Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

Alone in the Dark (1982)

Director: Jack Sholder

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

'I guess I just prefer psychopaths...' smiles bug-eyed Donald Pleasence, director of the fashionably liberal 'Haven' mental institute. We've already seen what the psychopaths think of him in a pre-credit nightmare: he hangs his victims by the ankles and splits their personalities with a meat-cleaver through the crotch. There's a sharp sense of humour at work in this school-of-Carpenter siege movie, even if, for all its ironic observations on madness in American society, it never cuts free of genre routine. A citywide blackout lets out the 370lb child molester, crazed preacher, military hardnut and faceless 'nosebleed killer,' to put the wimpish assistant director and his family through the suspense grinder; but with the strength of the cast (Landau, Palance) on the outside, the siege machine seems to have slipped a gear.

Author: RP 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Jack Sholder

Producer: Robert Shaye

Cast: Jack Palance, Donald Pleasence, Martin Landau, Dwight Schultz, Erland Van Lidth, Deborah Hedwall full cast

Genre(s): Horror

Duration: 93 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.