ALONE IN THE DARK (1982)
I caught this last week on IFC's Friday night cult movie offering. Not the Uwe Boll-Tara Reid epic, but a very witty psycho thriller from director Jack Sholder (
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET PART 2,
THE HIDDEN) about dangerous mental patients who escape from a hospital during a blackout to terrorize a local community. Donald Pleasance is wonderfully over the top as a pot-smoking (out of a peace pipe!) psychiatrist who's gone off the deep end with his empathetic treatment of his patients. And what patients! The escapees are played by Jack Palance, Martin Landau, and 6'6" Erland van Lidth of
STIR CRAZY and
THE RUNNING MAN! Plus a mystery fourth psycho who cops a hockey mask for his face four months after
FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 3. The killers eventually target the home and family of the hospital's latest shrink, played by
THE A-TEAM's Dwight Schultz.
A great deal of satirical jabs are made from how insane the world is outside the mental hospital. As soon as the blackout starts, the locals waste no time in looting stores. Schultz's wife and sister keep themselves regularly sedated through pot and Valium. The sister keeps showing signs of a previous nervous breakdown, so she can play the Barbara role during the
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD siege on the house. This bit culminates in a cheating "it was just a hallucination" jump scare involving a very effective Tom Savini-created zombie. The local club is hosting a performance by The Sick Fucks, where Palance and his violent behavior is applauded by all the punks.
Not a classic, but there's a lot of fun to be had here. Pleasance, Palance, and Landau are endlessly entertaining as they wolf down huge chunks of the scenery. I particularly loved Landau as the pyromaniac preacher, with his Lugosi pallor and creepy laugh. Check him out in the first couple minutes of the film, as we experience one of his nightmares:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i95r-rdLY4A 
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