"It's simply coincidence that a hundred years ago there was a killer similar to this one."
Back in May I posted a newspaper clipping of an ad for 1979's The Dark. In that post I shared how director Tobe Hooper was fired during the first week of filming. The reasons cited for his being sacked were his going over budget and falling behind schedule. John "Bud" Cardos was brought in to complete the film on time and on budget, which he appears to have done.
But a change in directors was not the only unexpected switch that befell The Dark. At some point late in filming producers Dick Clark and Edward L. Montoro decided that the film's undead killer should be an alien from outer space instead.
The end result of that decision was a jumble of nonsensical dialogue scenes interrupted by an occasional and incomprehensible 'monster' attack.
In that post I also theorized the film's novelization might be an adaptation of the story as it had been originally planned. How I hoped it would contain the supernatural elements that were excised from the film and therefore might make a bit more sense. That if I could find an edition for a reasonable price, I just might buy it and give it a try.
Well, after writing that post, I decided to check eBay and found an edition I could afford. So I bought it and read it.
Now, having finished it, I can share that the novelization of The Dark might be a tad more comprehensible with an undead killer decapitating and chowing down on the flesh of his victims rather than an alien killing people by shooting lasers out of its glowing eyeballs. Yet there were still way too many unanswered questions and unexplored theories in whichever draft of Stanford Whitmore's screenplay was being adapted here.
What amazed and amused me about the book was how close the novelization aligned with, yet managed to deviate from, the finished film's narrative. It was easy to see all the narrative and stylistic embellishments and liberties the author made so the book could reach the required word count to qualify as a novel.
The biggest was the changing of the second victim from a randy night watchman that is killed while on the job to a wholesome family man that is slaughtered just as he is about to return home to his loving family. This allows for television reporter Zoe Owens to return later in the book and conduct a heartfelt interview with the grieving and traumatized family, so that pesky word count can be reached.
There were also some plot points and scenes that might have been excised after the monster was changed from undead serial killer to alien from outer space.
Ray Warner, the grieving and vengeance seeking father of the first victim, does a bit of research at the local library and learns of one Harmon Quade. A merchant seaman turned murderer and cannibal. Quade was killed by an angry mob and buried in a potter's field. Warner's daughter just so happened to have been killed one hundred years and a day after Quade's burial. Coincidence?
Contrivance then allows for Warner and Owen to locate Quade's supposed resting place and engage in some illicit grave digging. All they uncover is dirt and more dirt. The grave is empty.
Which is when my amazement and amusement began to curdle into frustration. While the book implies that the monster 'might be' a 100 years dead cannibalistic murderer that has somehow returned to life, no further information is given. Nor is there ever an explanation, or even a whacky theory, as to how or why these killings are even happening.
Zero expository light was cast upon the incomprehensible blackness that is at the very center of The Dark. While the novelization does offer a tantalizing concept of an explantation, that concept is not developed into something, anything, that approaches satisfying.
The novelization of The Dark left me as every bit as confused as the film did.
If you want a coherent variation of The Dark where the menace is supernatural, I suggest watching John Carpenter's The Fog. But if you want an alien menace stalking the streets of Los Angeles and slaughtering people, then just watch Predator 2. Both are better than The Dark.
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