She Never Died (yes, SHE!)

She Never Died (2019)

Dir. Audrey Cummings

Written by Jason Krawczyk

Starring Olunike Adeliyi, Peter MacNeill, Kiana Madeira, Noah Dalton Danby, Michelle Nolden

I was genuinely surprised when I saw they made a sequel to HE NEVER DIED, the Henry-Rollins-starring cannibal/action/horror/drama/comedy that so unexpectedly delighted me back when I randomly caught it in 2015 during the AFI Spooky Movie Festival. Not that I wouldn’t be up for spending more time with Jack, the immortal, perpetually put-upon bingo enthusiast played by Rollins, but it just seemed like the first film wrapped up so neatly that it didn’t demand any further exploration. It was the first film I’d seen in ages to premise itself upon a J.J. Abrams-style mystery box and then actually have the goods to pay off that mystery with an interesting, satisfying solution – but in doing so, it didn’t seem to leave a sequel with much room for a similar mystery hook. Still, the possibility of kicking around for a sequel adventure with Rollins’ hilariously deadpan weirdo seemed appealing enough – which makes it doubly surprising that he isn’t in it! The fact that this “sequel” even takes place in the same universe as HE NEVER DIED is attested to only obliquely. If it didn’t have that title, I’m genuinely not sure even people who had seen HE NEVER DIED would have put together that this was a sequel, and, in fact, a sequel with some pretty serious and ballsy implications for a franchise.

First things first, though: although it will eventually expand the mythology somewhat, SHE NEVER DIED is primarily one of those genre sequels which is essentially a remake and remix of the first one, like EVIL DEAD 2 or FROM DUSK TIL DAWN 3, or SECOND TO LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST or FRIDAY THE 13th Parts 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7, and to a lesser but still obvious extent also 5 and 8. Just like HE NEVER DIED, SHE NEVER DIED introduces us to an isolated, socially awkward weirdo who, uh, never died. But, as the title might suggest, it is not the same isolated, socially awkward weirdo, but instead a woman named Lacey (Olunike Adelivi, a surprisingly lengthy filmography including SAW: THE FINAL CHAPTER, THE PRODIGY, and UNDERCOVER BROTHER [uncredited]) who is living as a homeless derelict and moonlighting as a brutal vigilante who stalks the members of a human trafficking ring led by an absolutely magnificent douche named Terrance (a superbly entertaining Noah Dalton Danby, another surprisingly lengthy filmography including DETROIT ROCK CITY, RIDDICK, and EXIT WOUNDS [!]).

If her actions seem very slightly more proactive than Jack’s did, however, her personality is even more reserved. If Jack was utterly disinterested in the world, Lacey seems downright disengaged from it. She has a flat affect and glazed eyes, seems to be completely lost in her own mind, barely even aware of anything around her. When someone talks to her, it seems to take a conscious effort for her to drag herself out of her own thoughts and focus on the speaker. She comes off, in fact, as mildly autistic, not just annoyed by the unwanted intrusion of other humans’ problems --like Jack was-- but genuinely uncomprehending of them. If Jack has isolated himself in a hermetic routine, she has isolated herself within her own mind. Which makes it all the more startling when something finally jars her out of her stupor, and she suddenly roars into a focused, predatory frenzy that is likely to be fatal for anyone around her.

This makes her a harder character to relate to than her irascible, eccentric counterpart in the prequel. Consequently, the movie adopts a slightly different structure from its predecessor, framing the film mostly from the perspective of the other characters who are reacting to Lacey, keeping her at a mysterious distance. Thus, we are introduced to Detective Godfrey (Peter MacNeill, yet another startlingly lengthy filmography, including CRASH [the David Cronenberg one], A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, REGRESSION) an old police veteran who is worrisomely close to retirement but would really love to finally nail the shadowy syndicate which has been kidnapping people and forcing them into brutal snuff films for a live internet audience. When Lacey crashes one of these films and provides an appropriately gory end for the filmmakers, she winds up on the radar of both the Godfrey and the gang, and things get even more complicated after she's joined by an unlikely sidekick, bubbly chatterbox Suzzie (Kiana Madeira, still another busy filmography, most notably an episode of The Flash) who she unintentionally rescued from a gristly death.

The details may be different, but when you get down to it this sounds like little more than a few cosmetic alterations to HE NEVER DIED; again, you have two acolytes, one chipper and persistent, the other disbelieving but curious, who gravitate to our Never Dyer du jour, while meanwhile an obtuse crime plot plays out in the background and provides some antagonists. But it turns out that even gently adjusting the levels of these elements produces a rather startlingly different effect. Despite a functionally identical plot, SHE feels much more like an ensemble piece than HE did, adopting the point-of-view of multiple different characters as they gradually figure out what Lacey is and consider what they want from her. Refocusing the movie this way is kind of a risky move, given the extent to which HE hung together entirely on Rollins’ great character work and inimitable personality. Fortunately, everybody here turns out to be more than up to the task; I didn’t recognize a single face, but, as you have seen, it turns out the cast is absolutely stacked with venerable Canadian character actors, and all those dozens of cheapie American genre flicks and TV shows that shot there to save money have provided this demographic with enough experience that they’re uniformly ready for their big showcase roles here.

