1982 Archives - Screen Wolf

“One Dark Night” was the directorial debut of Tom McLoughlin. The director is perhaps most famous for providing one of the best Jason Voorheese movies, “Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives” (1986). The screenplay was put together by McLoughlin and Michael Hawes. The pair had been trying to sell the script for about four years before they found a group of investors will to put up one million dollars for the film providing they start filming within three weeks.

The movie stars Meg Tilly as “Julie” a young girl determined to prove herself above a group of college mean girls by passing their initiation into their club called “The Sisters”. The club is led by “Carol” (Robin Evans) who holds a grudge against Julie since she is now going out with Carol’s ex boyfriend Steve (David Mason Daniels). Carol tasks Julie with spending a night in a mausoleum, but intends to make be make it as uncomfortable as possible for her. Unfortunately for the girls the mausoleum currently houses occultist Karl Raymarseivich Raymar, rumoured to be a psychic vampire with the powers of telekinesis. The only person aware of the danger they are in is Raymar’s daughter Olivia (Melissa Newman), but can she save them?

Pranks and Perils

As with a lot of horrors of the early 80’s, this is actually fairly slow to start. Things don’t actually kick off until the last 30 minutes and the rest of the film is pure set up. This is an approach that can work very well and can certainly cover for a lower effects budget, but it does ask more from the actors and script to make it work. If you are killing teenagers in the first ten minutes you have your entertainment factor. If you aren’t getting dirty until the final act you need to keep the audience entertained via other means. One Dark Night takes a two pronged approach to this. We have a story with college teenagers playing cruel pranks and walking blindly into the hands of the movies antagonist. But we also have Olivia, the antagonists estranged daughter learning via audiotape just what her father was capable of.

First thing I have to say here is I quite like exposition via audio tape in a horror. It works and doesn’t feel as awkward as having a character turn up mid way through to do a big exposition dump. Indeed, because it’s one sided and not a conversation it cuts the time needed for exposition right down. Of course you can’t do that in every film, but it works here. This exposition is spread out a bit as we see the events develop with the rest of the cast. The plot design here is pretty solid, the only downside is none of these characters are interesting. The antagonist, Raymar, is silent and sort of dead. The generic final girl is basically useless, her boyfriend is brave but also useless and her bullies are generic bullies. Well outside of one girls weird thing with her comfort toothbrush.

The Final Act

When it comes to events kicking off in the final act we have a lot of zombie like creatures, but because they are animated via telekinesis instead of being actual zombies they just sort of float into people instead of attacking them. Raymar is mostly motionless but occasionally fires out bolts of electricity at people. Ultimately it’s kind of goofy. But it is a pretty original idea. I’m not sure I’ve seen zombies created through telekinesis before. Maybe skeletons, but not flesh covered zombies. It occurs to me that saving these zombies until the final act was probably a good idea. The long build up and relatively brief time they are around for means they just about get away with it. Only narrowly though.

Ultimately this a pretty average 80’s horror with some interesting ideas that don’t quite work out in practice. The zombies look pretty good even if they move in a goofy way. Adam West feels wasted. The characters are generic, but the plot itself is fairly solid. A mixed bad that averages out to a 5.5/10. If you are a fan of 80’s horror it’s worth checking out, if not skip it!

Tonight’s horror movie is 1982’s “Alone in the Dark”. This is no relation to the 1992 video game or the Uwe Boll. This was the first movie actually produced by New Line Cinema (Previously they were only a distributor). This is the second movie of my October reviews this year to be directed by Jack Sholder (“The Hidden” being my previous one). This however was his feature film debut.

The movie features a lot of recognisable names. The lead however is Dwight Schultz who you may recognise as “Mad Murdoch” from the A-Team. This movie clearly gave him a lot of tips on how to play crazy people. Notable support includes horror legend Donald Pleasance as “Dr. Leo Bain”, the great Jack Palance as “Frank Hawkes” and Martin Landau in one of his strongest performances as Byron ‘Preacher’ Sutcliff.

October Review Challenge – Day 25

The story begins with psychiatrist Dan Potter’s first day on the job at the experimental psychiatric hospital “Haven” in New Jersey. He is replacing a doctor that has moved on to a different hospital in Philadelphia and amongst his new charges are dangerous psychopaths Frank Hawkes (Palance) a former POW twisted by his experiences, pyromaniac Byron “Preacher” Sutcliff (Landau), the child molester Ronald “Fatty” Elster (Erland Van Lidth) and shy serial killer John “The Bleeder” Skaggs (named for getting nosebleeds when he has the urge to kill), who refuses to show his face.

