The Dark by Max Franklin - Review

"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 give it a read.

Well, after writing that post, I checked on eBay and found an edition I could buy at a reasonable price. Which I did, obviously.

Now, having finished it, I can share that the novelization of The Dark is a tad more comprehensible with an undead killer decapitating and chowing down on the flesh of his victims rather than as an alien that kills 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 it both aligned with and deviated from the film version. I could suss out some of the narrative and stylistic embellishments and liberties the author took so the book could reach the required word count in order to qualify as a novel. Yet there were a few plot points and scenes that might have been excised when the monster was changed from an undead serial killer to an alien. But it is impossible for me to be certain.

As amazed and amused as I was, I was even more frustrated when I finished the book. Whether the monster threat was a 100 years dead cannibalistic murderer somehow returned to life or an alien from outer space, the novelization offers no information whatsoever as to how or why these killings are happening.

Zero expository light pierces the incomprehensible blackness that is at the very center of The Dark.