 That they have good material to work with certainly helps; writer Jason Krawczyk brings the same offbeat wit he brought last time around. The characters are broad, but distinct and fun, quippy in that most rare of ways which doesn’t seem derivative of Tarantino or tediously labored. Director Audrey Cummings (DARKEN, TORMENTED), stepping in for Krawczyk while he supposedly develops this as a mini-series(?), manages the tone very nicely, giving the actors plenty of room to play up their colorful characters without allowing things to drift into frivolous, low-stakes comedy. Instead, it has the loose, scrappy energy of a 90's indie caper, chatty and maybe a little more self-consciously offbeat than is entirely good for it, but blessedly free of the relentless high-concept plottiness of the current cinematic era. You could definitely show this along with SUICIDE KINGS and THE BIG HIT and, aside from a few inconspicuous bits of technology, never guess it was made twenty years later. Not that it's in any way a pastiche; it's just a good vibe for this material. Not plotless, but less focused on plot than on hanging around with a bunch of colorful weirdos.

That was true of HE NEVER DIED too, of course, but the emphasis on the ensemble here highlights it even more. In particular, it’s worth pointing out what a tremendous improvement the villains are this time, with Danby creating a sleazeball character who is both utterly loathsome and terrifically entertaining. It turns out his boss is his yuppie sister (Michelle Nolden, CHRISTMAS HORROR STORY, HAUNTER, RED, THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE) who moonlights as a sadistic gang leader in-between yoga classes, and who is, if perhaps just a little more cartoonish than the other characters, at least a delightfully hissable villain, and a great foil for our homeless African-American Canadian protagonist. Their flippant, vain villainy got big laughs from my audience (and hopefully gets these actors some bigger parts down the line) but without sacrificing genuine menace or tempting us to identify with them, a subtly tough tone to get right.

 It’s also worth noting the mercifully understated portent of having a homeless black woman fight smug, bourgeois human traffickers; race is never explicitly an issue, but it's hard to ignore the the implications here, especially when they capture Lacey and put her in chains. That uncomfortable image smartly and quietly prompts us to consider a little bit about Lacey’s experience as an immortal. Being an ageless supernatural entity is hard enough on its own (or so I've learned from the endless parade of sad Draculas), but imagine trying it as a female minority! One of the funniest scenes in HE NEVER DIED found Jack offering a comically long list of jobs he’s had over the centuries. He does not describe a life of luxury (it’s a mostly blue-collar resume), but one can’t help but notice there’s no parallel scene for Lacey. It makes me think of Louis CK’s routine* “Time Travel is a White Privilege." Jack may have been miserable, but at least he had options. Black people have had a pretty bad run for a few centuries, especially in the Americas. And being a woman has made things harder pretty much everywhere, since forever. No wonder she seems obliquely unwilling to pay much attention to the world.

This is all left unsaid (to the movie’s enormous benefit); there's only a light suggestion of how enormously alone and beleaguered Lacey must feel, and the movie's focus is squarely on being a feisty, colorful horror/crime flick. Still, there's a unmistakable shadow of philosophical pathos in here, which makes the more familiar joys of supernatural violence hit a little harder. HE NEVER DIED did a magnificent job with this, and Cummings manages that tone at least as well as Krawczyk did, although she doesn’t do much to improve on his cheap-looking, rather style-less aesthetic. No matter; the content is entertaining enough that a simple, unflashy point-and-shoot style gets the job done, making the most of the gritty urban decay of the Canadian locations. In fact, I kind of love that these movies about ageless supernatural beings both take place in bland, run-down Canadian suburbs. I can’t find out specifically where SHE NEVER DIED was shot, but while its predecessor was supposedly shot in Toronto, it’s obviously not the part of Toronto that usually plays New York City. Both movies have a small-time, suburban outskirts feel to them, full of rotting industrial buildings and decaying, dirty strip malls. Nothing towering and gothic, just a drably dismal landscape of slow, dispirited neglect. Even the despicable villains are hardly plotting global domination from the penthouse of Trump Tower; their viciousness and greed looks like it just barely puts them in the upper middle class. They still spend most of their time working in grungy, unfurnished concrete buildings and hustling for new prospects. They can afford to buy off the local cops, but one gets the feeling a federal investigation would have no trouble locking these small-timers up and throwing away the key, if they ever bothered. The small scale keeps things personal, lets the movie focus on its characters rather than getting caught up in a bunch of complex, overwrought plotting about the fate of humanity.

