Alone in the Dark

Pretty damn good! Palance is menacing as hell, Landau is batshit crazy and the supporting cast all nail their roles.

Sholder's sharp satiric splatter pic -- which sometimes approximates the feel of a live-action "Simpsons" Halloween special gone *way* over the edge -- pokes fun at 'burb life, Laingian shrinks, punk rock, American media addiction, and voyeurism in general and features one of the best nightmare sequences ever lensed. This is an almost seamless genre movie that's funny, scary, and equipped with a bright central metaphor. Who could ask for anything more?

Boy, did this suck. (Wrong, no question mark. It's a statement, doofus... Yea, yes. I'll be here all night. And tomorrow I'll refine the material and come up with something better such as "'It sure did', the boy answered" or some brilliant stuff like that.)

Theres something missing

For some cool people this is their Avengers. I’m not being sarcastic.

STRANGE....BUT NOT IN A GOOD WAY

A quite silly, but enjoyable slasher, driven by entertaining performances from the well-known, quirky cast. I'm not sure that any deeper messages reached me through the nonsense, but there was certainly enough going on to hold the attention. Worth a look.

When a new psychiatrist starts work at a mental asylum, a group of lunatics decides that he must have killed the old doctor. They escape from the asylum and lay siege to the doctor's home with his family trapped inside. Essentially a slasher flick with a bunch of killers instead of one, the best thing about this movie is the cast, including the deliriously loony Martin Landau as a pyromaniac priest. Not really original but well made, with a musical performance by The Sick Fucks.

Not a typical slasher for several reasons, not the least of which being that the best actors in it are playing the killers which changes the balance of sympathy even if they're not the good guys. As a tense cat and mouse type film it works decently, and has a couple of surprises, but it's not really anything special.

Extremely silly movie (in Maltin's view, "If your IQ is 15, you might enjoy this") which I nevertheless enjoyed (draw your own conclusions regarding my intelligence). A great beginning and ending, very enjoyable performances by Martin Landau, Jack Palance, Donald Pleasence, and Erland van Lidth, and an amusing critique of 1970s psychiatry. Once actually wrote to the director to express my fond memories, and he was kind enough to send back an interesting reply. See also my review of DODES'KA-DEN.

This was amazing! So creepy. Some of the best aesthetics to start this movie off. A tight satirical jab at just about every thing in reagan's America. A nicely put together cast as well! All the bad guys were the best actors which is good for a horror flick. Doesn't even feel too much like a Halloween retread which it's kind of set up to be.

Amusingly self-effacing slasher. Unexpectedly lighthearted with some hilariously over-the-top performances (Pleasence, sending up his _Halloween_ role, and Landau are at their most unrestrained) and a smattering of gory Tom Savini FX.

Jack Sholder's greatest film, and a good companion-piece to 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'. There are no crazy people; we're all just on vacation.

Kind of fun in a campy way, I guess. I like Landau's over the top preacher character, and Pleasence and Palance were enjoyably bizarre. When the film shifts its focus to the family itself, it becomes a lot less interesting.

Comes off as too much of a goofy Halloween ripoff (complete with Donald Pleasence as a weirdo psychiatrist) to be appreciated on its own merits. Palance & Landau make it just enjoyable enough to sit through.

*Palance tries to run down a biking mailman in a van* Mailman: "What are you, an asshole?" *Palance backs into said mailman, sending his flying 20 yards through the air* Also. Big ending!

Spoilers. Great setup in the first half, but falls apart once the siege starts and every character in the house acts like a moron with braindead IQ who won't even do the bare minimum needed to respond to threats or to secure their safety.

A solidly entertaining Slasher/home invasion film that has some great moments mixed into this otherwise average film. Landau and Pleasence are hamming it up, Dwight Schultz is good and more understated than normal, but its Palance that really makes the film, he's intense as hell.

A dumb black comic slasher made by semi-smart people. As others have pointed out, it contains a playful critique of old psychiatry and some amusingly camp performances by notable actors, which help smoothen out the rough film making edges that prevent it from being a top shelf entry in the genre. Fans of Pleasence and Palace should have a ball.

A piece of crap that's not even crappy enough to be fun.

Home siege slasher with four villians? I'm sold! On top of that promise, this is a surprisingly clever horror and one of the most tense I've seen from its decade. Unfortunately the villains are far more interesting than the family under siege.

Clearly intended to a be at least a bit tongue-in-cheek satirical, which I did appreciate quite a bit as horror really hadn't started poking fun at itself all that much yet in 1982, but still missing that something extra to really put it over the top for me. I wanted to see more of a complete arc for the sister character, and the twist towards the end felt too telegraphed. Great performances all around, though, and some excellent moments of mounting tension. Solid, entertaining film.

This is the first film New Line produced after making their bones as a film distributor. It's often overshadowed by the next film they produced ... "A Nightmare on Elm Street" ... but it's a solid debut.