The Dark (1979) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - May 30, 1979

The Dark is another ignoble example of a film's troubled production offering a far more interesting story than the film itself. 

First Tobe Hooper, the original director, was fired just a week into filming and John "Bud" Cardos was brought in to get the shoot back on schedule and, more importantly, keep it on time and budget.

Second the nature of the threat was changed mid-shoot. No more would the bizarre and brutal killings be the work of what appears to be a vengeance seeking revenant of some kind. Now it would be an alien. One that shoot lasers from its eyes!

There was a novelization of the film that adapted the discarded script Hooper was working with. If getting it can prove cost effective, I might snag a copy and read it. Because, to this very day, I am curious as to what the hell this confusing jumble of a movie was supposed to be about.

Producer Igo Kantor, in an interview printed in Fangoria #34, said of the production, "We were rewriting every night for the following day of shooting. The Dark was a hodgepodge. There were continuity problems, scenes that didn't make any sense." True. Nothing about The Dark makes the slightest bit of sense.

That very same issue of Fangoria offered a review of the film, courtesy of Dr. Cyclops. The good doctor opined that "the attack scenes are effective in a relatively restrained way, and the final confrontation is quite zesty, but the intervening scenes never amount [too] much." I agree.