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.

               

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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.