Alone In The Dark (1982)
Currently Out Of Print
Director: Jack Sholder
Writer: Jack Sholder, Robert Shaye, and Michael Harrpster
Stars: Jack Palance, Donald Pleasance, Martin Landau, Dwight Schultz, Erland van Lidth, Deborah Hedwall, Lee Taylor-Allan, Phillip Clark, Elizabeth Ward, Brent Jennings, Gordon Watkins, and Carol Levy
A quartet of murderous psychopaths break out of a mental hospital during a power blackout and lay siege to their doctor's house.
The movie
Alone In The Dark (1982) bears no relation to the long running video game franchise of the same name. It should
not be confused with the godawful Uwe Boll directed movie adaptation of said video game, either.
Alone In The Dark is a splendid little gem of a movie that got lost in the deluge of slasher flicks flooding theaters in 1982, and it ended up largely forgotten outside of genre circles save for its status as one of the "clips no one can quite place" in the 1984 trailer compilation
Terror In The Aisles. It deserves better.
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| Byron 'Preacher' Sutcliffe (Martin Landau) approaches Mom's Diner in the surreal dream sequence preceding the opening credits of director Jack Sholder's 1982 directorial debut Alone In The Dark. |
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| Preacher imagines Dr. Leo Bain (Donald Pleasance) as a cleaver wielding short order cook who's about to help him split the tab the hard way... |
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| ...before he awakens from his nightmare to find himself back at the asylum and (you guessed it) alone in the dark! |
Alone In The Dark was among the first movies produced for Robert Shaye's New Line Cinema just a couple of years before the success of Wes Craven's
A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) turned it into The House That Freddy Built. Shaye's wife Lynn even has a cameo as a receptionist at the Haven, the mental hospital run by the pot smoking Dr. Leo Bain, played by Donald Pleasance. Pleasance is clearly having a blast in a role that comes across as a parody of his performance as the doom-and-gloom riddled Dr. Loomis in the
Halloween franchise. Dr. Bain subscribes to the notion that no-one is really crazy, that the people society labels as psychotics are only individuals having difficulty adapting to an already psychotic world. Even the Haven's four most dangerous patients are given considerable free reign. Paranoid schizophrenic Frank Hawkes (Jack Palance), pyromaniac Byron 'Preacher' Sutcliffe (Martin Landau), hulking pedophile Ronald 'Fatty' Elster (Erland van Lidth), and a homicidal maniac called 'The Bleeder' (Phillip Clark) are contained only by an electric door lock that confines them to their own wing of the hospital at night. It sure would be a shame if the power went out...
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| New hire Dr. Dan Potter (Dwight Schultz) receives an awkwardly enthusiastic welcome from hospital administrator Leo Bain upon arriving for his first day of work at the Haven. |
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| Dangerous mental patient and pedophile Ronald 'Fatty' Elster (Erland van Lidth) practices his origami, which one presumes must be a big hit with the kids. |
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| De facto leader of the psychos Colonel Frank Hawkes (Jack Palance) in a typically intense moment upon meeting Dr. Potter for the first time. |
As one might imagine, a considerable part of the charm of
Alone In The Dark derives from its casting. Beyond the delightful skewering of new age psychiatry that Pleasance provides, it's hard to deny the thrill of seeing future Oscar winners Jack Palance (Best Supporting Actor,
City Slickers, 1991) and Martin Landau (Best Supporting Actor,
Ed Wood, 1994) hamming it up to great effect as psychotics in a low budget horror movie. The two also appeared together two years prior in the low budget sci-fi/horror flick
Without Warning (1980), which was only recently rescued from obscurity by a new Scream Factory Blu-ray release. Many viewers will also likely recognize the late Erland van Lidth, who portrays obese pedophile Ronald 'Fatty' Elster. Van Lidth had previously made an impression as the hulking prison inmate Grossberger in the popular comedy
Stir Crazy (1980), as well as later portraying the opera-singing stalker Dynamo in
The Running Man (1987). If that isn't enough star power to pique your interest, how about we also throw in actor Dwight Schultz as the mild-mannered - and completely sane - Dr. Dan Potter? Ironically, just a few months later we'd all come to know Schultz primarily as crazed pilot 'Howling Mad' Murdock on the popular TV show
The A-Team (1983-87).
