Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Taraparain Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Sam Panico The film opens with a dream sequence where Byron "Preacher" Sutcliff (Martin Landau, forever Bela Lugosi and John Koenig to me) finds himself in a diner where he is chopped in half by a demented short order cook (Donald Pleasence!).That cook turns out to be Dr. Leo Bane, who runs a psychiatric hospital that is able to reach the unreachable. Sure, his methods are practically surreal and he randomly smokes weed during the day. But they work.Dr. Dan Potter (Dwight Schultz, Murdock from TV's The A-Team) is the new doctor in town, the replacement for Dr. Harry Merton who has moved to another hospital in Philadelphia. He's brought his wife Nell and daughter Lyla (Elizabeth Ward, who played the original Carol Seaver in the pilot for TV's Growing Pains before Tracey Gold won the role) to town and is preparing for a visit from his punk rock, post-nervous breakdown having sister Toni.The really dangerous people in Dr. Leo's care are all on the third floor. We already met the preacher, who loves setting things on fire. Then there's the paranoid prisoner of war Frank Hawkes (the transcendent Jack Palance), child molester Ronald Elster (Erland van Lidth, Dynamo from The Running Man who was also in Stir Crazy) and John "The Bleeder" Skagg (Phillip Clarke, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud ), a killing machine who bleeds from the nose when he kills. No one has seen The Bleeder's face, as he hides it from everyone but his close friends.Dan learns from security guard Ray Curtis (Brent Jennings, Witness) that the third-floor men all believe that he killed Dr. Merton and want revenge. He blows this off.A night at the punk rock club -- a place that Dan hates -- ends after the power goes out, as a nuclear power plant has caused a regional blackout. Lyla is at home with Bunky, her babysitter. And the men from the third floor kill their way out of Dr. Leo's hospital, with all three but The Bleeder staying together.Preacher makes the first move, trying to deliver a telegram to the Potter house. Then, Nell and Toni go to protest the nuclear power plant but are arrested, forcing them to bring in Bunky to babysit. However, Ronald gets there first and teaches Lyle origami. As for Bunky, well, she calls over her boyfriend Billy for some sex, but Preacher and Ronald kill them in a scene that has a disconcerting bit with a knife emerging from the bed.When Dan bails out Nell and Toni, they bring along Tom Smith, a man they met in jail. The police are all over the house, investigating the murders of Bucky and Billy. Luckily, Lyle was in bed sleeping the whole time after playing with Ronald.What follows is a night of murder and mayhem, with cops getting killed by crossbow bolts, Dr. Leo trying to reach out and hug the Preacher (he had previously told him that if he didn't settle down he would cut him in half, leading to the nightmare we saw at the start of the film) before getting killed with an axe, a fire in the basement, the reveal of The Bleeder and so much more."It's not just us crazy ones who kill," says Dan at one point. The end of the film and the closing scene are harrowing. I'm not giving it away. You need to hunt this down for yourself.Alone in the Dark was written off as just another slasher in the early 1980's. It's basically disappeared as there hasn't been a major re-release by a label like Shout! Factory or Arrow Video. That's a shame -- it's an intelligent film that is as comfortable discussing the existential philosophy of R.D. Laing as it is with showing people get skewered.

cricket crockett . . . health care system up to the level where it is today. Before the wide release of ALONE IN THE DARK, U.S. taxpayers were footing the bill for hundreds of spacious "state hospitals" within which millions of "voyagers" enjoyed basking amid their own private I-Don't-Knows. However, as the ill-fated orderly "Ray Curtis" observes during ALONE IN THE DARK, the American General Population always was just a power blackout away from these facilities' electric barriers failing, allowing the voyaging hordes to run rampant throughout the darkness conducting looting, raping, and killing sprees. Thanks to the detailed depiction of just such a calamity during ALONE IN THE DARK, America was forced to come to Her senses. Within months of this film's release, convoys of bull-dozers razed or plowed under most if not all of the never lucrative white elephant state asylums. Corporate taxes no longer go toward supporting such money losers. Righteous families blessed with the corresponding means still have a wide range of private sector mental health care options in the rare instances when such needs arise. Those frowned upon by Fortune, however, are now mostly "free-range" out-patients. If they lack the job skills to earn their meds, Today's well-armed militia of private citizens are doing a fine job of keeping them in check, thanks largely to the timely warning of ALONE IN THE DARK.

skybrick736 Synopsis:Dr. Dan Potter is assigned as a lead psychologist to four dangerous madmen at an alternative psychiatric facility. When a blackout knocks out the electricity at the facility, the lunatics are loose and are out for Dr. Potter and his family. Review: What is impressionable about Alone in the Dark (1882) is how much it had going for it even before the filming even started. This is Jack Sholder's first feature film, while he may not be a household name, he went on to contribute a great deal to the horror genre. Sholder wrote a rather simple but desirable script about four locked-up murderous psychopaths who escape and are out for blood. To top off the script, Sholder managed to hook an incredible line-up of leading men and a horror icon. These actors include the likes of Jack Palance, Martin Landau, Donald Pleasence and Dwight Schultz. As it came together on film, the script and cast were so profound and entertaining, it lives up to any pre-anticipated thoughts. With all that being said, Alone in the Dark is by no means a perfect movie, with its share of plot holes, bad dialog and predictableness. Actors were also limited as a typecast only to their known strengths, example Donald Pleasence plays an eccentric psychologist, no way, we have never seen that before… Tying up some of these loose ends would have established Alone in the Dark as one of the most prominent slasher movies of the 1980's. This little horror gym is very entertaining without a dull moment and doesn't nearly get the credit it deserves.

TheLittleSongbird After hearing many things about Alone in the Dark, good and bad, I saw it as someone who has a lot of admiration for most of the cast and liked a lot of things they've done. And it was an hour and a half well worth spent, it is not flawless of course but it was most effective, a lot of fun and handles the horror and suspense elements surprisingly well.The film does get off to a rather pedestrian start, aside from a wonderfully weird opening dream sequence, with a lot of talk and not a lot happening(or at least not a lot particularly interesting). It ends a touch too conveniently outside of the reveal and the bizarre gem that is the nightclub encounter, Lyla for my tastes is an annoying character nonchalantly played by Elizabeth Ward and while they all did a fine job the big names could have done with a little more screen time, Jack Palance especially is underused.However, once the psychopaths escape Alone in the Dark really gets going and boasts some great offbeat dialogue, Donald Pleasance's speech in his last scene is deliciously nuts and Palance has two of the film's most memorable lines(one being "There are no crazy people, doctor, we're all just on vacation" and "So... it's not just us crazy folk that kill. We all kill... when we must") and some genuinely scary, stylishly shot and well-timed shocks, the knife through the mattress, the heart-in-your-mouth moment with the fleeting apparition and the clever reveal with The Bleeder(did not see that coming at all) being the standouts.Alone in the Dark is well-made with tight editing and photography that's stylish and moody, I for one didn't find it dated at all, and efficiently directed(hard to believe this was just a debut, Jack Sholder mentioned that it was his personal favourite of his films and it shows here, personally do agree with him). The music score is very spooky and quite refreshing for a horror and apart from Ward the cast are uniformly good. Dwight Schultz's role is very atypical and he does a good job playing it straight, even if a couple of Dr. Potter's decisions are a little dumb, and Donald Pleasance is great fun as Bain. Erland van Lidt intimidates from his appearance alone and Jack Palance is both very funny and menacing, but especially good is Martin Landau, who has seldom been creepier and he looked as though he was having a lot of fun with his role.Overall, very effective and well done film and one of the 80s' most under-appreciated films. 8/10 Bethany Cox