The Dark

“The Dark” is really a colossal fraud that was supposed to have been a zombie movie directed by the competent Tobe Hooper. Unfortunately, Hooper left the project after a few days of shooting due to creative differences with the producers and was replaced by former stuntman John “Bud” Cardos. Meanwhile, the zombie theme was eighty-sixed in the belief that an extraterrestrial menace would be a better bet at the box-office.

The result? A total disaster where elements of the movie’s “rough draft” zombie version keep popping up with crazy results (the monster’s living-dead makeup, the newspapers talking about an attack by mysterious zombies, etc.) Making matters worse is the film’s chronic inability to generate tension and a motley cast of has-beens worse than any found in even the trashiest sci-fi movies of the mid-1960s.

Extremely tedious for over an hour in which little or nothing actually happens (a couple of murders in the dark and a police officer apparently suffering from tapeworms), the film goes off the deep end in the final reel when the so-called alien begins frying cops left and right with lasers shooting out of his eyes, like Cyclops from the X-Men.

Don’t miss the nonsense uttered by the off-screen voice at the end of the film: “In the darkness of the universe, man is the alien, and from this day forward, only those who walk forever in darkness will have nothing to fear in the dark“.

A worthy tombstone for a sci-fi horror abomination of rare ineptitude.