Evil Elvis sideburns does a slasher routine

THE DARK HALF (1993)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Periodically haunting and somewhat watchable, "The Dark Half" is only a mild disappointment from the Stephen King pit of adapted horror novels. It is a schizophrenic picture, partly slasher and partly a character study. The slasher mentality dominates the second act, while the first act does a good job of establishing its rhythm and its main character, a writer using a pseudonym that makes him more marketable than his actual name. Good idea, insufficient depth.

Thad Beaumont (Timothy Hutton) is the writer living in Maine, married to a strong, devoted woman (Amy Madigan, perfect casting), and making ends meet by teaching creative writing at a college. Thad's pseudonymous novels have been discovered by a blackmailer who wants cash or he will out Thad. Thad decides to stage a mock burial of his pseudonym, thus also closing the lid on his main character, Machine, an evil, leather-bound dude with Elvis sideburns who seems to have emerged from the Coens' "Raising Arizona" with a propensity for slashing people with a razor. Naturally, the mock burial causes problems for Machine, who is actually a living, breathing being materialized out of the novels and seeking vengeance by killing everyone who knows Thad. There is a novel twist revolving around Thad and Machine that I will not disclose.

For ambience and a feverish sense of mood (complemented by the occasional use of Elvis' song "Are You Lonesome Tonight?"), "The Dark Half" maintains a sense of unrelenting gloom and doom (hey, it is George A. Romero at the wheel here). Unfortunately, a lot of the film has the standard slasher fare that feels out of context with the theme of duality and an artist's obligation to move on beyond schlock commercialized novels and segue to "real" novels that have something to say (the kind that don't sell). Hutton does a good job of playing both the nonplussed writer and the demonic rock and roll killer from the novels but I sense the depth has been left out of the screenplay. Aside from losing all of Thad's friends and acquaintances to a rampaging killer, the movie never toys with the differences between fiction and reality and Machine (who calls himself George Stark, Thad's pseudonym) is left to be nothing but a cartoonish psycho from dime-store novels. When even Amy Madigan and the do-gooder cop (Michael Rooker) do not seem alarmed by millions of sparrows that would've frightened Hitchcock (not to mention the sight of a decomposing, bandaged killer), then the filmmakers have lost me and my interest. "The Dark Half" is often disquieting and entrancing but it lacks any significant purpose.