 This all adds up to a charming little genre hybrid peppered with great moments,  though admittedly one which is functionally similar enough to its predecessor that it could hardly be called essential (despite a little extra action and gore, much appreciated). It would be hard to follow HE NEVER DIED in any case, but there's no denying that this feels a little less impactful, lacking its predecessor's element of surprise and failing to find a similarly potent substitute for the utter perfection of Rollins' take on a very similar character. It's a lot of fun, but even by the worthy standards of horror sequels which are essentially remakes, it feels a little bit safe and familiar, unable or unwilling to escalate things or expand the world.

Or, so I thought, until the movie ended, and then I realized it hadn’t quite ended yet. There's a little teaser of a coda at the end, and one so brazenly provocative that it retroactively forgives a lot of the film's general reluctance to break new ground. I wondered how Krawczyk though he was going to turn his simple little story about an eccentric immortal into a series; well, now I guess I have an idea. Whatever comes next seems like it's gonna be pretty wild. Still, SHE NEVER DIED is perfectly convincing proof that this series' ongoing existence needn't be contingent on ambitious narrative conceits. If the pleasures of watching a brusque, indestructible cannibal disinterestedly massacring small-time Canadian gangsters are simple ones, they at least remain reliable. If GENDER-NONBINARY-PRONOUN NEVER DIED does nothing but swap in another weirdo character actor and let them go to town on some local hoods, I'll still probably enjoy the hell out of that too, as long as it can maintain this level of shaggy, offbeat fun. Still, the ending here makes me excited about the possibility that there are still some pretty wild places for this concept to go.

  

* The fact that this reference has some baggage of its own now is telling in its own right.

               

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2019 CHECKLIST!

For Richer or Horror

TAGLINE	Everyone Has Their Demons. Pretty generic, and doesn't even seem to make sense with the movie because there are, I notice, no demons in it.
TITLE ACCURACY	Confirmed, the titular "she" does not die at any point.
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	No
SEQUEL?	Yes, to 2015's HE NEVER DIED
REMAKE?	None.
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	USA/ Canada
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Sort of vaguely vampire/cannibal, but it kinda defies genre.
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	None.
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	None
NUDITY?	None, which is probably just as well given its grim subject matter. As it is, the movie is able to stay agreeably light even in the face of villains who run a snuff-film ring; getting sleazy about it might have pushed things into more unpleasant territory.
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	None
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	None
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	None
POSSESSION?	None
CREEPY DOLLS?	None.
EVIL CULT?	No
MADNESS?	No
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	None
VOYEURISM?	Yes, via the live-stream murder viewers
MORAL OF THE STORY	Canada's way more intense than you think.

Winchester

Winchester (2018)

Dir. The Spierig Brothers

Written by Tom Vaughan, The Spierig Brothers

Starring, what the absolute fuck, Dame Helen Mirren, Jason Clarke, Sarah Snook, Eamon Farren

Yes, yes, I know everyone in the world said this was absolute garbage. But come on, look at the ingredients here! First and foremost, of course, we get the tantalizing prospect of Academy-award winner and grand duchess of acting Helen Mirren slumming it up in some dumbass haunted house thriller. I know, I know, it’s not like she exactly has an untrammeled record of high class prestige films. She has NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS, THE NUTCRACKER AND THE FOUR REALMS, and three separate –and counting!—FAST AND FURIOUS movies on her resume, along with THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE and THE QUEEN and GOSFORD PARK and all that. Hell, she’s in a 2005 DTV Cuba Gooding Jr. crime thriller. But still, of all the Oscar winners I’ve encountered shamelessly slumming in lowbrow horror fare for a quick paycheck –and there have been a lot this year, including Jack Palance, Martin Landau (twice!), Jose Ferrer, Dorothy Malone, and Joan Crawford—Mirren still seems like the most unlikely, and certainly the one least in need of this kind of garbage. Horror gets them all eventually; either before their star has risen (a young DiCaprio in CRITTERS 3) or as their career starts to flag (Ray Milland in THE PYJAMA [sic] GIRL CASE), but seldom indeed does horror come calling in the middle of what is, to all appearances, a career as vital and productive as it has ever been. It’s a truly befuddling decision, but obviously I’m all for it (just as I was for Octavia Spencer’s recent horror pivot in MA), even if I can’t claim to understand it. It feels like we won, somehow. We got her!

