The Dark (John "Bud" Cardos, 1979)

Is there anything more 1979 than William Devane with Rick Springfield hair driving a Corvette, windows down, through downtown Los Angeles at night, Cathy Lee Crosby and her flowing blonde mane (not quite a full Farrah Fawcett but close) in the passenger seat? The Dark may have an occasionally sluggish narrative, and the horror is relatively tame and offscreen except for a few crazy moments, but I thoroughly enjoyed it anyway because the damn thing's got vibes. It's a '70s L.A. hangout movie with multiple eye-pleasing locations throughout the city, and the stacked cast also includes Richard Jaeckel, Keenan Wynn, Warren Kemmerling, Jacquelyn Hyde, Angelo Rossitto, Casey freakin' Kasem, and Philip Michael Thomas. Dick Clark co-produced it, for some reason.

The Dark was an almost completely different movie, with a different director. Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) was hired to direct the film but was fired only three days into the shoot because he was running way behind schedule. The producers replaced him with b-movie veteran John "Bud" Cardos, who had a reputation for getting things done quickly and efficiently. I reviewed another Cardos film, Kingdom of the Spiders (a thoroughly enjoyable killer tarantulas in the desert movie starring William Shatner, Tiffany Bolling, and Woody Strode), on this site many years ago. Shatner's character in that movie is named Rack Hansen. Hilarious.

In the version of the movie that Hooper was going to direct, the killer terrorizing the Los Angeles streets was an abused and neglected man who spent his entire life locked in his family's attic. After the house burns down, he escapes and goes on a decapitation spree. Cardos shot most of the movie with this same idea in mind, but he got a brainstorm near the end of the shooting schedule. Hey, he thought, aliens are hot right now. Let's make this sumbitch an alien. An opening and closing narration was added explaining that our killer came from outer space, and a few new scenes were shot with him shooting lasers from his eyes, alien-style. I love this kind of nonsense, though it causes a few narrative problems; for example, the cops talk about the bodies being ritualistically mutilated but the alien mostly just blasts people with eye lasers, causing them to explode. He does get a few decapitations in, at least.

The Dark has quite a cast of characters. William Devane plays Roy Warner, the father of a woman murdered by the alien. Warner spent three years in prison for manslaughter after catching his wife in bed with another guy and shooting both of them, but he's also a bestselling horror novelist who writes under the pen name Steve Dupree. The horror novel business must be good to him, because he lives in a super-swanky '70s pad in the Hollywood Hills with a swimming pool and a great view of the city. He also has the aforementioned Rick Springfield hair (so wild to see Devane with this look) and a truly eyeball-hurting multi-colored bathrobe he puts on while strolling around his digs.

Warner/Dupree is putting major pressure on the homicide detectives investigating the murders. Those detectives are raging prick Dave Mooney (Richard Jaeckel) and his buffoonish partner Jack Bresler (Biff Elliott), who is always munching on a pastry. They're getting it from the top, too. Grumpy police captain Speer (Warren Kemmerling, who played a couple of corrupt sheriffs on a couple of Rockford Files episodes) is getting the business from the mayor and Warner and is sending that business back to his detectives.

Also taking an interest in the case is TV news anchor Zoe Owens (Cathy Lee Crosby), who has mostly been relegated to covering low-level human-interest stories like flower shows and swimsuit competitions. She wants to move to hard news, and the decapitation murders are her ticket up. Program director Sherm Moss (Keenan Wynn) reluctantly acquiesces. Wynn gets to deliver some classic Keenan Wynn lines and twirl his impressive mustache. Zoe is sympathetic to Warner's grief, but she also finds his horror novels disgustingly violent and without literary merit. Something tells me these opposites are going to attract (that something is me watching the movie last night and seeing that these opposites attracted).

Wait, there's more. Jacquelyn Hyde gets to unleash the full-strength, unfiltered Jacquelyn Hyde as eccentric psychic De Renzy, who has visions of the murders and the alien who is committing them. We also get cameos from Casey Kasem as a forensic pathologist, Philip Michael Thomas as a sassy street tough named Corn Rows who makes some solid points about the incompetency of the police, Angelo Rossitto as a surly newsstand owner, Paris Hilton's mom Kathy Hilton as the girlfriend of a shitty wannabe actor, and Vivian Blaine as a rich older woman who can't stop having kickass parties on her fancy yacht. There's also an inexplicable blind man character who is seen wandering the streets at night with trench coat, glasses, and a cane, passing by every person who's about to be killed. I thought this blind man was going to be the alien in disguise, but no. He's never explained, other than some silly "Poochy went back to his home planet" narration at the end about only the blind being able to see.

