Alone in the Dark ** (1982, Donald Pleasence, Jack Palance, Martin Landau) – Classic Movie Review 12,395

A power failure frees four mental asylum inmates, who then run amok and try to kill their psychiatrist director (Donald Pleasence) and his family, in Jack Sholder’s 1982 debut film Alone in the Dark.

Co-writer/ director Jack Sholder’s 1982 debut film Alone in the Dark is made for New Line Cinema, and stars Donald Pleasence, Jack Palance, and Martin Landau.

A power failure frees four mental asylum inmates who then run amok and try to kill their psychiatrist director, Dr Leo Bain (Donald Pleasence) and his family during the power blackout, in a muddled slasher horror picture / home-invasion thriller that tries for class with its good cast and borrowings from Hallowe’en and Spellbound.

Alone in the Dark is grim and gruesome, but it is occasionally effective. The good actors help, particularly a tongue-in-cheek Pleasence, and Sholder’s direction is controlled and steady, building scares, suspense and tension successfully.

Thanks to this, writer-director Sholder went on to make A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2 for New Line Cinema.

Also in the cast are Dwight Schultz, Deborah Hedwall, Erland Van Lidth, Lee Taylor-Allan, Phillip Clark, and Elizabeth Ward.

The first film produced by film distribution company New Line Cinema, it was low budget at $1 million, and premiered in the US on 19 November 1982.

Sholder pitched the idea to New Line founder Robert Shaye of ‘a group of criminally insane guys escaping from a mental hospital during a blackout in NYC and creating mayhem and then getting rounded up by the Mafia, based on a New York City blackout he had experienced years earlier. It was considered too expensive to produce, so it was re-written as a home-invasion thriller. Sholder worked as film editor on the 1981 slasher The Burning while New Line raised finance. He said Dr Bain is based on Scottish psychiatrist R D Laing and his philosophy on the treatment of mentally ill patients.

Writers: Jack Sholder (story and screenplay), Robert Shaye (story) and Michael Harrpster (story).

The cast are Jack Palance as Frank Hawkes, Donald Pleasence as Dr Leo Bain, Martin Landau as Byron “Preacher” Sutcliff, Dwight Schultz as Dr. Dan Potter, Erland Van Lidth as Ronald “Fatty” Elster, Deborah Hedwall as Nell Potter, Lee Taylor-Allan as Toni Potter, Phillip Clark as Tom Smith / John “Bleeder” Skaggs, Elizabeth Ward as Lyla Potter, Carol Levy as Bunky, Keith Reddin as Billy, Gordon Watkins as Detective Burnett, Brent Jennings as Ray Curtis, Frederick Coffin as Jim Gable, Annie Korzen as Marissa Hall, and Lin Shaye as Receptionist at Haven.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,395

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