Alone In The Dark
Way too often it is all too easy for a horror / slasher movie to only view its psychopathic villains from the outside looking in, using a superficial style of writing and wild eyed, cliché acting from the actor who happens to be playing this particular type of character. What’s even rarer is for that given movie to try and even adopt something resembling a PHILOSOPHY about that given lunatic’s psychosis and even moreso about the field of psychiatry and how it chooses to handle the conditions of mentally ill people. But this 1982 entry in the madcap slasher sweepstakes of the early 1980s (and the first film ever produced by Robert Shaye and New Line Cinema) happened to do just that with its low budget and clever script, not to mention scoring not just one but several major casting coups in order to have a stacked cast here talent wise including two future Oscar winners. The stance taken by writer / director Jack Shoulder (reportedly based upon real life radical psychiatric theory) was simple yet intricate: What if we all lived in a truly rancid, depraved and utterly insane world to begin with and those who have been classified by society as being “mentally ill” are really just the poor, lost souls who find themselves unable to cope with the greater sickness at large? This certainly seems to be the ethos espoused by Dr. Leo Bain, the head of a progressive mental institution played by Donald Pleasence in what is certainly a polar opposite character of his legendary Dr. Loomis from the Halloween movies. Pleasence’s Dr. Bain prefers to refer to his patients as being “voyagers” instead, places them in actual administrative positions at his hospital and most fascinatingly, seems to relish getting directly into the heads of his “voyagers” so that he can find ways to relate to them and thus expediate their therapy. This is evident in the opening dream sequence as experienced by one of his most dangerous charges, Byron “Preacher” Sutcliff (Martin Landau), an actual former preacher who went so nuts that he believed himself to be the true wrath of God, going on a pyromanical rampage where he set fire to several churches WHILE services were ongoing with people inside. Now still ranting random scripture in Bain’s looney bin about the punishments that will be dealt out to the sinners, the only thing keeping him docile is Bain’s methods of establishing a level of ongoing fear on Preacher’s part, mainly a fear of Bain himself that manifests itself in his nightmares where his doctor carries out various forms of punishment should he act out of line. Also in the ward is one Col. Frank Hawkes (Jack Palance), a crazed World War II vet with severe PTSD that has led to him having even more severe paranoid schizophrenia as a result, Roland “Fatty” Elster (Erland Van Lidth, best remembered as Dynamo from The Running Man before his untimely death at age 34), a morbidly obese child molester who also happens to be incredibly strong physically as well and the most dangerous one of them all, a notorious serial killer known as The Bleeder who was found not guilty by reason of insanity for raping and strangling women all while bleeding from the nose. Interestingly, The Bleeder chooses to hide his face at almost all times, making the character into almost an enigma even though it makes for a great twist later on in the film. With this literal zoo of great actors all playing lunatics (including Pleasence whose own character is almost completely off the wall in his own eccentricities), who better to play the calm, rational young doctor newly arrived at the clinic who also happens to be the hero of the film than one Dwight Schultz, beloved by millions on TV in the 80s for playing the batshit crazy Howling Mad Murdock on The A Team but here being almost forcibly toned down considering whom he’s sharing the screen with. Schultz’s Dr. Potter arrives at the hospital and witnesses firsthand the nutty as a fruitcake techniques that Pleasence has employed and even must decline an offer from Pleasence himself to smoke some marijuana with him in his spacious office! Pleasence has also installed what he considers to be a state of the art security system, one that is completely dependent upon electricity since Pleasence seems to detest the idea of having guards or any other form of armed security authority figures on hand despite the dangers that his voyagers pose. Naturally, when the small town suffers a major power outage and blackout, the doors of the looney bin swing wide open and our 4 key lunatics walk right on out, spurred on by Palance’s earlier conclusions (since Shultz had replaced their previous doctor whom they had all liked) that their new doctor had only taken over because he has murdered their old doctor (something completely off the wall yet understandable given Palance’s highly concentrated state of paranoia) and thus they set out for Schultz’s home where his family is at in order to “get revenge”. But first they make a little detour for a shopping (looting) trip downtown where (no surprise) a full scale riot is taking place with people just tearing up the center of town. The cops as it would be are only really concerned with The Bleeder running loose in the streets as opposed to the other three but nonetheless once they are all fully armed they head over to Schultz’s house where his family consists of his cute wife, his even cuter 80s hippie sister (whom as it turns out in the film’s best story dynamic also has an extensive history of mental illness which happens to come into play later on) and his precocious little daughter (the primary target of Dynamo’s child molester) along with such side characters as their idiot teenage babysitter and the no nonsense cop who stays for dinner and winds up being easy prey for Palance’s crossbow. In all of this, the one major story flaw that almost cripples the movie is when one of the lunatics shows up at Schultz’s house halfway through the movie, only for the cops to come by and check everything out, finding nothing to take issue with even though dead bodies have already been stashed in the house along with physical evidence of the murders themselves! But nonetheless this literal supercast (by low budget horror standards) just will not be denied: Palance plays his traumatized vet in a more cerebral fashion, smartly allowing for his natural menacing presence to compensate for just how dangerous he really is as opposed to employing rancid overacting all while being the one figure who is almost fully self aware of who he is and the situation at hand (especially considering his obsession with escaping). Landau goes in the opposite direction, relishing the opportunity to play an almost no holds barred crazy person complete with a frighteningly twisted grin from ear to ear whenever he spies himself a victim like an unlucky mailman who is in the wrong place at the wrong time (“I like his hat.”). Von Lidth as the overweight pedophile exudes disgust from the viewer even with his fleeting moments of empathy. The Bleeder remains an anonymous character (and rightfully so) until the shocking twist concerning who he is at the end. Pleasence as Bain is an obvious crackpot who regardless remains highly respected because he “gets results”, but his constant strategy of always trying to find a way to “talk things out” (even when faced with one of his own knife wielding voyagers) costs him dearly in the end. And then there’s Schultz, again forced to be the most grounded in reality, reasonable by nature performance of the entire bunch (keeping in mind that his Murdock was one of the all time great crazies in the history of TV), gainfully playing along with Pleasence’s uber compassionate stance of the escaped psychos but upon learning that real people have been murdered at their hands, all but dismisses Pleasence as being nothing but a quack with no idea what his true responsibility as a doctor really is (even when Pleasence has figured out that the psychos have targeted Schultz and his family he makes absolutely no attempt to contact the authorities on the assumption that they would just mishandle it, preferring instead to cover his ass by handling it personally). But at the end of the day, this whole thing really does belong to none other than Jack Palance, given the opportunity here to be showcased in one of the greatest endings in the history of horror movies, one which sums up the beauty of the filmmakers’ philosophy and has rarely been topped before or since…
9/10