OH MAN, this movie was something. I'll preface this by saying that Nate actually chose this one. Considering how many horror movies I make him watch in the month of October (okay, who am I kidding, it never really ends), it seems only fair to let him choose which one we watch once in a while. If you pair a ridiculous and loosely sci-fi plot with the cinematic style of the 70s, Nate is going to be on board, so we dove right into The Dark, and… it was an adventure.Apparently Tobe Hooper was originally hired to direct this — he's actually listed as an uncredited director on IMDb — and it pains me to think of how much cooler it could have possibly been. When he signed on, the storyline was quite a bit different… but then he fell behind schedule and the producers fired him and brought on John "Bud" Cardos, who had previously done quite a bit of acting and working as a stuntman in addition to directing a few other feature films. The plot was changed pretty significantly towards the end of the shoot — in an effort to cash in on the recent success of Alien — and I think the entire film suffered as a result.There really isn't much more to the plot than there's a mysterious killer prowling the streets of Los Angeles and everyone is trying to either avoid getting killed or catch the killer or both.** SPOILERS! **So I actually loved the opening scene of this film. The initial crawl, actually, was awesome, too… but I wasn't prepared for how little any of that would really come into play (aside from the fact that they just wanted to cover their asses so they could show a vaguely otherwordly creature instead of just a dude killing people). The music was all whispers and chaotic piano punctuated with the clicking of heels on pavement… the lighting was so dark and contrasted that you could only see the occasional glimpse of blonde hair in a beam of light or shoes whisking along the ground… it was great.The creature itself — I'm not even sure what to refer to him as, or even that it IS for sure a "him", though they referred to it as The Mangler in the movie — is not much more than a less hairy werewolf in jeans. But wait, it can shoot lasers out of its eyes! Lasers that often don't seem like they're even coming from its eyes OR hitting its targets, but dammit, they are somehow still super effective! It growls and snarls a lot and it has superhuman strength (but don't they all?) but it limps along clumsily when it chases people. Ah, logic.The cops, Detective Mooney (Richard Jaeckel) and his donut-eating companion, Detective Jack Bresler (Biff Elliot), are awful. Like they literally do nothing but scowl and pick fights with random people until the end, when Mooney is ONLY in the right place at the right time because he's obsessed with Roy Warner (William Devane), a man he had once helped get put into prison.But it had some highlights, too. I loved the entire scene with "Sherm" (Keenan Wynn) and Zoe (Cathy Lee Crosby) in the parking garage, from him hilariously scaring her (twice) to his fevered sprinting from what he imagines may be the killer. At one point, Zoe asks him "you aren't afraid of the dark, are you?" and he responds with, "No, I'm afraid of what's in it". Awesome. I also loved seeing Casey Kasem as the police pathologist (I only wish he had played a more central role).It has all of the usual oversights of a crappy sci-fi B-movie. The effects are pretty terrible. The creature — The Mangler, the alien, the werewolf, whatever it is — has absolutely no backstory, explanation, or motive. Two characters watch The Mangler break through a wall of concrete blocks WITH ITS BARE HANDS and then not a minute later think they can hold it back with a locked wooden door. There are all kinds of mentions of The Mangler beheading and eviscerating its victims… but any time we see someone get killed, his laser eyes seem to just explode them. WHICH IS IT, WRITERS? Also, the thing is seemingly unaffected by countless bullets being fired at it, but ends up literally just going POOF! and exploding when touched by fire. Okay?Also, the very last scene shows a blind man — one who had been shown repeatedly throughout the film but never referenced directly — as a voice-over tells us that "only those who walk forever in darkness will have nothing to fear in the dark" and like DAMN that would be kind of a cool line if the movie itself wasn't such a disjointed mess. Come on, Tobe, come back around and do this thing for real.But despite all of that — every single bit — I STILL ENJOYED THIS MOVIE. This is the formula that can never be pinned down, friends. A movie can have everything it possibly should to be a quality movie and can be hated… and a movie can be a hot mess of bad effects and stale acting and a plot that is barely hanging together by some weak threads and it can be super fun. This firmly falls into the latter category. So, ya know, go give it a watch.

