A Light in the Darkness

Product Description After years of incarceration at the state mental hospital, a madman is set free to return home. But once he returns to his hometown, Taylor Melnick finds that the madness that haunts him originated from his home life with Mother. Suddenly the town is afraid for their lives and that sets in motion a web of betrayal, intrigue, lust and murder. This is the harrowing story of Taylor Melnick s last days on earth. Review A review snippet on the back of the DVD box recommends this supernatural thriller to anyone who liked Saw, Devil s Rejects, The Shining and other modern day horror movies. I think this film is better crafted than those and actually bears more in more in common with the movies about maternal dysfunction, including Hitchcocks Psycho, Friday the 13th and even Mommie Dearest. The film stars Matt Terzian as Taylor Melnick, a genius and released mental patient who is still haunted by visions of his cruel, overbearing mother (wonderfully portrayed by B-movie veteran Karen Black). If that s not enough to screw him up, he s got an alcoholic nympho (Troy Beyer) for a neighbor and an uncle (Geoffrey Lewis) with a severe gambling problem who has stolen pretty much all of his assets. But Melnick can t be too mad at Uncle Stanley, who has hired to work on an archaeological dig in the desert, a job hopes will help him achieve a semblance of normalcy. Of course, it s hard to be normal when your uncle contracts with thugs to have you dig in the wrong location, and when you re intuition leads you to the right place, the bones and Indian artifacts you exhume lead to visions about death and conversations with buried shamans. Compelling and stylish, A Light in the Darkness is, among other things, an entertaining low-budget exploration of the fine line between insanity and revelation. --MTV Headbangers Ball About the Actor Matt Terzian, Geoffrey Lewis (Outlaw Josey Wales, Every Which Way But Loose), Troy Beyer (BAPS, Gingerbread Man, John Q), Karen Black (Day of the Locust)