And then, as if that wasn’t enough, you’ve also got Jason Clarke (LAWLESS), Eamon Farren (Twin Peaks: The Return) and Sarah Snook (JESSABELLE, Succession), the latter of whom we last encountered absolutely slaying it in PREDESTINATION, a film directed by these very same Spierig Brothers who serve as directors here! The same Spierig Brothers, in fact, who were kinda on a roll for a little while, with 2003’s UNDEAD, 2009’s DAYBREAKERS, and 2014’s PREDESTINATION all turning out to be remarkably delightful genre fare (I’m not really a SAW guy but it seems like people mostly agreed their 2017 JIGSAW was OK, not great). So that’s a winning team already assembled, and on top of that, you can add a splendid premise: it’s a film about the famous Winchester Mystery House, a topic which has always intrigued me and seems like it should all be itself be unique and colorful enough to fuel a solid gothic horror flick. Oh, and I even like the poster, which has an appreciably stark, evocative M.C. Escher look (see above). This movie really seems to have everything going for it, I mean, how could it not be grea… oh crap.

To the surprise of no one, I can now add my own voice to an essentially unanimous consensus that there is definitely a way for this to not be great, and that way is the one you can see on-screen. There is initially reason for hope, though; the location footage of the house itself is quite lovely (the film was shot by Spierig regular Ben Nott, who also deserves a mention for shooting 24 HOURS TO LIVE) and makes it seems like it’s at least going to be a classy Victorian affair with an interesting setting (in both the house itself and sunny, tropical California/Melbourne locale, an unusually bright and lush milieu for a horror movie even under perpetually troubled gray skies). Stately Victorian-Gothic haunted house flicks are not exactly a surefire guarantee of white-knuckled terror (let alone entertainment), but at least we don’t get very many of them, and this one seems to have a can’t-miss premise.

…which is then almost immediately missed, first with some eye-rolling clichés (Jason Clarke is –and you won’t believe this!—a guy haunted by grief following the death of a loved one!) which quickly give way to a stultifying death march of agonizingly rote jump-scares, and not even that many of them.* Amazingly, even that wasn’t enough to immediately tamp down my at-this-point wholly inexplicable optimism. That’s partially because the first jump-scare, at least, is the final flourish of a rather nicely staged little sequence of coquettish misdirection, and it gave me false hope about the level of effort that was going to go into them. But if I found myself in a remarkably lenient mood towards this kind of chicanery, it’s also because I swear to god, I discovered that in this age of gloomy, dour A24 “post-horror” mopefests, encountering a corny old boo! jump-scare was like running into an old friend. Aww, buddy, how long’s it been? It feels like I haven’t seen you in ages!

Unfortunately, after a warm reunion, it quickly became clear that this was more like running into an old friend you haven’t seen in ages, and then, after 5 minutes of talking to them, remembering that the reason why you haven’t seen them in ages is because they’re intolerably annoying. Right, there was a reason this kind of hacky business was wisely and correctly cast out of society. It’s unendurable. But the five minutes of fond nostalgia was fun while it lasted.

There’s not too much to say about the plot, which is, like the setting, both inscrutably complicated and functionally useless. Let’s just say that it feels self-consciously compelled to introduce far too many characters and plot twists and backstory for a narrative which basically boils down to “there is a haunted house and Helen Mirren is there.” There is one pretty charming twist involving the identity of the villain, exactly the kind of empty-headed but gleeful silliness which could have made for a fun romp. But unfortunately the script mostly takes itself exceedingly seriously. Much more so than I would have imagined possible for something which features a haunted roller skate. In fact, it generally seems to unwisely, --disastrously, in fact-- believe itself to be yet another weepy, dismal metaphor for dealing with grief, which is a dire mode for the Spierig Brothers, who are at their best with zippy, high-concept entertainment and have –to their credit, I suppose—no patience whatsoever for lugubrious atmospherics. They seem openly bored with the grinding slow build, whooshing around the camera impatiently and itching to get to the next setpiece. Except, with this lame script (which they co-wrote it, so they’re not entirely off the hook**) there is no next setpiece. All you have to look forward to is the next jump scare with a loud musical sting. It’s a bad fit between filmmakers and material (not that Kubrick himself would be able to squeeze much atmospheric dread from this limp, dusty ol’ lemon of a screenplay), though I guess given the two bad options available to them, going for hoary whammy instead of mannered gloom was the more honorable decision. And it does kind of pay off in the ending, which takes a direction so amazingly boneheaded it tilts towards active parody, and might actually get there if it wasn’t also so boring. Not that their commitment to frothy entertainment pans out at all, but at least it’s sprightlier than it would be if it was a Blumhouse or A24 production. That’s something

I should also, I guess, mention that the movie really seems to think it’s about guns or something – the Winchester of the title is, of course, the abode of Sarah Winchester, widow of William Wirt Winchester, heir to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, and her hauntings are said to be the result of all the death brought on by those repeating arms. She goes on and on about this in a perfectly workable American accent. “You - feel responsible for the misuse of your product?” Asks Clarke. “If a weapon works as intended, one can hardly call it a misuse,” she responds, frostily. When complimented on her “superior” rifles, she retorts that they’re superior at “Killing. Indiscriminate killing. Very superior.” It’s not exactly subtle. So you figure, sure, mean ol’ liberal Hollywood hates the Constitution and wants to take your guns, fine, whatever. But here’s the weird thing. SPOILERS SPOILERS at the end, you know how they defeat the evil ghost? Fuckin’ shoot him with a magic gun! Firearms: The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems. I can’t tell if this is, like, deliberate subversion of Winchester’s anti-gun policy, or if this script was just written by lazy idiots who didn’t realize they completely negate their point. I guess it doesn’t matter though because guess what, we’re not getting rid of the guns, it just ain’t gonna happen. If Helen Mirren being haunted is the price we have to pay to keep guns to protect ourselves from asshole ghosts, Americans are willing to pay that price. END SPOILERS

