MVD Entertainment Group’s popular “MVD Rewind Collection” will have a new member on Aug. 24 with the addition of both DVD and Blu-ray editions of John "Bud" Cardos’ 1979 sci-fi thriller, The Dark: Collector’s Edition.
Film Ventures International had some nice luck in the 1970s with such theatrical releases as Grizzly (1976), Beyond the Door (1974) and Day of the Animals (1977), and so in the fall of 1977 FVI began production on their most ambitious film to date, The Dark.
Tobe Hooper, who had delivered the legendary Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 1974 and followed that up with Eaten Alive in 1976 was signed on to direct. William Devane, who was just arriving as a known quantity after Family Plot, Marathon Man and Rolling Thunder was cast in the lead and was looking forward to working with Hooper.
However, the night-shooting schedule and the multiple locations soon had the production behind schedule and FVI panicked … Hooper was fired and replaced by the late John "Bud" Cardos, who had wrapped up Kingdom of the Spiders earlier in the year. Devane stayed with the project.
The film opens with the gruesome murder of a young woman by the name of Shelly Warner (Kathy Hilton), which brings us to writer Steve Dupree (William Devane), whose real name is Roy Warner … Steve Dupree is his nom de plume. He’s informed of his daughter’s death and we get a bit of a backstory about how he killed his wife’s lover in a jealous rage and served time in prison.
The irony is, the detective assigned to his daughter’s murder case is the same detective, Dave Mooney (Richard Jaeckel, fresh from FVI’s Day of the Animals, and before that, Grizzly), who arrested him … this conflict-of-interest will prompt Dupree to launch his own investigation of his daughter’s murder.
Meanwhile, the local TV news “fashion” reporter, Zoe Owens (Cathy Lee Crosby) begs to cover the Warner murder case and gets her first real assignment and creates some sensation when she makes the on-air connection between Shelly Warner and her crime-novelist father, Steve Dupree.
Another murder takes place. The police are baffled. Dupree and Owens join forces … and it is a race to see who can solve the crime first. Throw in a fortune teller and a creature from another world and you’ve got a wild ride to a climatic encounter with the thing from another world (played by seven-foot, four-inch actor John Bloom — as the monster in Dracula vs. Frankenstein and as The Reaper in The Hills Have Eyes, Part II).
Although The Dark finished filming in late 1977, it didn’t open theatrically until April of 1979. The long delay was a result of extensive post-production special effects, which was costly for an indie like Film Ventures. The late April release date also proved problematic as available screens to continue the film’s theatrical run dried up as the major studio’s big summer hits began to rollout in May. Despite having a very commercial release, FVI just couldn’t duplicate the magic of Beyond the Door and Grizzly … in the end, The Dark probably did not recoup its production and distribution costs.
Presented in the original 2.35:1 aspect ratio from the original camera negative, MVD Entertainment Group’s “Rewind Collection” presentation of The Dark includes commentary from associate producer Igo Kantor (Kingdom of the Spiders, Kill and Kill Again, Mutant) and director John “Bud” Cardos. There are also two video sessions with Cardos, one vintage and one where he is joined by composer Roger Kellaway (Oscar-nominated for his musical score for the 1977 release of A Star is Born, but perhaps best known for his work on All in the Family and the “Remembering You” theme).
No comments:
Post a Comment