Alone in the Dark

(Jack Sholder/1982/USA)

Early 80's horror flick but with a little more substance than usual, Alone in the Dark has all sorts of questions about what insanity is or means and how we treat those diagnosed as not sane. Sholder lays off the gore in favour of a more cerebral tension. There are some genuinely odd and unsettling moments throughout, the scene with Fatty Elster and the young girl Lyla alone in the house being a stand out one. Apparently Donald Pleasance’s character, Dr. Leo Bain, was based on the radical Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing so the probing of the narrative into the nature of madness makes a lot of sense. The performances from the leads, Palance, Schultz and Pleasance are great and slightly kooky but Martin Landau as “Preacher” and Lee Taylor-Allan as Toni are superb. As a fan of The Fall it was more than interesting to hear the lines of Dr. Leo Bain, “Always remember what the Hindu mystics say: Mind moving fast is crazy, Mind slow is sane, Mind stopped is god” which has to be a direct source for these Mark E. Smith lyrics in the song Craigness, “Mind moving slow is sane, Mind moving fast is mad, Mind left stopped is god.”

(2.5/5)