Anyway, with a paper-thin story, you’re really gonna need the actors to carry a movie, and maybe that’s what the Spierigs were counting on, because they definitely got some ringers. But alas, here we learn once again that professional acting is simply not something which greatly benefits an otherwise threadbare genre movie. Mirren is perfectly adequate in a very dumb and exposition-heavy role, but honestly not doing anything appreciably different than any normal professional old lady actor could give you. And it wouldn’t really matter if she was; this role could be played by Tara Reid in an Andy Warhol wig and it would amount to about the same thing. In fact, it would almost certainly be better just by virtue of being something. Clarke, who is capable of being exceedingly good but just as often seems to vanish into the background, at least brings a sort of weird detached annoyance to his role, which is something, although maybe just what he was feeling at having to read these dumbass lines. Sarah Snook, so terrific in PREDESTINATION, is criminally wasted on a useless nothing of a character, though I guess you could argue the Spierigs just wanted to throw some work her way. Fair enough, the poor lady’s gotta eat while she waits for Hollywood to set her loose on something worthy of her talents.

Anyway, the whole thing is kinda a waste, in fact it’s almost amazing how completely it fails to make anything of the bounty of potential it assembles. It just goes to show you, you can get together the right ingredients, but you still have to BOO!!

Ha, got you. See, that shit’s still fun. Once.

* “Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." "Yeah, I know; and such small portions!”

** Although I have a suspicion they re-wrote it from a previous script by Tom Vaughn (Wesley Snipe’s UNSTOPPABLE), and basically just added the four or five fun parts.

               

 

Haha, wow. Surely whatever they paid her wasn't worth being implicated this graphic design nightmare.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2019 CHECKLIST!

For Richer or Horror

TAGLINE	Inspired By True Events At The Most Haunted House In History. Also, the much better Terror Is Building
TITLE ACCURACY	There are both a house and a character by that name.
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	No
SEQUEL?	None
REMAKE?	None.
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	USA/ Australia
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Haunted House, Period Horror
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	Man, I still can’t believe I have to type the words “Helen Mirren” in here.
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	Spierig Brothers? Not an icon, I guess, but I will always think fondly of them for DAYBREAKERS and PREDISTINATION
NUDITY?	There might be, like, a boob early on? I think Jason Clarke is in a bordello type opium house at one point. I dunno. It’s PG-13, anyway.
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	None
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	None
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	Yup
POSSESSION?	You betcha
CREEPY DOLLS?	I wanna say no? But if so it’s the only haunted house cliché they left out.
EVIL CULT?	No
MADNESS?	Yes, except it’s one of those madnesses where it turns out it was actually ghosts
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	None
VOYEURISM?	None
MORAL OF THE STORY	You can assemble all the right ingredients, but you still need an actual movie.

Alone In The Dark (1982)

Alone In The Dark (1982)

Dir Jack Sholder

Written by Jack Sholder, Robert Shaye, Michael Harrpster

Starring Dwight Shultz, Jack Palance, Donald Pleasance, Martin Landau

  

            ALONE IN THE DARK opens with a strange man (Academy-award-winner Martin Landau, THE BEING, WITHOUT WARNING) walking into a very strange, very empty diner. It’s called MOM’s, and he greets the waitress at the counter as “Mom,” in a strange, stilted, dreamlike way. And that sense of dreamlike strangeness is, ah, heightened by the fact that his order of “the usual” results in a plate with a single whole raw fish on it, which is quickly joined by a frog that hops into view from off-frame. And then to make matters worse, the cook (Donald Pleasance, THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS) starts shouting at him that he is supposed to cleanse the Earth with fire and blood, and it starts raining indoors, and then he gets chained up by his feet and sliced in half. “Service good, but food underdone and ambiance terrible, two stars.” –Yelp reviewer DinerGuy6969. Alas, this kind of greatness is impossible to sustain; it turns out to be a dream. But it’s a damn great opening sequence, far and away the best thing in the movie. It’s hella crazy, but it turns out to be a smart way to open this particular film, which is very much about crazy people. This will be our sole direct glimpse into the crazy mind of the weirdos with whom we expect to eventually be ALONE IN THE DARK.* We’ll never see things from their perspective again, but this gives us a good hint of just how frighteningly far from reality it is.