The Dark (1979)* 1/2 (out of 4)A former convict turned reporter (William Devane) sees that his daughter has been brutally mutilated so he sets out to try and find the killer as does a detective (Richard Jaeckel) working the case. It turns out that a space alien has landing on Earth and is doing the brutal murders.THE DARK has an interesting production history that is actually a lot more interesting than the film itself. Originally Tobe Hooper was to direct this film and he got several days into the production when he either quite or got fired. The somewhat notorious John 'Bud' Cardos took over the production and the end result is a rather tame sci-fi picture that's biggest problem is the fact that it lives up to the title.I say that because this film was shot way too dark and often times you can't even tell what's going on. I mean, I'm all for movies keeping the monster in shadows and what not but the problem here is that whenever the alien goes on the attack it's so dark that you can't see anything. Or, at least, you can't see anything too clear. The other big problem with the picture is the fact that it drags so slowly that the 90-minute running time seems double that. There are non-stop scenes of people talking and fighting yet none of it is very entertaining.It's really too bad that the film is so lame and doesn't feature that good of an alien or gore effects because the cast is actually pretty good. Devane is always worth watching and he turns in a nice performance here. Jaeckel is also very good in his role as is Jacquelyn Hyde and Keenan Wynn in their small roles. You can also look quick for Casey Kasem and Vivian Blaine. Who knows what might have happened with the film had Hooper stayed on but as it stands, THE DARK isn't a very good movie and it's not nearly the best "alien run amok" movies from this period.

I'd first watched this in a cinema in Istanbul in the early 1980s. The Turkish title was GERÇEK YARATIK (The Real Creature) and an English-language title as ALIEN TERROR was tagged on to the Turkish posters. - and ALIEN had been released a while ago in Turkey as YARATIK (The Creature). So the publicity for this movie was suggesting that it was related to the much-publicized ALIEN and that it was actually the real stuff! I was just 13 or 14 years old at the time... (and there was no internet back then!) Naturally, I was pretty much disappointed when I went ahead to see it and realized it was basically an ordinary urban murder thriller until the last scene. Nevertheless, I've recently bought its DVD to rekindle childhood memories and watched it last night. Now watching it with a more open mind, zero expectations, I find it not half bad as most reviewers have it. First of all, the cinematography in night scenes is simply perfect, beginning with the opening scene. I think the problem most of the other reviewers face ("too dark") simply stems from bad transfers of previous VHS and/or TV prints. The DVD's brand new digital transfer from original materials is really a beauty. Plus, the soundtrack is also very effective, as even the most negative reviews acknowledge. So, overall, the nighttime attack scenes are really brilliantly crafted. Top-notch horror filmmaking there. Having said these, the movie is sadly not competent in other departments and is a mess overall. Richard Jaeckel, who was great in MAKO JAWS OF DEATH, looks very wooden here as the main cop protagonist. William Devane shows some charisma and has got what is called as a screen presence, but is out of tune with his character as a father who had lost his daughter as a savage murder victim. All the secondary characters, esp. the boss of the female reporter, play it for laughs. A few of the lines are intelligently sarcastic, but the demonstration scene (what is it by the way? a student demonstration?) is very offensive: a bunch of youths protest that the city police is busy harassing them rather than tracking the murderer and they act like stupid monkeys (jumping around, etc!) during the demonstration! The director must be a feeble-minded cop-loving right-winger who strongly resents student activists deep in his heart and used this as an opportunity to make fun of them... Anyway, the incoherence of the plot, which, as is widely known, stems from a reworking of the script, is already well-covered in all reviews. I am not very much troubled by that precise aspect and actually find it interesting that you can trace two versions of one story in one movie! As everyone who has read anything about the movie knows, the original scripts did not entail an alien! The DVD has an informative video interview as well as a commentary track with the director Cardos. I've watched the interview and listened to part of the commentary. Cardos explains that the original version entailed a freak-child (and not a zombie, as has been claimed). He also says that none of the footage Tobe Hooper shot before being replaced has made into the final edit of the movie.

With B-grade 70s/80s horror, like "The Dark", you never expect a cinematic masterpiece. You don't expect brilliant dialogue and pacing and Oscar-worthy acting. And it's just as well, because "The Dark" lives up to all lack of expectations.The dialogue is so pathetically cheesy. Lots of glib, snappy, clichéd lines; lines delivered for their 'that's what a hard-nosed cop says' value rather than their relevance to the context in which they occur. Notably the lines delivered by a hilariously cornball Richard Jaeckel as Mooney--especially when engaging with his constantly eating sidekick (another cops cliché).It's clear that this film was re-edited to make it something other than it was originally intended to be. The sequence of events, the way characters become involved suddenly, the appearance of certain characters in scenes where they don't really belong--at least not until later; it's all so amateurishly jumbled. And all is accompanied by a ridiculous "soundtrack" featuring some garbled Spanish-sounding words and a tacky, ominous "The Dark...nessss". Ridiculous! Cathy Lee Crosby brings all her plasticky bodaciousness to her role and William Devane (pre-jowls--although you can see the creases at the corners of his mouth that were soon to evolve into his most notable feature; surely those jowls are worthy of their own IMDb listing!) gives the best performance I've ever seen of an aging divorced hippie ex-convict-cum-crime novelist whose daughter has been beheaded by a mutant alien zombie mangler.Great B-grade fare! No. No, it isn't. It's awful!