| Alone in the Dark | |
|---|---|
Promotional film poster |
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| Directed by | Jack Sholder |
| Produced by | Robert Shaye, Benni Korzen |
| Written by | Jack Sholder, Robert Shaye, Michael Harrpster |
| Starring | Jack Palance, Donald Pleasence, Martin Landau Dwight Schultz Erland Van Lidth |
| Music by | Renato Serio |
| Cinematography | Joseph Mangine |
| Editing by | Arline Garson |
| Distributed by | New Line Cinema |
| Release date(s) | November 12, 1982 |
| Running time | 92 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Alone in the Dark is a 1982 slasher film directed by Jack Sholder. It was the director's debut film and was the first motion picture to be released by New Line Cinema. The film's tagline is: "They're out... for blood! Don't let them find you--"
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Dr. Dan Potter is the replacement for Dr. Harry Merton, a psychiatrist at Dr. Leo Bain's psychiatric haven. Dr. Bain operates the haven through very lenient methods. He calls the patients "voyagers" and treats them kindly; he keeps the most dangerous voyagers on the 3rd floor contained with electrically-activated security mechanisms instead of bars, and only keeps one guard on duty.
The aforementioned 3rd floor patients (paranoid former POW Frank Hawkes, pyromaniac preacher Byron Sutcliff, obese child molester Ronald Elster, and homicidal maniac John "Bleeder" Skaggs) initially treat Dr. Potter with mixed hostility. At their first meeting, Hawkes nearly explodes at Dr. Potter as he leaves, but calms down before giving a reason for his outburst.
At night, however, Hawkes states to the others that "the new doctor killed Harry Merton, and now he wants to kill us". The others believe him (aside from Skaggs, who hides his face throughout the film, this time burying his head in his pillow), and agree to help him kill Dr. Potter. They plan to do this on the outside.
Ray Curtis, the sole guard on the 3rd floor, overhears the foursome's scheme and tells Dr. Potter about it, but Dr. Potter dismisses Curtis' fears as unwarranted. However, Curtis remains convinced of the danger.
One day, in the hospital's courtyard where Dr. Bain is counseling his patients, Sutcliff sets his coat on fire (using matches Dr. Bain gave him during his treatment) and Dr. Bain manages to quell Sutcliff's fit by threatening to "split him down the middle."
Meanwhile, Dr. Potter tries to talk with Frank Hawkes about his connection to Dr. Harry Merton, and about the plan Ray Curtis overheard. Hawkes reminds Dr. Potter that he shouldn't take Curtis' warnings seriously.
Another day, while waiting in Dr. Potter's office, Ronald Elster looks through the Dr. Potter's unopened mail to find his home address and sees a picture of the doctor's young daughter.
At the Dr. Potter household, Dan Potter lives with his free-spirited wife Nell and their precocious daughter Lila, as well as his sister Toni, who comes to visit following a successful treatment for a mental breakdown.
Toni takes Dan and Nell to see The Sick Fucks at a nightclub, much to Dan's displeasure. As they play the city's power shuts down. Dan at the time is glad. Meanwhile, the men on the 3rd floor wake up and begin to carry out their plan. Sutcliffe and Elster kill Curtis and the four escape in a night doctor's car. They drive to a store in the middle of a raid to pick up new clothes and weapons. Skaggs kills an innocent bystander by splattering out his insides and runs away, the others take the murdered man's van and drive off.
The next day, Dan arrives at the hospital to learn from Bain about the four escaped patients and of the people they killed. With the power still off from an apparent statewide power outage, Dan has to report to the police about the four maniacs on the loose. In a nearby neighborhood, Hawkes, Preacher, and Ronald are driving around and torment a bicycle messenger and when the man mouths off to them, calling Hawkes an "asshole" the enraged Hawkes throws the van in reverse and plows into the bicycle messenger.
At Dan's house, Preacher arrives wearing the bicycle messenger's hat and uniform telling Nell that he has a telegram for the doctor. Nell offers to take it, but Preacher says that he will come back later. Nell is slightly spooked by Preacher's strange behavior. After Preacher leaves, Toni tells Nell to accompany her to an anti-nuclear protest that is going on in town.
A little later, after Toni and Nell leave, Lyla comes home to a vacant house, and Ronald is there, claiming to be her babysitter. Ronald is friendly towards Lyla, but she is a little unsettled by his strange behavior. Ronald suggests going to Lyla's room to show her how to make different origami shapes.
