic. That is, until he meets the truly dangerous patients kept on the 3rd floor of the Haven. The patients include psychotic Vietnam vet Frank Hawkes (Jack Palance), still playing the role of 'Sarge' all these years later as the leader of the group, Byron Sutcliff - a former preacher turned pyromaniac freak, morbidly obese child molester Ronald Eister (Erland van Lidth), and "the Bleeder" John Skaggs (Phillip Clark), a homicidal maniac who refuses to show his face. As per Dr. Bain's instruction, the men on the 3rd floor are not kept behind bars. An expensive electronic security system is the only thing keeping them in their rooms at night.

The 3rd floor patients had become quite close to Potter's predecessor, Dr. Merton. The four men come to the misguided conclusion that Potter must have killed Merton to take his place, thus they begin to scheme a method of eliminating the new shrink. An unfortunate mishap at the local power plant causes a statewide blackout, which gives the maniacs the perfect opportunity to escape. They kill the hospital guard and steal a car, tearing off into the night to begin the stalking of Dr. Potter...

Let's see. I've got the Crossbow of slaying, plus I have attack of opportunity, and then there's my DEX bonus...

Alone in the Dark is notable for being the first movie ever theatrically released by New Line Cinema and for unfortunately sharing the same name as a series of video games (which means it also shares its name with the reviled 2005 movie allegedly based on said games directed by Uwe Boll). It seems a shame that history has reduced this film to nothing more than an answer to what could be a moderately difficult trivia question in a game of Scene-It?, because it's one of the most interesting slasher films I've ever watched, equally chilling as it is intelligent. And it doesn't hurt that the movie is graced with a trio of brilliant actors (Palance, Pleasence, and Landau), each of whom turn in arresting performances as a different kind of crazy.

I suppose the film was easy to overlook for a contemporary critic in 1982, after all, the popularity of Leatherface and Michael Myers had ensured that a gamut of slasher flicks would be released over the next several years, some of them good, many of them in the middling to bad range. Yet the premise of Alone in the Dark is so creepy and creative that I have to wonder how many members of the press actually sat through the whole thing. A massive power outage and a gang of homicidal loonies set loose on a quiet community? Even today that still seems like relatively uncharted horror movie territory. I only wish the 'dark' aspect of Alone in the Dark was tapped into just a little bit more. Most of the scenes after the power outage still appear to be pretty well lit (understandable if you don't want your movie to look like crap, but work with me here, people!).

He disagreed with something that ate him.
(There's like one person out there who appreciates my obscure James Bond jokes.)

It is somewhat amusing that the prolific Dwight Schultz is playing the perfectly sane and rational psychiatrist in Alone in the Dark when barely a year later he would become famous for taking on the part of TV's 'Howling Mad' Murdock in The A-Team. Schultz is the straight man in the film. His composed demeanor and every-man attitude is somewhat vanilla compared to the antics of the mental hospital patients and their kooky psychiatrist, but Dr. Potter does start to lose it just a bit as his family are also put in jeopardy by the escapees. The rising violence of the third act brings out the primal side in him as survival instincts kick in. A neat character arc to follow along with.

Martin Landau is perhaps at his creepiest in this film, playing the manic-eyed, Bible-thumping preacher to perfection. His performance is memorable enough to make you do a double take whenever you see one of his latter day films where he's playing a kinder, more grandfatherly type character. Could that really be the same actor? Donald Pleasance also threatens to steal any scenes he's involved in, playing perhaps a polar opposite of Dr. Loomis from the Halloween series. While Loomis could be quite creepy and mysterious at times, Dr. Bain is far more quirky and offbeat. Bain's debates with Potter early on in the film are quite thought provoking and one of the highlights of the film - consider: are the patients in a mental hospital the sick ones? Or are they merely victims of a sick planet?

Perhaps neither. Perhaps Hawkes is on the money when he tells Dr. Potter: "There are no.... crazy people, doctor. We're all just........ on vacation." Line of the movie, folks! Watching this film made me once again realize just what a talent Jack Palance was. Oh, how I miss him being around. We could use a little more Jack Palance (or Donald Pleasance) nowadays. No doubt, Jack was one of the hammiest actors of all-time, but he did it with such verve and confidence and bravado. You never doubted him for a second. The only problem with having Palance in this role is that Hawkes becomes so much of a badass that you may come very close to cheering for him in an anti-hero sort of way; obviously not the intent of the filmmakers here.

O hai, boyfriend! I'm stuck babysitting again. Yeah, I know, what a drag! But the brat is off taking a nap. So, like, why not come on over for a quick suck 'n fuck with me? It'll be totally rad! There's no lights and the news keeps talking about those four psycho killers on the loose. What could possibly go wrong?!

For a directorial debut, Alone in the Dark was a fine start for Jack Sholder. He knows his horror techniques rather well, whether it's framing the shot for a perfect jump scare or lingering on a close-up of an actor's face for an uncomfortable length of time to build tension, the man is obviously a fan of the genre. Sholder would go on to direct A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, once again teaming with Alone in the Dark's producer Robert Shaye, but Sholder's career as a director seemed to fizzle afterward. His features post-Nightmare consisted of mostly B-movies that are even more forgotten than Alone in the Dark is.

Despite my rather glowing praise for this movie, it does have a few problems one could nitpick. While the film does try to go in an original direction, it still ends up back on the same road as many other horror films, falling back into the set of rules that Wes Craven would lampoon many years later in Scream. The black guy does indeed die first, you should never go near windows, and of course, sex most definitely equals death if you're a horny young couple looking to get it on. Alone in the Dark could have been just a tad scarier too. There are some rather nasty kills and the requisite amount of blood is spilled, but the truly frightening sequences are spaced out too far from one another. It should be noted that horror legend Tom Savini was brought in to work on a particularly gruesome apparition that appears in a dream sequence. I won't spoil it for you if you haven't seen the movie before, but trust me, this one scene is worth watching, even if the apparition does feel a shade out of place with the realistic take the film aims for. The climax is also a bit too convenient for all involved. Then again, the twisted ending does make up for it in my estimation.

And make no mistake, nobody will ever mistake the movie's time period for any other but the 1980's when you have a band like the Sic Fucks playing the 80's-tastic "Chop Up Your Mother".

Check out Alone in the Dark if you get the chance. I highly recommend it to any horror buff who enjoys a good slasher but has become jaded with the staleness of the genre over the years.

"Happy.... trails!"

4 / 5