The Hammy Landau Performance Enlivens it (Alone In The Dark (DVD))

Member Name: mercy9

Product:	Alone In The Dark (DVD)
Date:	28/06/00 (25 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good Second Half; Martin Landau's Hamminess

Disadvantages: Drab and Shoddy Lighting; 'So what!' Opening

Before he won a well-deserved Oscar for his masterful work in 1994's ED WOOD, Martin Landau appeared in more than his share of turkeys, and ALONE IN THE DARK, a 1982 suspense flick, was one of them. Looking back, it's hard to imagine that an actor of his talent could possibly regress to a level as low as this, in a genre that's usually reserved for third-rate talent. Directed by Jack Sholder, who would later redeem himself with 1987's THE HIDDEN, ALONE IN THE DARK pits a doctor and his family against a trio of escaped mental patients, each of whom is highly psychopathic. When a blackout occurs in the small town, the good doc must protect his own in his suburban house, which, in STRAW DOGS-like fashion, is under siege by the baddies.

The film is crudely made, with some truly pitiful cinematography -- it looks like it was lit by a 20-watt bulb -- making the action in the nighttime sequences hard to make out, and there's even the sex-starved couple getting slaughtered before they can reach orgasm. Not a lot of artistic ingenuity is apparent here, yet a major studio, Columbia Pictures, saw fit to give this the green light.

Yet there are some saving graces. Sholder's direction is better sustained in the second half, conjuring up a fairly tense finale. And Martin Landau is lip-smackingly hammy as the leader of the sicko bad guys. Bulging his eyes to the point of bursting and emoting to the nth degree, Landau puts a charge into the material, giving the film some much-needed humor. Whether its intentional humor or not, I don't know, yet it induces the kind of laughter that makes films like these play a lot better than they should.

Summary: