Fortunate for me that I was born from parents who bought literally every VHS movie they could get their hands on in the heyday of the eighties. Fortunate for me that I was born from a woman who loves every horror movie ever made, and continues to love every horror movie ever made. Which is where my meeting with “The Dark” enters. Available on DVD and still pretty rare, “The Dark” is one of the most confusing hybrids of blaxploitation, science fiction, and horror I’ve ever seen with ambiguous plot devices, horrific performances, and the odd association with Dick Clark. Watching this on the same grainy discount VHS from Media Home Entertainment I first viewed it on fourteen years ago, “The Dark” has lost plenty of the oompf and suspense I remember it holding.
For the discerning writer or movie buff, “The Dark” is a pretty messy little horror entry from the seventies. One of the most nagging questions you’ll be asking (as I was) is: Who is that blind man? Whenever this monster (who looks like a mutated Grizzly Adams with Heat Vision) steps in to murder passerby on the street, there’s always the introduction of a blind man who walks by the monster with his stick clapping it on the floor rowdily and casually signaling the entrance of the monster. At first I didn’t make mind of it, since I assumed it was an extra, but if you watch closely, you’ll see he appears inexplicably every single time the monster strikes, and even walks by in the climactic war where the police finally strike back to end its reign of terror on the streets. Is he an omen? Is he the monster’s keeper? Is he the monster’s human form? Why is it never explained to us? What was the point?
Was there an intended sequel to provide the origin? Did they just run out of money? And most importantly, why does the monster look like a radioactive hippy? Only director John Cardos (who ended up replacing Tobe Hooper on this) knows as he introduces a monster more horrifying than all the pimps, hookers, muggers, rapists, and perverts looming in the city at that time, and it’s stolen Superman’s heat vision with Godzilla’s roar, don’t you know. Shocking enough the police just can’t quite track down this hulking beast hiding in the dark, and Cardos in the mean time attempts to inject themes of racial injustice, and government corruption in a screenplay that seems to just be making it up as it goes along. It’s a zombie! No wait, it’s possessed! No wait, it’s an alien! Yeah, it’s an alien! Why can’t they find it? Why do they call it a “he”? Was it human once? How do they assume it bears a sexual representation?
Why does a fortune teller bear a psychic connection with it? Aw hell, “The Dark” makes my head hurt, but why did I enjoy it so much? I’m talking in circles, here. Frankly, “The Dark” is just a horrible movie, with one of the least menacing monsters I’ve seen on film, and in spite of William Devane and Cathy Lee Crosby’s best efforts to force dramatic tension and urgency, Stanford Whitmore’s limp script leaves their attempts with a thick sense of futility. There’s also the unexplained series of decapitations and the monster’s actual freaking purpose that stays in the air long after the credits have ended that make you appreciate the dumber monster movies from the drive in era.
Because they may have been formula, but at least they had answers and healthy ambiguity. Cardos’ film doesn’t know what it is. I still don’t know to this day, either. Somewhere underneath the dreck, there’s a great story here. I think we’ll need a remake to bring it out. Hey, it’s possible. There’s really not much to expect when you read the premise. It’s an odd hybrid of genres with a monster that’s never quite extrapolated until the end. It’s terribly written, features terrible performances, and garners one of the dumbest monsters ever brought to the big screen, with a plot device that’s frustratingly ambiguous and unexplained to the very end. But here’s one consolation: It’s so bad, it’s good. And it features some sweet gore. Well, that’s two consolations.