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ACTOR
Joe BaloghJosie BissettJason SaucierRobin Fox
DIRECTOR
Umberto Lenzi
SYNOPSICS
Paura nel buio (1989) is a English movie. Umberto Lenzi has directed this movie. Joe Balogh,Josie Bissett,Jason Saucier,Robin Fox are the starring of this movie. It was released in 1989. Paura nel buio (1989) is considered one of the best Thriller movie in India and around the world.
Mark, a disturbed young man, harbors sexual desires for his deceased mother. Driving around the back roads of Va. Beach, Mark seeks out lone females to carry out his twisted sexual fantasies. Enter Daniela, who bares a striking resemblance to mom, who happens to make the mistake of accepting a ride from Mark.
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Paura nel buio (1989) Reviews
Oh, come on now!
This film has to be viewed with this in mind first: it is ridiculous and not meant to be scary. I like "Hitcher in the Dark" a lot. It's no award winner, but what do you want? It's a low budget, late-80's slasher/thriller with a good dose of comedy and sleaze thrown in for good measure. I doubt Lenzi was even trying to make it scary. The 'killer' is a preppy looking RV driver cruising the Virginia Beach coast on his daddy's dime. He picks up a girl and makes her life hell for a few days, and ends up paying for it in the end. Thrown in between is a cheesy plot, an angry boyfriend, lots of 80's beach people getting drunk and listening to horrible music, and some pretty nice looking chicks. For the time it came out, it was a little ahead of it's time, too. Pretty much all the new thrillers are 'real life' terror rides like "Hitcher in the Dark." For what it is, "Hitcher in the Dark" is a lot cooler than any teen horror movie of today. And it's funny as hell!!! 5 out of 10, kids.
What the hell happened to Umberto Lenzi?
This movie has some things going for it. It features some really beautiful scenery of the American South. It features some really beautiful scenery of a young, lovely Josie Bisset. And it is not quite Umberto Lenzi's worst movie ever. It has a lot of problems though. First, the dialogue is terrible. (Maybe these ridiculous conversations would sound better if they were badly dubbed and delivered with Italian accents). Second, the acting is wretched. The aforementioned Bisset is even worse than she was on "Melrose Place". The only time her acting is halfway tolerable is the scene where she is being photographed naked and sexually assaulted, and that is only because she has been mercifully drugged unconscious. The killer is played by a Christopher Atkins look-alike who is not only just as bad as Bisset but woefully miscast to boot. A five-foot-tall, effeminate pretty boy wearing Vaurnet sun-glasses and driving around in a RV camper is just NOT scary. The amazing thing though is director Umberto Lenzi who started out as a great director with classic Italian giallo like "Paranoia" in the late 60's, but seemed to get worse with each film. His infamous cannibal and zombie movies in the early 80's were awful but at least they elicited some reaction. This movie and its Florida-lensed follow-up "Nightmare Beach" don't even do that. At the rate he was going here, if Lenzi's still working at all he's probably making amateur porn videos and forgetting to take off the lens cap. I can certainly understand why Lenzi started using a cinematic pseudonym about this time, but why did he choose the name "Humbert Humphrey" recalling classic literature's most infamous pedophile?(Would that make Josie Bisset "Lolita")? What a strange, strange guy.
Lurid psycho drama
*SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* A psycho and his Winnebago. So a nut travels up and down the Virginia Beach coastline looking for hitchhikers. Seems lonely boy has a fixation on his mother. Don't they all? He wants to mold the hitchhikers into his hot, saintly mother's image. Lurid mind games follow. This movie could have been good. The problem is the acting. Since most of the movie is spent having the psycho converse with his prey, it is imperative that the psycho be believable and, if at all possible, scary. He is none of that. In fact, he's awful. One of the worst acting performances ever. Since the camera is on him through most of the flick, he starts to wear you down with his lazy psycho routine. The hitchhiker he picks up, (Josie Bissett), was good. All of the other actors stunk. The music was also horrible. Late 80's synthesizer cheese. On the plus side, the movie did have an authentic, grimy feel to it. The filmmakers knew the right deranged words to put in the psycho's mouth. He just couldn't deliver them convincingly. There are some good exploitation scenes in his camper. Here's the psycho party mix: A girl, chloroform and an instant camera. It makes for a happy psycho. I did enjoy the completely unnecessary wet T-shirt contest as well. "Hitcher in the Dark" may just be sordid enough to warrant a viewing. I can't say that I loved every second of it but it does have its seedy moments.
Anonymous, rather dull giallo
Italian director Umberto Lenzi will hopefully always be remembered for gruesome and bloodthirsty splatter films like `Cannibal Ferox' and `Nightmare City' much more than this worthless movie. Hitcher in the Dark is lame and redundant attempt to explore the mind of a disturbed psycho-killer. The 22-year-old Mark Glazer picks up young hitchhiking girls in his camper. Too bad for these girls, Mark suffers from a really bad case of the Oedipus-syndrome and goes over to torturing the girls if they don't want to take mum's place. The plot of `Hitcher in the Dark' (wrong name, by the way, the entire movie is shot in broad daylight!) isn't exactly original and elaborates on the success of `The Hitcher', with a slight Norman Bates twist. There's no tension, the characters are absolutely non-believable and there even isn't enough horror to keep you alert. Hitcher does contain a few bloody make-up sequences, but nowhere near as shocking as some of Lenzi's previous films. I don't know if Josie Bisett likes to be remembered about her starring in this film, but it did mean her debut in the world of cinema. Bisett plays the main muse of the young weirdo. Although I don't like the film at all, I prefer it over watching all the `Melrose Place' episodes, so it can't be that horrible. And at least Bisett shows a little naked flesh here
Worthless non-giallo
This is a completely artless and tasteless contribution to the psycho-slasher genre, existing only as another cynical Eurosleaze rip-off of a far superior American original, The Hitcher (something done only slightly better by Festa-Campanile's Hitch-Hike). Lenzi made some serviceable paint-by-numbers giallos and cannibal epics, but never had an original idea in his head. Without the exotic background -- it seems that colourless Virgina Beach was chosen merely as an excuse to insert some topless footage of college girls -- there's nothing left but bare-bones plot, pseudo-psychology and some nasty, intrusive violence. And campers aren't exactly the most exciting vehicles on the road, are they? The young cast play it so sensitively that one feels embarrassed for them. What is most irksome is that the DVD is being sold as part of "The Giallo Collection" on the strength of Lenzi's name. This ain't no giallo, and it's frustrating to think how many truly superior films by Sergio Martino and his colleagues are desperately in need of re-release.