            Indeed, it is in this break from reality that we locate the horror. The diner sequence is more surreal than out-and-out terrifying in its specifics –and it is a dream in any case. But the implications for the dreamer are more sinister: what kind of twisted mind, we wonder, would produce this bizarre fantasy? No healthy, rational one. The villains in this movie are not supernatural beings, not particularly stronger or faster or smarter than the average person. What makes them frightening is that they’re driven by thoughts and motivations which are unknown and unknowable to us, motivations we can’t predict, can’t reason with. We have no power whatsoever over a reality which is closed to our influence. They will be impervious to our attempts to convince, threaten, cajole, bargain. In fact, what we do will only matter to them through the warped filter of their madness; we are less real to them than whatever demoniac forces from unknown subconscious depths have constructed the fractured mental world they inhabit. And that makes the anxiety they provoke metaphysical, even beyond the very real material threat of bodily harm.  

This is why what we now call mental illness remains an unsettling topic to explore, even if we (hopefully) know by now that people who suffer from mental illness are far, far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it. (We do know that by now, right? Right?) Although ALONE IN THE DARK will, as a slasher film, eventually hinge on our (unrealistic) fear that mentally ill people will enact violence on us, there’s a little more to it than that. We fear the mad not so much because of their capacity for violence, but because it frightens us that we don’t share their world. So much of our comforting assumptions about life are nested in our sense of solid, fixed, and broadly shared reality. Severing that link to a consensus reality results in a deeply unsettling sense of uncertainty. So much classic horror --first and foremost the work of Poe-- locates its fear in the loss of reality which comes from a slipping mind. If we can’t know reality, we’re as good as dead, just senseless dreamers stumbling randomly through a meaningless void, impotent to control a world which we cannot understand. And if someone else doesn’t share our reality… who knows what they’ll do?               

            And, for better or worse, that’s what ALONE IN THE DARK is interested in. Even though the premise is not exactly enlightened, the movie is surprisingly nuanced in its portrayal of mental illness and the treatment thereof. (At least as far as 1980s slashers go). One might fairly ask if “thematically incoherent” might be a better description, but I’m feeling generous enough to think it’s trying to genuinely explore the topic. At the very least, it takes the question of treatment seriously, and spends a surprising amount of time addressing different professional approaches to it. After having seen what the inside of Byron 'Preacher' Sutcliff’s (Landau) mind looks like in the opening, we will spend the remainder of the movie looking in from the outside, through the efforts of Dr. Dan Potter (Dwight Schultz, The A-Team, Star Trek: The Next Generation, FAT MAN AND LITTLE BOY) a psychiatrist who has just been transferred to the psychiatric hospital run by Dr. Leo Bain (Pleasance). Potter seems skeptical of Bain’s permissive, hippy-dippy attitude towards his patients, but also rejects ignorant stereotypes casting the mentally ill as dangerous boogeymen. In fact, his sister, Toni (Lee Taylor-Allan, woah, STARGATE!) has recently been released from a similar institution after recovering from a stress-related mental breakdown, and he neatly diffuses the social stigma that background might impart: “She’s probably better off now than before the whole thing happened… breakdowns can sometimes be very cleansing. Why don’t you give her a chance, she’s a great girl now.” Still, he has some anxiety about the lax security afforded to so-called “third floor patients” at the hospital, four men with violent criminal psychoses. That would be paranoid former POW Frank Hawkes (Academy-Award-Winner Jack Palance, SHANE, but also Joe D’Amato’s BLACK COBRA WOMAN), pyromaniac preacher Sutcliff, obese child molester Ronald Elster (Erland Van Lidth, THE RUNNING MAN), and homicidal maniac John "The Bleeder" Skagg, who refuses to let anyone see his face.

            The hospital prides itself on its humane, unrestrictive treatment. “We don’t lock people up here and fry their brains with electricity,” Dr. Bain proudly tells Potter, and frankly that sounds like a pretty good idea to me. He isn’t in denial about his patients’ need for care and treatment, he just doesn’t think it necessitates that they’re treated as objects of fear and suspicion when they can get by with just a little understanding. He considers their mental illness to be a “journey to the inmost psyche,” and huffs, “I’m running a haven here, not a jailhouse.” In a startling depiction of the faith he has in his patients, he happily lends pyromaniac Sutcliff a matchbook; when minutes later Sutcliff has set own coat on fire, Bain just hurries over to him and calmly talks him down, and then asks somebody to get him a new coat.** He seems like a real caring, progressive guy, and even the skeptical Potter has to admit “he gets results.” In fact, when the “third floor patients” are convinced by the ultra-paranoid Hawkes that Potter has murdered and replaced their former doctor, Potter takes a page from Bain’s empathetic approach and points out that this is a perfectly natural, and even common, coping mechanism for mentally fragile men used to consistency. Their floor monitor, Ray (Brent Jennings, RED HEAT, MONEYBALL), is not comforted by Potter’s measured, calm appraisal of the situation, though. And his point of view is somewhat backed up when a days-long blackout shuts down the hospital’s security system, releasing all four psychopaths, who promptly murder him and escape. Why yes, he is a black guy, why do you ask?

