Now the promise made on the Philosophy
page arises and threatens to bite us on the butt. Good luck if you
choose to seek out Dark Intruder; Something
Weird used to stock it, but I'm not sure they still do. Psychotronic
lists ShockToons as a distributor. In the words of a friend's
father, who was CEO of Republic Airlines, hey, I got mine.
Dark Intruder stands as a monument to a phenomenon
which will be familiar to any Bad Movie Fan: The-Really-Cool-Movie-I-Saw-As-A-Child
Syndrome. Like Attack of the Giant Leeches, which severely
traumatized me as a child and is now merely laughable, Dark Intruder
has lost a lot in my translation into an adult (a lot of people
would say they're still waiting for that translation, but that's
beside the point).
Which is not to say it's laughable, like Attack
- no, there is much coolness to recommend Dark Intruder.
It's actually a TV pilot, for a series that was to be called Black
Cloak. When the series wasn't picked up, Universal thriftily
released it as a theatrical film, much like the next year's (possibly
superior, but still similar) Chamber of Horrors.
The
story takes place in 1890 San Francisco, where a series of gruesome
murders attracts the attention of Brett Kingsford (Leslie Nielsen),
a playboy detective with a secret crime lab, a library of occult
tomes, and an invaluable dwarf assistant (Charles Bolender). His
friend, Robert (Mark Richman), soon to be married to Evelyn (Judi
Meredith), keeps having trance-outs at the oddest times, and looks
to be a likely suspect - especially since he knows the victims.
However, the killer growls like a beast and kills with a set of
murderous bestial claws, two attributes which Robert lacks.
Long story short - Robert had a deformed siamese twin
which was separated at birth, and is not only killing everyone who
knows of its existance in preparation for taking over Robert's body
by occult means, but is also possibly the embodiment of an ancient
Sumerian demon.
This short description really doesn't do the plot
justice - there are numerous little creepy details 
that
elevate Dark Intruder above the norm. The killer leaves an
ivory carving at each murder, and with each successive murder the
carving mutates more. What appears to be a statuette of a demon
in the possession of Kingsford's chinese mystic friend is not made
of stone, but mummified flesh and bone. The same mystic makes
mention of "banished gods...forever attempting to return to
Earth", making this one of the earliest Lovecraftian films
ever made.
Which is probably why I found Dark Intruder
so cool: I first saw it when I was discovering Lovecraft. Had Black
Cloak been picked up, I wonder if the series would have gone
on in a similar vein... Probably not. I also indulge in wild fantasies
of an episode featuring famed San Fran eccentric Emperor
Norton. Admittedly tough, since Norton died in 1880. But I digress.
Dark Intruder is flawed, in many ways, however.
Though director Harvey
Hart keeps the camera moving, the proceedings all too often
show their small screen origin. Scenes which cry out for another
take are left as is, the "that's good enough" procedure
of a rushed TV shooting schedule. Much of the horrific detail happens
offscreen, and we get to hear people talk about it. And the atmosphere,
so important in a period piece like this, just doesn't gel.
At a running time of only 63 minutes, forget about character development
- we only have time for the broadest possible strokes - even in
the main character.
Why is Kingsford a two-fisted master
of disguise (see below)? What is his history? Why does he have this
huge collection of occult paraphernalia? We tend to forget Leslie
Nielsen was once a leading man, and there's a good reason for that:
he wasn't very good. He is far better these days in his second
career, lampooning himself in roles like this one. And though Barre
Lyndon's plot is head and shoulders above most TV offerings (and
a lot of cinema), the dialogue is tepid in the extreme, and the
"idle ne'er-do-well" flip dialogue given to Kingsford's
Scarlet Pimpernel-manque persona is incredibly irritating.
Equally irritating is Judi Meredith's Evelyn, but I suspect that
is more symptomatic of the time than Ms. Meredith's acting skills;
as one writer has put it, "It was the sixties! We didn't know
women were good for anything!"
One of the devices which would have continued through
the series regards the fact that, in order to maintain his "outsider"
status and not jeopardize his sources, Kingsford must don some sort
of disguise whenever he wishes to confer with the police commissioner
(Gilbert Green). All well and good, except that Kingsford's first
disguise consists of striding into Police Headquarters with... a
British accent! What a chameleon!
Flawed,
yes, but an attempt at something thoughtful, and that always deserves
applause in my book. Bud Westmore's make-up is good as usual, especially
the killer's claws. And speaking of the killer, who goes by the
name Professor Malaki - it's played by none other than Werner Klemperer,
most famous for Col. Klink in Hogan's Heroes. What more could
you want?
Possibly, the same film made by Hammer. Or Amicus.
Or Tigon. That would have been cool.
