The Dark
THE DARK seemed to pretty much vanish for awhile until it recently resurfaced on DVD from Media Blasters. A lot of its bad reputation seems to stem from the fact that it was originally a zombie picture that was retooled after test screenings to be an alien in blue jeans running amuck story. People seem to think it was changed to cash in on the success of ALIEN but this is crap as ALIEN had not been released yet. Actually STAR WARS and films that followed in the science fiction genre are probably more to blame.
THE DARK was begun by Tobe Hooper but after two days of shooting he was replaced by John "Bud" Cardos (KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS), a seasoned veteran who had a ton of production experience. It turns out Bud was actually picked by producer Dick Clark. Yeah, that Dick Clark. As the story begins there is a scroll and some voice over narration about alien life and how "not all encounters will be friendly", which is our first clue that this is a killer alien picture. We see a girl get killed who turns out to be the daughter of Steve Dupree, a Stephen King type novelist, played by William Devane. For you trivia buffs, the first victim is played by Kathy Baker, the mom of Paris Hilton. The cop on the case is the always excellent Richard Jaeckel, who also put Dupree away several years back for manslaughter. Kathy Lee Crosby plays Zoe, an up 'n coming TV journalist investigating the case. Another great character actor, Keenan Wynn plays her producer. So Devane and Jaeckel butt heads as the "mangler" killings continue and the community at large gets very panicky. There's a great scene with Phillip Michael Thomas as "Corn Rows", a outraged, dazzling young urbanite. He says "bust a nigger for getting mouthy when there's a killer on da' loose" to hard ass Richard Jaeckel.
The structure of the plot resembles a KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER episode, specifically "The Zombie" . Casy Kasem plays the coroner who reveals odd characteristics about the skin found under the victim's nails, leading to more speculation about the killer's origin. There's really nothing good that can be said about the incredibly goofy laser beam eye effect that was inserted post production. It's just fucking awful. It turns out in the original story, the killer was a kid who had grown to adulthood completely confined in a single room. The house he's in burns down, he's disfigured but escapes. On the commentary track, Cardos does not call the killer a zombie but he seems to be at least somewhat supernatural. He's not the gut eating kind of zombie but possibly a resurrected corpse. The Dark himself is played by the immensely huge John Bloom(INCREDIBLE TWO-HEADED TRANSPLANT) as a Frankenstein type lumbering psycho. There's some of that cliche spooky whispering on the soundtrack and a side plot with a psychic that don't do much to convince you it's an alien if the fact that he wears blue jeans wasn't enough. The big fiery conclusion was filmed after the producer decided to go the alien route and has some decent stuntwork and combustible cops. Despite the "R" rating there is no nudity and not a hell of a lot of gore. Devane and Jaeckel are both great and Crosby doesn't get in the way but the movie as a whole is a mess that never comes together. It's really too bad they went the alien route as the hulking, decapitating brute was pretty cool. The commentary has Bud Cardos and fan/director Scott Speigel, the guy behind the criminally under-rated INTRUDER, as well as some guy who sounds like BabyBear from Sesame Street. At first I thought that surely this guy was just doing this voice to be funny, but no, it continues throughout the pretty entertaining commentary. He's all "so Bud, the lighting was wary, wary dwark in this scene". You just gotta hear it, if nothing else then to hear Bud Cardos say "Caeser Romero was a wonderful man"