The security system that keeps the psychopaths in check is one that relies entirely on electricity. Which is obviously a terrible choice and leads to them getting out when shortly after there is a power cut. Thanks to Hawkes tendency towards conspiracy theories the group believe that Potter has murdered their previous psychiatrist so he can take their place and that he intends to kill them next and so they intend to hunt him down first. When the town has a total power cut they kill theri lone guard and escape and head to town where they tool up. “The Bleeder” separates from the group after he kills a random person (He will of course show up later) and the rest head to the Doctor’s house.

Isn’t Everyone Crazy?

With the Doctor not at home the killers lay in wait. Elster poses as a baby sitter for the doctors daughter Lyla and then he and Sutcliff brutally murder her actual baby sitter and her boyfriend while she sleeps. While that is going on and Dan is at the hospital, Toni and Nell are arrested while at a protest against nuclear power and meet up and are helped out in jail by a man named “Tom Smith” who lets them take his turn to make a call. The three of them arrive back at the house to find Dan and the police already there. They have apparently found out that Elster was present in the house (presumably the daughter described him to Dan).

Out of caution police Detective Burnett remains with the family for dinner and Toni invites Tom to stay too. After they hear a noise outside and Burnett is killed with a crossbow they realise they are under siege by the group of psychos and the rest of the film turns into a tense stand off between the group and the family. Since I don’t like to spoil the end of movies for my readers, this is where I’ll leave the plot break down. Let’s get to the analysis.

Psycho Happy Fun Time!

On the positive side, the film features quality actors doing a great job of playing interesting characters. This is the movies strength by a long way. First of all we have Donald Pleasance as the hippy psychiatrist Dr. Bain in charge of the asylum. A man who seems to be stoned most of the time and doesn’t like terms like “psychopath”. I can’t help but feel Bain has spent too long around madness and that his own grip on reality has failed. The fun thing here is in how this character contrasts with Pleasances more famous psychiatrist role as Dr. Loomis in the Halloween series. Another character of note is Lyla Potter, the families daughter that manages to add a touch of comedy to the story while still be suitably terrified when needed.

The key to the movie though are the psycho’s themselves, lead by Jack Palance who doesn’t get much screen time at all but is so good when he does that it raises the quality of the entire film. He feels genuine in his craziness, both dangerous and vulnerable at the same time. Most of the screen time for the psychos though goes to Martin Landau and Erland Van Lidth. Landau delivers a fantastic performance as “Preacher”, the least stable of the psychos. He really makes you feel that he could flip and kill someone at any given moment. Van Lidth’s doesn’t have the most difficult role role as the Paedophile killer “Fatty”, but he still performs it admirably and gets the best two kills of the movie along the way.

Chop Chop

The movie features a soundtrack by Italian composer Renato Serio and it’s exactly the kind of soundtrack that nostalgia bait 80’s films try to impersonate. It’s worth noting outside of the work of John Carpenter, these kinds of horror soundtracks tended to be from Italian cinema and composers like Serio. Not that it’s all like that, there are the classic horror stabs and a notable performance by punk band “The Sic F*cks” that seems to fit effortlessly into the theme of the film (with a performance including a huge fake axe and machete). The soundtrack finds a good balance between style and purpose.

The Messy Bits.

The plot here has a lot of holes and there are a lot of pacing and coherence issues. While watching I could tell there were scenes missing that really needed to be in there. For example we go directly from Toni and Nell’s meeting with Sutcliff posing as a mailman at their house to them in jail after being arrested at the protest with little on screen to explain it. We also go straight from Lyla’s baby sitter calling her boyfriend to him showing up to a trail of clothes leading to the bedroom, one hour later, but with little to indicate the passing of time. Meanwhile a lot of other scenes could either have been cut or reduced in length (Especially mid siege).

In regards to plot holes, the main one is how a doctor that appears to be permanently stoned was allowed to run an asylum with dangerous psychopaths with a security system that is entirely dependent on electricity, with no failsafe, that in a power cut basically just allows the psychos to wonder out with nothing to stop them. The entire film relies on this stupidity and it’s hard to believe. On top of that there is a big reliance on both the police and psychiatrists not knowing what one of these psychopaths looks like. Sure the Bleeder likes to hide his face, but he was in an asylum, there would be a record and you’d think people would have seen it.

Conclusion.

Overall, this is a movie with pacing issues, a few aspects that just didn’t really add anything (Such as the older daughters mental illness), and a plot that doesn’t bare much in the way of scrutiny. On the positive side the story is lifted up by some superb performances and interesting characters. It features at twist that while predictable does a good job of hiding itself in plain sight (though it brings in additional questions that it’s best not to dwell on). Donald Pleasance is a definite highlight, despite his limited screen time there are some fun kills. Not quite enough here to drive the score up towards the higher end of good, but this is a solid 6/10.

Tag: 1982

One Dark Night (1982)