Meanwhile, Toni and Nell are in jail having been arrested with dozens of other protesters. Toni meets a certain Tom Smith, one of those arrested with them during the demonstration. When it is time to make their phone calls, Tom lets Toni use his turn at the phone where she calls Dan at the hospital to tell them where they are and to bail them out. Dan then calls Bunky (Carol Levy), Lyla's real babysitter, to go over to his house to make sure that Lyla is okay. Bunky arrives at Dan's house and after looking around, finds Lyla asleep on her bed. Bunky then calls her boyfriend, Billy, and invites him to come on over.
Billy arrives a short while later and Bunky invites him up to the master bedroom so they can have sex. While making out on the bed, Bunky hears a noise coming from the closet and asks Billy to check it out. He is pulled under the bed and a knife is jabbed through the bed several times at Bunky who is able to dodge it. Bunky jumps off the bed and runs to the bedroom door. Just when Preacher comes out from under the bed, Bunky runs out of the bedroom only to be grabbed by Ronald who strangles her to death.
Later, Dan arrives home with Nell, Toni and Tom when they see cops all over the house. Lyla is fine as she told them about Ronald who was there, but the police apparently do not know about the murdered Bunky and Billy. Tom asks to stay for dinner and Dan also invites Detective Barnett to stay as well in case any more of Dan's escaped patients pay a visit. That evening, Dr. Bain is trying to get a hold of Dan on the phone, but he is getting no response. At nightfall, the Potter family is having dinner when Detective Barnett goes outside after hearing a noise. As the family and Tom watch from a window, a crossbow is fired and Barnett is hit and pinned to a tree. The group reacts quickly and begins making sure all the doors and windows of the house are locked, but they also learn that the phone is dead. Toni is too scared to go upstairs alone for she tells Dan that she once had a breakdown and spent time in a mental hospital as well. Tom goes upstairs instead and secures all the windows. When Dan looks back outside, he sees that Barnett's body is gone.
After an arrow is shot through a window, Tom and Dan barricade the front door with furniture as well as some of the windows as more crossbow bolts are shot through the windows as well. Meanwhile, Bain is told by the telephone operator that the phone line to the Potter residence is out of order. He sets out to the Potter residence. At the house, the group hears a car approaching and it is Bain who gets out and tells them that their phones are out of order. Dan and the others yell at Bain to get back in his car and drive away. After Dan yells at Bain that the "voyagers" are there, Bain decides that it would be best to try to talk with them and calls them out. Preacher comes out of hiding from the nearby bushes and Bain (who is just as insane as all of the other psychos) tries to talk with him to come back to the hospital. Preacher angrily responds by slashing off Bain's left ear with his Bowie knife and then tries to get inside the front door when Dan opens it to try to help. Bain runs back to his car and Preacher turns back towards him and runs over beside the vehicle and yells "Romans 12.19: Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord!" Preacher pulls out his axe and swings it. A minute later, Tom looks out of a window and sees that no one is inside Bain's car.
Dan tries to scream to the men outside and tells them that he did not murder Dr. Merton, but he gets no reply. Suddenly, Barnett's dead body is thrown by Ronald through a window, and the group stacks furniture against it as Hawkes shoots another bolt through the broken window. Toni thinks she sees another window open and when she goes to close it, a bloody body jumps through the window at her. But she only imagined it. When Dan asks her what is wrong, Toni says: "I'm getting sick again."
Minutes later, when the group smells smoke, Dan realizes that Preacher must have broken into the basement and is planning to set fire to the house. When Nell goes to look for the fire extinguisher, she finds the dead Bunky and Billy in a closet. Dan runs down to the basement, and struggles with Preacher and knocks him out with the fire extinguisher, and puts out the fire. Upstairs, Ronald bursts into the house from the kitchen back door and runs for the group with a baseball bat. Lyla ducks under a table and cuts his leg with a knife, and Tom swings a large cleaver into his back. Tom then picks up Ronald's baseball bat and beats the cleaver in further, and Ronald falls over dead.
