Alone In The Dark (The Not Shitty One)

You might be aware of the Uwe Boll, video game adaptation film "Alone In The Dark", but you probably aren't. Which is good. But if you are and you're thinking, "Hey, I"m aware of that." this is not that. This is from 1982 which was a good year for slasher films apparently (and a good year for biths)(knowing wink).

Alone In The Dark stars Dwight Schultz (Reg Barclay from ST:TNG), Jack Palance (that tough cowboy from all those cowboy things and also City Slickers, which I guess technically is a cowboy thing so), Martin Landau (Bela Lugosi), Donald Pleasance (Dr. Loomis from Halloween but also amazing in everything, including this) and features old school punk rock act Sic F*cks (how they spell their name, I'm not censoring them, look: fucks.)

But beyond that it's a tight, suspenseful little flick that manages to avoid a lot of slasher film pitfalls, while maybe just about nudging a few slasher film potholes. For example at one point a random guy just drives up to the insane asylum (wonderfully named, "Haven") during a black out/madness orgy/escape attempt time and just pulls right up to the building, gets out of his car and stares dumbly as our psychopaths (or as Dr. Merton would call them "voyagers") advance toward him. At which point he walks backwards slowly, wide eyed and freaked out (who wouldn't be) and gets into his car only to have it not start. That's a silly bit of horror film laziness but honestly, it might be the best example of the worst of the film because other than that the film actually works really hard to be inventive, suspenseful, original, fun and (like the best horror) talk about complex current events and deep philosophical issues while at the same time entertaining you and scaring you.

The plot is kind of like Doctor Detroit meets Manhunter meets Straw Dogs. Dr. Potter (Schulz) goes to work at Leo Bain's (Pleasance) hippy dippy love in asylum, "Haven". Potter likes to work with psychopaths and is given a tour of the facility where he gets to meet his patients, Frank, Byron, Ronald and Skaggs (Palance, et al). Being psychopaths they don't handle change very well, and Frank (Palance) decides that Dr. Potter killed their old doctor, Dr. Merton, and that they should kill Dr. Potter when the time is right.

They should be in a maximum security wing but Leo doesn't think that that's a good way to treat psychos so they have a ward that looks normal, but with a high tech security system ready to lock 'em up if they step out of line. The windows look normal but if you try to touch them an metal plate drops down, that sort of thing. And the whole home (and it's security) runs on electricity (a fact that is really hammered home to the audience, almost to a strange degree, like electricity is new), so all it takes is a black out to get the fellas loose and on the road to Doc Potter's house.

Each of the psychopaths has their own thing. Martin Landau's character is an ex preacher who likes to set fires to churches. Skaggs doesn't like strangers to see his face and is known as a "bleeder" because he gets nose bleeds when he gets excited while he's killing someone. Ronald is an enormous child rapist. And Frank is an ex-colonel who doesn't really so much have a thing as he's just kind of an all around, ex-army, cold and gritty, psycho bad ass.

That's the basic premise, psychos escape and go to Doctor's home to terrorize him and family. But outside of that, the film has all kinds of really interesting and fun subtext. There's the whole issue of nuclear power vs. renewable energy (where both sides seem to lose in the end), there's a lot of philosophizing about society as a whole where Leo's defense to a lot of his methods are, "Well everyone is crazy right? It's a violent society." (paraphrasing there but honestly that's almost word for word). Leo represents this kind of new age, "don't call them psychos, maniacs are people too" philosophy that (from what I gather) was really picking up steam in the 80s (don't believe me? read Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns" or really, any Frank Miller, ever).

At the same time there's all of these issues about masculinity raised, as kind of ineffectual milquetoast Dr. Potter has to step up to the violence and insanity around him, caused by other (and more physically intimidating) men.

There's a great scene where Dr. Potter, his wife and his (incredibly attractive) sister go to a punk rock show and watch real punk band Sic F*cks perform their song, "Chop Up Your Momma" which is honestly infectious as hell and kept pulling me out of the movie as it went on and I found myself humming it to myself.

There's a small amount of gratuitous sex and nudity in it, not enough to ruin the flick, just enough to cement it's stance in slasher film history (and I imagine as a product of the times). The violence is well done and not over done. It's a tight 90 minutes and packs an impressive supporting cast of unknowns who all do a fabulous job (except for maybe the cop who stays for dinner, but his bad acting is almost cute, like you can tell he's trying real hard and it made his performance kind of endearing to me).

The family moments are real and don't seem staged or thrown in to fill time. There's a scene where the wife and the sister in law are smoking pot by candle light and it definitely felt real.

Oh and the opening scene is great too. It's the perfect bit of insane surreality to set the tone for what lies ahead. Granted the rest of the film isn't really surreal at all (unless you find the idea of psychopaths trying to break into your house and murder you surreal) but it's the kind of opening that grabs you and makes you go "WTF am I watching? This is awesome." And that's kind of the highest praise you can give to a lot of horror.