That's the atmosphere and monster. Here are the characters and story:
The dead woman was the daughter of horror novelist Roy Warner (William Devane). Devane has made a career out of playing clean-cut authority figures, but here he is scruffy and long-haired, as befits a horror novelist. Naturally, Roy Warner has also done prison for manslaughter, his novels are "nothing but blood and gore," and he lives in a pricey Hollywood Hills house.
Hey, aren't ALL horror novelists fabulously rich felons who only write blood and gore? (As The Dark was released in 1979, I assume the "rich" part was modeled on someone's idea of Stephen King.)
Roy Warner is one of The Dark's more original characters, as the film is a parade of stereotypes. We have two cops assigned to catch the killer. One's a clean-cut straight-arrow (Richard Jaeckel), the other's a pudgy slob (Biff Elliot) forever dripping donut filling. This allows for the usual comic relief, as when Jaeckel tells Elliot to "buy a bib."
Hey, that's funny stuff.
(Okay, let's not judge too harshly. The critically acclaimed Hill Street Blues was still recycling cop/donut jokes years after The Dark.)
The Dark has the usual Police Captain (Warren J. Kemmerling) who gets heat from the mayor, hates the press, and wants to "keep a tight lid" on events. You've met him in many a Kolchak episode. When one cop suggests the killer is a "zombie," the Captain explodes: "Zombie! Mangler! I don't want to hear any of that!"
The Dark also has a bizarre gypsy fortune teller, a midget newspaper vendor (more comic relief), and jive-talking blacks (one of them wearing a puffy denim pimp cap). Philip Michael Thomas (Miami Vice) has a bit part as an angry young black man. In fact, the Internet Movie Database credits Thomas as "Angry Young Black Man." This is noteworthy, because the film credits refer to Thomas' character as: "Corn Rows."
Well, his hair IS in corn rows.
Cathy Lee Crosby (That's Incredible) plays Zoe, a crusading TV reporter. And yes, although hired for her looks, she's tired of covering fluff, and wants to do hard news in "the big league."
Zoe's supposed to be bright, but she's not very. At least not as written. Zoe pontificates that it's "ironic" that the daughter of a horror novelist (who trades in gore) was killed in gory fashion. Warner accuses Zoe of implying that it was "poetic justice." Zoe insists she meant ironic, but that's because she's illiterate. Irony requires incongruity, so it would have been ironic if Warner's books had promoted peace.
I don't think the screenwriter intended Zoe to be illiterate, but she is.
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