Straight Into Darkness

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The story of Straight Into Darkness revolves around two US soldiers, the young Losey (Ryan Francis) and the wild-eyed Deming (Scott MacDonald). Both have been posted to Germany during the final days of World War II, both have deserted their units, and both have been arrested and are being transported to face court martial. A roadside explosion disrupts this journey, leaving the prisoners and their wounded captors trapped in a snow-caked minefield, before Losey and Deming make their escape. While this technically means the uneasy duo are once again free man, they also now find themselves lost deep in dangerous territory, with no obvious route to safety.

Just how dangerous that territory is swiftly becomes apparent. Straight Into Darkness writer-director Jeff Burr portrays a German nation that was collapsing as surely and as fatally as its war effort was during this period, with small factions roaming the snow-caked countryside, abominable acts stemming from the desperate shortage of supplies. At times, the journey of Losey and Deming feels as much like a descent into hell as anything else, as they happen upon a wood littered with hanged bodies, and a cracked clergyman who has taken up cannibalism. Not that Deming and Losey are paragons of sanity and good judgement themselves. Losey continually loses himself in snatched sunny memories of his pre-war days, while Deming shows distinct signs of psychotic tendencies.

Those tendencies come bursting to the surface when the two soldiers take shelter in a run down building and capture an older couple. Deming takes a lascivious interest in the woman, Maria, to the distaste even of his cohort Losey. But before Deming can follow through on his base urges, he and Losey find themselves surrounded and outgunned by a unit of kiddie commandos. These armed youngsters are the original residents of the building, which was an “orphanage for special children” before the outbreak of war.

Maria and the old man, Deacon, ran the orphanage and have since tried to ensure the juveniles' survival by equipping them with guns, even providing firearms to the young boy with no legs, who speedily scampers round on his hands, and the girl who hides behind an expressionless mask, like Edith Scob from Georges Franju's Les Yeux sans Visage. The children's self-preservation skills are put to the test though when a German battalion shows up and attempts to capture the orphanage. They are forced to turn to their American prisoners, all banding together to mount a defiant, Alamo-style defence of the structure.

The man behind Straight Into Darkness, Jeff Burr, is best known as a horror filmmaker, having previously taken charge on the fourth and fifth Puppet Master movies, as well as The Stepfather II (which is available to watch here on Indie Movies Online for users based in the UK and Australia). Burr was also responsible for Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, supposedly beating out a young Peter Jackson for a gig that saw him directing Jackson's future LOTR star, Viggo Mortensen. But despite this horror background, Burr admitted in an interview with Icons of Fright that Straight Into Darkness was one of the two films of which he was most proud to have made (the other was Eddie Presley, which features cameos from Bruce Campbell and Quentin Tarantino).

Having said that, Burr's experience in the horror genre does come across in Straight Into Darkness, with the wartime tale possessing a heightened atmosphere of extremity in terms of the characters and the actions depicted. There is an air of unreality about the waking nightmare endured by the tormented Losey, but – given the insanity of war in general, and in particular the latter stages of World War II – the crazed, intense atmosphere feels appropriate.

Horror fans will pick up another far more minor link too, when Deming yells, “I am the conqueror worm!” as he makes his final stand against the German troops. Seeing as he is bellowing this in 1945, the unhinged soldier must be referring to the Edgar Allen Poe poem. However, the minds of genre fans will very likely reel straight to 1968's The Conqueror Worm, the US title of the final film from cult British director Matthew Reeves, which was known as Witchfinder General on UK shores. As it happens, two cult actors actually put in appearances in Straight Into Darkness, with Deacon and Maria being respectively played by David Warner (The Omen, Tron, Time Bandits) and Linda Thorson (Tara King in TV's The Avengers).