The movie spends much of its running time as a police procedural and a William Devane hangout movie, interrupted by the occasional scene of a weird-looking big guy (the 7'4" John Bloom) shooting lasers out of his eyes. Most of the decapitations happen offscreen, but we do get one sweet onscreen beheading, and you better believe that head rolls. The alien also increases in strength after every murder, so once he gets several killings under his belt, he's able to send people flying sideways for several yards with just one punch. That's always fun to see. The score is pretty enjoyable, too, with minimal percussion thwacks and a whispery voice uttering either nonsense or "the daaaaarknessssss."

The real star of The Dark is '79 Los Angeles. The locations include cinematically appealing movie theater marquees, phone booths, bars, restaurants, nightclubs, neon signs, and city streets. Even the morgue has fun '70s wallpaper. It makes me lament the beshittening of public space aesthetics in my lifetime thanks to corporations and technology and a general lack of appreciation. The world used to have a lot more visual texture and flavor. I hate it here.

This may not have been the full-on head-ripping alien serial killer in '70s Los Angeles movie of my dreams, but it's pretty damn fun, and I still can't get over William Devane's hair in it. If you value the little things I value, I think you'll enjoy it. 

Super-Sleuth (Benjamin Stoloff, 1937)

Super-Sleuth is a charmingly silly horror-comedy (heavy on the comedy) that may be one of the earliest movies about the movie business. Most of the showbiz-themed movies in the earliest decades of film take place in the world of the theater, but Super-Sleuth's characters are Hollywood actors, studio publicists, and directors, and much of the film's action takes place on movie sets, on location, and in the offices of Apex Pictures, the fictional Hollywood studio employing most of our characters.

Jack Oakie (John Goodman's character's favorite actor in Barton Fink) plays Willard Martin, the self-absorbed star of a series of popular private eye films. His multiple public comments making fun of the police for being unable to catch The Poison Pen (an author of several poison pen letters threatening bodily harm to local citizens) and his boasts of knowing more than the police due to his experience playing a private eye have caused a bit of a PR crisis for Apex, exasperating studio publicist/Martin's on-off romantic partner Mary Strand (Ann Sothern) and enraging the LAPD. Instead of being conciliatory, Willard doubles down on his sick cop burns. I really enjoyed this aspect of the film. It warms my heart to see police get the business.

Willard claims he'll solve The Poison Pen crimes instead of the cops, unwittingly making himself a target of the criminal mastermind. The movie never makes it clear why the entire city is trying to find a guy who writes mean letters and why it's making front page headlines. I'm going to assume the criminal is also killing the people who receive the letters. Otherwise, it makes no sense, but I have a soft spot in my heart for nonsense. We do know he's definitely trying to kill Willard, since we see him take direct aim at the star with a pretty sweet umbrella-gun (the center of the open umbrella is the scope, the handle is the trigger), barely missing his target.

Willard spends the rest of the film avoiding murder attempts, trying to solve the crimes, shooting his latest private eye movie, alternately placating and infuriating the cops, trying to mediate a romantic triangle between an actress and two actors (one established, one working as an extra), amusing and exasperating Mary, and polishing and straightening his portraits and billboards. He's a busy guy. 

Super-Sleuth is often described as a mystery, but the movie reveals the identity of The Poison Pen in the first third. Let's just say a creepy professor and expert on crime named Herman (Eduardo Ciannelli) who advises Willard on his private eye movies and lives in a weird wax museum of historical crime and punishment may possibly be the guy. You may be up to something if you've turned your home into a wax museum of the macabre, is all I'm saying.

Compared to the classics of the period, Super-Sleuth is a minor achievement, but it's a solid, well-made, funny, entertaining movie, and the umbrella-gun is the bee's knees. I loved the behind-the-scenes-of-filmmaking aspects, too, with the location shoot for the film-within-a-film's police chase being especially great. We get to see the preparations, the planning, the direction, the action, and the mayhem that ensues when The Poison Pen starts shooting at the actors for real as they're shooting at each other with blanks. Very cool scene.

The only thing marring Super-Sleuth is some '30s-era racism with the character of Warts (Willie Best), Willard's personal assistant. Willie Best was often saddled with the stereotypical black servant character, afraid of everything. His character is a bit more developed in this movie and gets some decent lines and a few zingers, but he still has to do the fraidy-cat schtick forced on so many black actors of the era.

If you're a fan of movies about the movies, '30s Hollywood, and umbrella-guns, check out Super-Sleuth. I had a good time with it.