Alone In The Dark

1982 • Dir: Jack Sholder • St: Dwight Schultz, Donald Pleasance, Jack Palance, Martin Landau, cameo from NY punk band The Sick F*cks

Note: I had borrowed this recently, and this weekend I purchased a copy, so now it meets the criteria for me to review it (ie I own it and it sits on my horror movie shelf). This means it just manages to jump in before I get to An American Haunting.

Premise: Dr Dan Potter (Schultz) starts his new job at a mental asylum run by the eccentric Dr Leo Bain (Pleasance). He is introduced to the asylum's four maximum security patients - Frank Hawkes (Palance), 'Preacher' (Landau), 'Fatty' and 'The Bleeder'. A power blackout across the whole town frees the four lunatics, and sets them loose on their mission to kill the new doctor and his family.

Analysis: I really enjoyed this film when I borrowed it off a friend (a co-conspirator from the mad and deranged Cult of the Chainsaw), and when I saw it lurking on the shelf in one of my favourite haunts (nerd paradise Minotaur) I picked it up.

The plot revolves around the belief formed by the four loonies that Dr Potter has killed their previous head-shrinker, and now plans to kill them. When the power goes out in the town, the four loonies escape and stock up with guns, crossbows and garden tools to stalk, hunt and kill Dr Potter and his wife, sister and daughter.

There are such top shelf talents in this film - Donald Pleasance is wonderfully kooky as Dr Bain, Jack Palance his usual good self as the deeply insane Hawkes, and it was a treat seeing just what a deep level of crazy Martin Landau can achieve. I was truly spooked by him, which was a bit of a revelation, as I only had hazy memories of him from Space: 1999. Dwight Schultz, who usually plays the kooky, funny guy, played a sensitive, staid psych doctor quite well. It made me realise there may be depths to him I'd never recognised before.

The set up of the film is really quite simple, but is enriched by great performances from solid actors, and some nicely paced direction from Sholder (of homoerotic subtext Nightmare On Elm Street 2 fame).

After visiting a local punk band (cameo from NY band The Sick F*cks) at his sister's behest, Potter and his wife return home to find the plot to kill them underway. We know Hawkes, Preacher and Fatty are nearby, but The Bleeder (so named because he gets nosebleeds when he wants to kill) has split off from the group and disappeared. The loonies have already visited the house and killed the babysitter and her boyfriend in the archetypal 'they who screw first, die first' horror movie rule.

Meeting up with a stranger in prison, where Potter's wife and sister were taken after attending a protest, the family, the stranger and a cop concerned for their welfare all converge on the house. What follows is pretty standard fare, but no less engaging for that. Potter's sister, recovering from a bout of mental illness, starts to wig out, as the attack of the lunatics heats up.

SPOILER (in black type below-select to read)

Okay so I guessed this pretty early one, but the friendly stranger is in fact the Bleeder, whose face had been obscured through the film to date. He gets a nosebleed while holding Potter's sister which gives him away. There's a reasonable body count. The babysitter and her boyfriend are finally found dead, Preacher and Fatty both get done in, as does the cop and the Bleeder. Bain gets killed as well. Finally the power comes back on, and a TV new bulletin shows Hawkes' former doctor alive and well, taking the wind out of his sails.

Hawkes escapes to the punk club, where the power is back on as well. Watching The Sick F*cks sing 'Chop Up Your Mother' he beams and says how he feels right at home.

END SPOILER

This was a good film. It has some pretty run of the mill twists and turns, but all up it's a good solid effort.

To close, I will relate something from the interview with three of the leftover Sick F•cks which was a special feature on the disk. One of the band members ran into Jack Palance in New York some years after the film. He ran up to him "Jack! Hey, Jack! Remember me? We were in that film Alone In The Dark together. I was one of The Sick F*cks." And Jack replied in that characteristic voice of his "I think we were ALL sick fucks in that film." Classic.

Stars: 4 out of 5