            Now on the lam, the deranged foursome stalk Dr. Potter, swinging by his house to menace his infuriatingly precocious daughter (Elizabeth Ward, two ABC Afterschool Specials)*** and surreptitiously hack up the babysitter (Carol Levy, an episode of Tales From The Darkside), who has unwisely taken this opportunity to have an extended hot naked sex scene with her boyfriend (Keith Reddin, THE DOORS, TO WONG FOO THANKS FOR EVERYTHING JULIE NEWMAR).**** The remainder of the film, then, is essentially a home-invasion/siege thriller, with the Potter family trapped in their house, cut off from the outside world by the blackout, and surrounded by a quartet of deranged maniacs. It takes itself pretty seriously, with Schultz and his wife (Deborah Hedwall, Jessica Jones, unnecessarily authentic in a typically unrewarding “threatened wife” role) feeling natural and grounded enough to make the home-invasion angle tense and weighty, with the extreme genre elements pushed right up to the point of ridiculousness but not quite across the line.

Unfortunately, this part, which would usually be known as “the good part” in a genre movie, is the least interesting thing here. It’s perfectly functional as far as home-invasion thrillers go, but without much to distinguish itself from a million other similar movies. Credit where it’s due: the final ten minutes get pretty intense, and include a brazen twist which actually managed to catch me off guard. But mostly the climax is disappointingly boilerplate, which is kind of a shame given the unusual premise, and the movie’s interest in the specifics of the “third floor patients” and their treatment beforehand. These villains mostly behave like any generic home-invasion gang, and the fact that they’re acting on these bizarre paranoid fantasies doesn’t really come into play. You could see that as a missed opportunity, with a potentially interesting backstory petering out into a routine slasher. But I prefer the glass-half-full approach: it’s a predictably average slasher, but with a surprisingly rich backstory. Obviously you don’t need Jack Palance, Martin Landau, and that big fat guy from THE RUNNING MAN to play murderous psychotic goons (and more or less generic ones at that; their individual delusions don’t even play a particularly pivotal role in their mayhem, which mostly just involves them attacking the family with edged weapons of various sorts), but since they got ‘em here for some reason, they add a little extra spice.

            Still, you do kinda need actors like these to create complex portraits of delusional, mentally ill people, and at least Landau and Palance actually do that, kinda. Their psychiatric issues, if not their slasher predilections, are treated more realistically and seriously than you might expect. These are not Hannibal-Lecter-style insane geniuses. As that opening scene very evocatively tells us, these are genuinely troubled guys living very much in their own heads. They’re not necessarily evil or sadistic, though their conditions sometimes make them do things which are both. But they really can’t help themselves. Co-writer/director Jack Sholder (THE HIDDEN, and, of course, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREE 2: FREDDY’S REVENGE a.k.a THE GAY ONE) says he was partially inspired by Fritz Lang’s M(!) in writing the script. ALONE IN THE DARK is arguably not as good as M, but it does have a similar sense of conflicted sympathy for the villains’ compulsions. They’re bad, but it’s not their fault, exactly. It all makes sense in their heads. Landau does a great job of depicting Sutcliff as a guy only barely aware of the world around him, shuffling through much of the movie in an inward-facing haze until he suddenly bursts out with tantrums of rage which seem to boil up from nowhere to anyone who can’t see the inevitable, internally logical train of thoughts which led there. He doesn’t want to be evil. But, I mean, what would you do if you got served a raw fish and then bisected by your psychiatrist at your Mom’s diner? Could you honestly say you wouldn’t want to stalk and murder Dwight Schultz and his family if you were in his shoes?

             Palance does even better with Hawkes, a Jack-Palance-style tough guy for whom the vulnerability inherent in his mental illness is intolerable. He doesn’t say as much, but there’s a wounded pride in his performance; this was a solider, a guy who obviously prided himself on his macho toughness and self-reliant individualism, and now he’s humiliated and emasculated by his confinement and the embarrassing focus on his disturbed emotional state. Real men don’t have to talk about their feelings, and here he’s being forced by the state to do just that. This is an intolerable insult, a suggestion that he is incapable of controlling himself and his emotions. No wonder he prefers a persecutorial fantasy to reality; looking inward threatens to shatter his entire sense of himself, but shifting the problem outside himself feels infinitely more comfortable. Strategy, aggression, and conflict are areas where he can feel capable, confident. It’s a rather neat, and understated, little parable about the temptation to see the world in a way which is convenient, rather than allow painful reality to change us. Which is a point especially driven home in (SPOILERS SPOILERS) the end, where he is forced into a sudden realization that he’s been wrong. Rather than a vigilante avenger, he’s just been a delusional psychopath all alone, and suddenly he can see that, and it just breaks him. He stumbles out into the night, a wreck of a man, his fury now turned inward. But the very end of the movie curiously offers him some flicker of hope; he winds up with the punk rockers Potter and his family had encountered earlier (at a show by a band called The Sick F*cks, who absolutely slay and seem to have been unfairly ignored by history*****). They seem crazy, half aggressive, half suicidal, and suddenly there’s a moment of strange, half-understood simpatico between them. All right, they’re crazy. Isn’t everybody? Bemoans Dr. Bains. We all go a little mad sometimes. And maybe we don’t need to be completely sane, or even completely understood, to get by in life. Maybe that old hippie Bains was onto something after all. (END SPOILERS)

