The Dark (1979)

Sorry, this movie sucks

A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Amusing in a so bad it's almost fun kind of way. But it's not fun. It's simply tedious. Unless you enjoy set pieces so dark you don't have a clue what's going on, apart from the fact you know an actor with false monster hands and a leather jacket is involved. Avoid. Thank me later.

This movie was TERRIBLE! But, I did some research to figure out how such a piece of garbage makes it to theaters.1.) Dick Clark from American Bandstand wanted to produce a horror movie so he bought a script/novelization about a zombie confederate soldier killing people on the streets of 1979 Los Angeles. That is why much of the dialogue in the film references a "zombie mangler" 2.) Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) is brought on as a high paid director paid largely in advance. Tobe Hooper changes the script so that the killer is now a deformed mentally sick kid who was locked in his parents attic for 20 years and then escapes into the streets of 1979 Los Angeles. But many references to the killer being a zombie remain in the script.3.) Tobe Hooper shoots the film for a little over a day and then quits (remaining paid) over irreconcilable differences with producer Dick Clark about how the movie should look. Hooper's film is not used at all in what was released to theaters. But Hooper's paycheck drastically reduced what money remained in the budget for this film.4.) John "Bud" Cardos is hired to finish the vast majority of the film (the entire film). Cardos is a far less talented director than Hooper and the script is in shambles.5.) After the film is finished being shot, it is test screened. The test screens reveal that people hate this movie.6.) With the popularity of Star Wars (1977), Dick Clark decided that he would rather have a movie about aliens instead of a horror movie.7.) They re-shoot a Star Wars-like opening crawl and a closing crawl which explains that the whole movie was really about aliens despite clear references in the movie to zombies and manglers. Test screeners still hate the movie.8.) They re-edit a few scenes and super impose Star Wars-like laser beams shooting out of the killer's eyes and add Death Star-like explosions to the victims that originally had their heads ripped off.9.) Test screen audiences still hate the movie. They re-shoot portions of the end scene so that now some of the police shooting at the Zombie get blown up by laser beams.10.) Rather than test screen the film any further, they release this piece of garbage into theaters in California and Seattle and it is a dismal failure. It gets limited release into some drive ins in the mid-west and then some limited release onto video.*Did anyone else notice cameos by the D.J. Casey Caseem and by the black actor who played Tubbs on Miami Vice? * Best Quote of the movie - "That's because half the male population of Los Angeles is staying up late and watching the news trying to figure out how to get into your Paaaaaaants!"

For the most part a middling, under-developed crime thriller, THE DARK is a really disappointing film with a great premise. I mean, the idea of a decapitating alien killer stalking L.A. sounds like the perfect opportunity for lots of excitement, scares, cheesy special effects and gore. Well, we get the cheesy special effects all right (albeit briefly) but sadly none of those other things. THE DARK is happy to wade along through cliché-land, shafting genre fans by relying on boring police procedural work while the alien himself is relegated to the background, making almost a cameo appearance and getting very little screen time. I mean, if I wanted drama, romance and human intrigue, I'd watch a soap, not a dark thriller such as this! This is a very odd film with a disjointed feel. I mean, it's firmly rooted in depressing reality until this ugly alien with laser eyes suddenly shows up. The alien is like some monster from STAR TREK or something and totally out of place. The investigation into the murders is intercut with some brief clips of people being zapped and exploded by the alien, which just isn't fair. The makeup itself is pretty good but the alien looks more like a Neanderthal than an extraterrestrial. And don't get me started on those laser eyes!The acting here is pretty stolid and unremarkable, especially the usually reliable William Devane. Then again he is given absolutely nothing to do other than look brooding - and with his dark glasses and long hair, he looks rather silly. Cathy Lee Crosby is an irritating blonde reporter who deserves to die and expresses no charisma, while Keenan Wynn is wasted in a role which has no purpose. The policemen investigating the case also have no personalities, so everybody here is pretty interchangeable. When a policeman dies at the end of the film, we're obviously supposed to think "that's so sad" but the more realistic response is "we're supposed to care?". A mad clairvoyant character is also extremely grating and sadly she doesn't get her skull torn off.Where this film does succeed is in the sudden, unexpected action-packed finale, which is everything a monster movie could wish to be. The alien takes on an entire police force, with bodies flying everywhere and all manner of chaos and destruction. It's excellent. If only the rest of the film could have been as exciting as this. Gorehounds need not apply either, as there are exactly three seconds of gore in this film (admittedly a very good bit of a decapitated corpse stumbling over). In the end, if you're looking for an "alien killer stalks L.A." type film, then PREDATOR 2 would be a safer and far more enjoyable bet.

This movie deserves a higher IMDb rating than its current 3.4. Not THAT much higher, granted, but at least 4.5. Almost the entire cast turn in very solid performances, elevating the weak material just by taking everything entirely seriously. A good job was done on the photography, particularly the use of lighting (and, by definition, the shadows) in night scenes. The highest praise could be that the whole thing comes across as a feature-length Kolchak (the police chief even bears a vague resemblance to McGavin's character).The script has a couple of strong points. Devane's character's past gives him an added depth and a good basis for the tension between him and the detective character played by Richard Jaeckel. Some of the night scenes are genuinely suspenseful. On the downside, the plot has very little real development, almost nothing is properly explained, and the ending is both well-choreographed and...well, silly. Also, the whispering voice on the soundtrack detracts from the movie - it's never clear if the voice is supposedly to actually be occurring within the scene or not, so it would have been better to omit it altogether.If for no other reason, the well-publicized post-production change to the movie and Kasem's cameo are two items that make this a curio worth tracking down.