Alone in the Dark

Released - 1982
Genre - Horror
Director - Jack Sholder
Starring - Donald Pleasance, Jack Palance, Martin Landau, Dwight Schultz, Erland van Lidth

This forgotten horror from 1982 sounded great when I came across it, featuring a cast including Donald Pleasance, Jack Palance and Martin Landau not to mention Dwight Schultz (Murdoch from the A Team), it is about four psychopath chums who escape from a mental institution and embark on a murder spree aiming to kill their new doctor. Sadly the writing is extremely muddled with gaping plot holes all over the place and it is hard to escape the feeling that the talents of this great cast could have been put to better use. Schultz is the new doctor and he comes to an institution run by Pleasance who is a pot smoking whacko himself, the four psychos are led by Palance as a disturbed veteran and they decide the new doctor must have murdered their old one. A power cut allows them to escape and they soon give in to their murderous impulses. Landau is probably the creepiest of the psychos as an ex-minister but this never really threatens to scare the audience. It is fun and very different from your average slasher flick but having watched it I now realise why I've never heard of it before.

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