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General Categories => Occupy My Mind! => Movies => Topic started by: Beefy on December 05, 2005, 09:59:11 AM

Title: Alone in the Dark
Post by: Beefy on December 05, 2005, 09:59:11 AM
No, not the Christian Slater film.  Even I have standards.

This was a suspense/horror flick from the early 1980s.  Murdoch from The A-Team plays a psychiatrist newly hired by a mental patient home run by Donald Pleasance.  Four of the home's most dangerous patients decide that Murdoch must have killed his predecessor, who they liked, so they decide to enact revenge.  One night the power goes down and they get their chance to escape.

Murdoch plays it straight, and really just fills the role.

I grow further convinced that Donald Pleasance was either truly mentally disturbed or smoking heinous amounts of pot.  As played, his character was just as badshiat insane as the inmates.

The real show here was the chance to see Jack Palance and Martin Landau play psychopaths.  Palance really just does his usual thing, playing a slightly over the top Vietnam vet with anger management issues.  He plays a heavy well.  The real delight was watching Landau as a deranged priest that likes to burn down churches... with the parishioners inside.  His eyes alone were creepy, and as I watched, I realized that had I seen the film when it was first released, Landau would have haunted my nightmares.

Not a great flick, perhaps not even a good one, but certainly an interesting one due to the casting choices.