In Search of Darkness: A Journey Into Iconic '80s Horror

I was looking forward to this documentary, but after slogging through almost four and half hours, I'm disappointed. There are too many titles missing, too much time spent on the usual Freddy and Jason series, and the titles they do include are given short shrift.

It seems like the creators were going for quantity over quality. And some of the talking heads are a little tough to take, especially the obnoxious James Janisse from the Dead Meat channel. He's obviously reading his lines, and trying to sell them like a used car salesman.

Seeing John Carpenter was cool, but we learn almost nothing new from him here.

While this is an ambitious attempt to document 80's horror, it misses the mark.

Complete list of films as discussed in order.

1980 1.) The Fog 2.) The Changling 3.) Friday the 13th 4.) The Shining 5.) Dressed to Kill 6.) Fade to Black 7.) Motel Hell 8.) Maniac

1981 1.) Scanners 2.) My Bloody Valentine 3.) The Howling 4.) The Burning 5.) American Werewolf in London 6.) Full Moon High 7.) The Evil Dead 8.) Halloween II 9.) Ghost Story

1982 1.) Cat People 2.) Basket Case 3.) Poltergeist 4.) The Thing 5.) Halloween III 6.) Q - The Winged Serpent 7.) Creepshow

1983 1.) Videodrome 2.) The Hunger 3.) Psycho II 4.) Cujo 5.) Sleepaway Camp 6.) Christine

3-d sub-section 1.) Friday the 13th III (3-d) 2.) Parasite (3-d) 3.) Rottweiler (3-d) 4.) Amityville 3 (3-d) 5.) Jaws 3 (3-d)

1984 1.) Children of the Corn 2.) Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter 3.) Firestarter 4.) Gremlins 5.) A Nightmare on Elm Street 6.) Night of the Comet

1985 1.) The Company of Wolves 2.) The Stuff 3.) Day of the Dead 4.) Fright Night 5.) Return of the Living Dead 6.) Howling II 7.) Silver Bullet 8.) Re-animator

1986 1.) Chopping Mall 2.) The Toxic Avenger 3.) Poltergeist II: The Other Side 4.) Psycho III 5.) Maximum Overdrive 6.) Friday the 13th VI: Jason Lives 7.) The Fly 8.) Night of the Creeps 9.) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 10.) From Beyond

1987 1.) A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors 2.) Dolls 3.) Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn 4.) It's Alive III: Island of the Alive 5.) The Lost Boys 6.) The Monster Squad 7.) Hellraiser 8.) Near Dark

1988 1.) Critters 2 2.) Friday the 13th VII: The New Blood 3.) Killer Klowns from Outer Space 4.) Phantasm II 5.) The Blob 6.) A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master 7.) The Lair of the White Worm 8.) Elvira: Mistress of the Dark 9.) Pumpkinhead 10.) Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Meyers 11.) The Live 12.) Child's Play 13.) Hellbound: Hellraiser II

1989 1.) The Burbs 2.) 976-Evil 3.) Pet Sematary 4.) Friday the 13th VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan 5.) Stepfather 2 6.) Society

Count me amongst those who were ecstatic at the prospect of a four and a half hour documentary on my favourite decade of horror, the 1980s. I felt disappointment set in pretty early however, as the obvious budget limitations had the film feeling like a slightly better produced YouTube video. That feeling may have also stemmed from a number of the talking heads being actual YouTube video bloggers. These people can be entertaining at times, but are ultimately little more than fans themselves. I would have preferred their time given to other folks actually involved in the making of these films. Then again, if Joe Bob Briggs was simply allowed to talk for four and half hours we would have gleaned much more than we did from the ensemble.

The best moments of In Search of Darkness were the sections in which the cultural and historical relevance of 80s horror was analyzed. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the doc is comprised of simple and brief commentary on classics of the decade. The decision to structure the discussion year-by-year (marked by title cards) made the project feel laborious at times.

I'm glad I watched the film, in the sense that it felt like talking about horror movies for an afternoon with fellow fanatics. Don't expect a deeply thorough examination though.

Lots of juicy clips from films, not much substance otherwise. No big names among the talking heads. They are pleasant enough but don't bring anything new to the table. Its nice to see how some of those 80's femme fatales have aged-Barbara Crampton is still impressive while Heather Langenkamp doesn't seem to care much about her appearance.

It is really disappointing that this documentary spends too much time on well known franchises such as Halloween/Friday 13th/Nightmare on Elm Street while other much better films are not mentioned.

A couple of UK releases are mentioned, but nothing from Europe or Australia.

The guys behind this video need to expand their horror horizons.

Sadly that's really all it is. It's great to see some of the faces but they don't really have anything interesting to say.

They give a quick intro on what the 80s was like and then 7 minutes in they start listing movies, giving a short description and saying they like them over alternating shots of talking heads and clips from the movie.

The first movie is The Fog. You get 3mins, 5secs of talk about The Fog. This is a transcript I made for you. -----

John Carpenter: After Halloween I had a deal with AVCO Embassy to make two films and the first one turned out to be "The Fog". It was a ghost story conceived on a trip to England and Stonehenge. I said to Debra Hill, man it's really amazing here. And a fog bank at the time was off in the distance. "I wonder what's in there?" we said. I was gonna get hired for horror films, that's what was gonna happen, 'cause that's where I had a hit. So off we went.

Tom Atkins: You know, it's kind of an old-fashioned ghost story. It's not big, gory, scary stuff.

Carpenter: The Fog was shot up in Point Reyes, California. It was a beautiful area.

Atkins: My dear friend Adirienne Barbeau, she spent the entire time up in that tower and so we were never ever on screen together. Jamie Lee: she's hitchiking and the first thing she says when she gets in the car is "Are you weird?"

-brief clip of the Are you weird? moment-

Atkins: Then I offer her a sip of beer and then they cut and there we are in bed. Just like that. It's that easy 'cause I'm smooth. Hah! I don't think it bothered her to get on that scream queen path as long as she thought she might be able to get off of it. And she did.

Nick Castle: The Fog has Nick Castle as the lead! That's the name of the character in it! I also remember that very fondly because as you pan across inside Adrienne's room she's holding a baby and that's my son.

Atkins: The guys that come out of the fog at the end, into the church, take Hal Holbrrok to heaven. Or hell. Somewhere.

Andre Gower: The seaweed dudes: did not like. Did not like the seaweed dudes at all.

Atkins: They look great in their seaweedy ooky outfits. Big box fans and fog machines at the end of a street trying to make enough fog to look eerie and creepy, threatening, the slightest breeze took it all away and then... to start over again, to build it up and get it going...

Carpenter: That was re-vamped after we finished it as it didn't work and the script was changed.

Atkins: It didn't get going quick enough, somehow.

Carpenter: I was... that was a nightmare. I don't ever want to do that again.

-----

And that's it. That's the level of insight you can expect. Hell, I'd say you get a bit more from The Fog than most of them - they hint that there's an interesting story about post production. They don't tell you anything about it but you know something interesting happened so that's something. And they don't waste a tonne of time telling you how much they like The Fog, something that happens on a lot of the other films.