Trivia / The Dark (1979)

• Completely Different Title:
  • Brazil: Los Angeles Terror
  • France: Nights of Violence
  • Portugal: The Killing Shadow
• Executive Meddling: As mentioned on Follow the Leader below, the monster was changed from a zombie to an alien (with the bare minimum effort). This was a request from the producers to cash in on the popularity of space-themed movies at the time.
• Follow the Leader: When Tropes Are Tools, this is an example of tropes being bad: it started life as a "killer zombie" film but changes were made mid-production to have the killer zombie be a killer alien (to exploit the sci-fi craze started by Star Wars and Alien) and added (very crappy) laser effects to the kill scenes.
• Mid-Development Genre Shift: The Mangler was intended to be (depending on which source you consult) either a zombie, or an oversized, mentally handicapped person who went on a rampage (hence his being dressed in normal human clothes). But the producers turned it into a sci-fi film partway through production by rewriting the monster to be an alien and adding cheap special effects.
• Similarly Named Works: With a 2005 supernatural horror film.
• What Could Have Been: Tobe Hooper was the original director but was fired early in production, as the producers weren't satisfied with his slow working pace.