Dan decides to make run for it and he runs outside to get to Bain's car to try to hotwire it to drive away and get help. Inside, Tom embraces a shaken Toni.... and blood begins to pour from his nose. Nell sees this and immediately realizes who Tom really is. Tom/Skagg wraps his hands around Toni's neck and begins to strangle her. Dan runs back inside when he hears the screaming and grabs Tom away from his sister. Lyla hands her mother the knife and Nell stabs Tom in the stomach, killing him. Suddenly, Preacher comes out of the basement and Dan struggles with him. Dan manages to twist the large knife out of Preacher's hand, and stabs him the chest with it then throws the fatally wounded Preacher back into the basement. As Dan, Nell, Lyla and Toni gather together for comfort, Hawkes appears standing in the kitchen doorway with his crossbow aimed right at them. "It's not just us crazy ones who kill", says Hawkes. Suddenly, the electricity comes back on and Hawkes sees Dr. Merton interviewed in a news report on television. Evidently upset, Hawkes breaks the TV and leaves the house and runs off into the night.
Hawkes walks through the town and passes the nightclub where the Sick Fucks are playing. He enters the club and beats up the doorman outside who insults him. In the club, Hawkes watches the punk rock band perform, when a girl whacked out on drugs walks up to Hawkes and says something to him. He pulls out his .45 caliber gun and points it at her neck. She looks at it and laughs, and so does Hawkes.
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Jack Palance | Frank Hawkes |
| Donald Pleasence | Dr. Leo Bain |
| Martin Landau | Byron 'Preacher' Sutcliff |
| Dwight Schultz | Dr. Dan Potter |
| Erland van Lidth | Ronald 'Fatty' Elster |
| Deborah Hedwall | Nell Potter |
| Lee Taylor-Allan | Toni Potter |
| Phillip Clark | Tom Smith |
| Elizabeth Ward I | Lyla Potter |
| Brent Jennings | Ray Curtis |
| Frederick Coffin | Jim Gable |
| Phillip Clark | Skaggs aka The Bleeder |
While writing the screenplay for Alone in the Dark, Jack Sholder was inspired by the writings of R. D. Laing, who theorized that 'psychotics' were actually people having difficulty adapting to an already psychotic world. The character of Dr. Leo Bain was supposed to be something of a parody of Laing.
Jack Sholder's original idea for the film was to have the story be about mental patients escaping during a blackout in NYC and the mafia being used to stop them. Due to the low budget it was re-envisioned to take place on a smaller scale outside of New York.
It was producer Robert Shaye that actually came up with the idea of the character of 'The Bleeder'. Shaye liked the idea of a crazed murderer who always hid his face and was revealed later in the film.
The scene where Ronald Elster grabs Bunky by the throat and lifts her off the floor was done without any special effect. Erland Van Lidth (Elster) was an incredible weight lifter and actually seized Carol Levy by the neck and lifted her for the shot.
Makeup effects artist Tom Savini was brought in specifically to create the horrific monster apparition that Toni has. Savini achieved the startling effect by covering an actor in a concoction of soap and Rice Krispies.
In the script Jack Palance's character was supposed to kill the driver outside the Haven. However Palance refused to do the scene saying it wasn't necessary for him to be seen killing someone for the audience to know that he was a dangerous character. The scene was never shot.
The film was one of the first horror films to be made with Dolby Stereo sound. The advanced sound level would often blow out the speaker systems in older theaters while the movie was being screened.
In the original script the punk band that Toni drags Dan and Nell to see was named Nicky Nothing and the Hives. When The Sick Fucks, an actual punk group, landed the gig as the punk band for the film their real name was liked so much that they kept it for the film.
The first scene at Stumps with The Sick Fucks performing was shot silently without the music. The band and audience had to mimic their performances during the filming and the song 'Chop Up Your Mother' had to be dubbed in later on.
One of the members of The Sick Fucks ran into star Jack Palance years later in the streets of New York. He said to Palance that he was one of The Sick Fucks in the film and Palance replied 'we were all sick fucks in that movie'.
The film came and went quietly upon theatrical release. It was dismissed as merely another slasher flick following the trend created by Halloween and Friday the 13th. However since then the film has gained notoriety as being one of the more intelligent slasher-themed films of the 80's.
The film was banned in the UK for a time.
The film was released on DVD by Image Entertainment for the first time in 2005.
In 2008 the indie rock band Lithium Walkers did a tribute song to the film entitled "Alone in the Dark". The groups drummer cites this as one of his favorite films. The song is part of an upcoming album called Midnite Matinee, a series of songs named after 80's horror films.
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