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| The Sic F*cks perform Chop Up Your Mother just before a citywide blackout brings the show to a halt. |
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| 'Preacher' finds just exactly what he's looking for while looting during the blackout... |
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| ...as does 'The Bleeder' (Phillip Clark), who prefers to keep his identity a secret for now. |
Alone In The Dark was also Jack Sholder's directorial debut. Sholder later worked with producer Robert Shay again on both
A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985) and the body-jumping alien parasite mini-classic
The Hidden (1987) before spending most of the rest of his career working in television. Contrary to what many fans believe, Sholder did not choose to have The Bleeder don a hockey mask upon escaping the Haven as any kind of homage to the
Friday The 13th franchise. Though released theatrically
after the first appearance of Jason's iconic hockey mask in
Friday The 13th Part III, Sholder's
Alone In The Dark was
completed first. The character of The Bleeder was actually conceived by Shay, who was taken with the idea of a psychopathic killer who keeps his face hidden to facilitate a surprising reveal near the end of the movie.
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| Land Shark! This screen grab is pretty funny once you know where 'Preacher' got the hat. |
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| Of course, there's nothing funny about pedophilia - except maybe watching a wise-beyond-her-years little girl (Elizabeth Ward) effortlessly thwart a pedophile's A game while still scoring the cookies and milk. |
Owing largely to its release during the theatrical heyday of the slasher movie,
Alone In The Dark is often lumped in with others of the type. Though it bears obvious cosmetic similarities to the slasher sub-genre, it's ultimately more of a siege movie.
Alone In The Dark goes pretty light on the gratuitous gore, and most of the movie's most suspenseful moments come in the third act after Dr. Potter and his family have been trapped in their home by the trio of psychopaths lurking outside. Slasher FX superstar Tom Savini does provide one make-up effect in the form of a briefly glimpsed zombie for a dream sequence, but his style of graphic slaughter is otherwise mostly absent. There is a set piece involving a scantily clad babysitter named Bunky (Carol Levy) and a very big knife that most any slasher movie would be proud to call its own, but even that episode is nearly gore-free. The appeal of
Alone In The Dark, not surprisingly, lies mostly in the strength of its performances and its clever screenplay, two strengths rarely associated with the slasher sub-genre.
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| Meanwhile, Bunky the babysitter (Carol Levy) thinks there may be someone under the bed... |
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| ...and there is... |
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| ...so maybe it's time for Bunky to get the hell off the bed and consider a less dangerous vocation. |
I intentionally went with relatively few screen caps from the final siege of the Potter household in
Alone In The Dark so as not to ruin any of the shocks, and I hope I've been sufficiently vague throughout this post about the specifics of the narrative.
Alone In The Dark is unique amongst horror movies of the era, and it deserves to be seen with its surprises intact. The original DVD release from Image Entertainment is unfortunately long out of print, though it can still be had for a price.
Alone In The Dark also later appeared in a two disc, four movie Image release alongside
Afraid Of The Dark (1991),
Relentless 3 (1993), and
Relentless 4 (1994), though that release seems to be even harder to track down. Sadly, it doesn't seem to be currently available on any of the major VOD outlets. Rumor has it that a high definition master of the movie still exists, so perhaps Scream Factory will someday swoop in to save
Alone In The Dark from obscurity just as they did with the previously mentioned
Without Warning.
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| Dr. Potter and his family prepare to fend off a home invasion... |
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| ... because appearances notwithstanding... |
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| ...the Potters already know they're not alone in the dark tonight. |
So how, you may ask, might someone go about seeing
Alone In The Dark given its current state of release? Well, if you expect to be anywhere near Timberville, Virginia on Memorial Day Weekend, shoot me an email.
Alone In The Dark is the second confirmed title - alongside
the previously announced Rituals (1977) - for the Movies At Dog Farm IV live event this Spring!