            Anyway, I’m probably making this movie sound more interesting than it actually is, because when it comes down to it as a genre film it ain’t any great shakes and as a dense psychological portrait it probably leaves a little to be desired in the ol’ realism department. Still, it’s watchable enough, has two lengthy scenes at a rockin’ punk show, a (hallucinated) zombie by Tom Savini, a funny bit part for Lin Shaye, and some solid meat-and-potatoes siege thriller crap. I can’t say it’s some forgotten gem, but I enjoyed it, and I think it has some unique merits, even if they’re not necessarily merits which much benefit its adequate but undistinguished genre cred. It is historically important for one reason, though: it was the first film ever produced by Robert Shaye and New Line Cinemas, which had previously been exclusively a distribution company. It wasn’t a huge hit, but it got their feet wet, and then it was on to XTRO, POLYSTER, and, of course, Freddy. So without ALONE IN THE DARK, there is no NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2. And we’d never have this:

            And that’s a sobering enough thought to make anyone crazy.

                *Spoiler: No one is ever alone in the dark at any point during movie. I don’t know what that title means but it’s obviously not meant to be taken literally.

                ** Jack Sholder has said in interviews (for example, in Twisted Visions: Interviews with Cult Horror Filmmakers by Matthew Edwards) that Bain is a parody of Scottish philosopher and psychiatrist R.D. Liang, and it’s pretty on-the-nose; Bain’s explicit rejection of retainment and forced electroshock therapy, and his description of psychosis as being a reasonable and valid reaction to a violent and chaotic world, are almost verbatim Liang. Though Liang is hardly above criticism, I’m not sure I care to hear any parody of psychotherapy from the guy who directed NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2 without realizing he had made the single gayest film not personally directed by Kenneth Anger.

                *** With the threat of child rape, since Elster is a child molester! Yikes! Fortunately for some reason he’s just not feeling it this time (possibly because the kid is so intolerable) and just contents himself with murdering the babysitter.

                **** IMDB offers an unsourced bit of trivia that “Matthew Broderick was auditioned for the role of [the boyfriend], however Jack Sholder thought Broderick was too talented for the small part.” Probably true, although I bet Broderick wouldn’t have minded being insufficiently artistically challenged considering the whole role consists of making out with a topless blonde nymphomaniac. I guess things worked out OK for him in the end, but imagine a world where both Broderick and Tom Hanks had early roles as pointless boyfriend characters in early 80’s slashers?

                ***** According to IMDB, they were originally called Nicky Nothing And The Hives, but liked their ALONE IN THE DARK moniker so much that they kept it. Apparently they put out and EP in 1982 under the name Sic F*cks but other than this single fanzine article I can find nothing else about them. Anyway, the song they play in the movie “Chop Up Your Mother” is a big sloppy freight train of punk rock, and I’m in fucking favor of it.

               

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2019 CHECKLIST!

For Richer or Horror

TAGLINE	They’re Out… For Blood! Don’t Let Them Find You… ALONE IN THE DARK.
TITLE ACCURACY	Inaccurate, even after the power goes out, no one is ever alone in the dark.
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	No
SEQUEL?	None
REMAKE?	None.
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	USA
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Slasher, siege-movie, home invasion thriller
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	Jack Palance, Martin Landau. Shultz would go on to a leading role in The A-Team the following year.
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	Martin Landau, Lin Shaye
NUDITY?	Yes
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	Two teens get murdered while having sex, and there is the lingering threat of “child molester” Elster, but nothing comes of it.
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	None
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	None
POSSESSION?	No
CREEPY DOLLS?	No
EVIL CULT?	No
MADNESS?	Yes
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	None
VOYEURISM?	The psychos stalk their victims for several days, though not much is made of this..
MORAL OF THE STORY	We should all be more accepting and empathetic of people with mental illness but at the same time you should probably never keep a gang of homicidal psychopaths in a locked room which will automatically open in the event of a power outage. But JURASSIC PARK hadn’t come out yet so there was no way they could have known that.