Stalker (1979 film) of the "Time Out Film Guide" has compared "Stalker" to Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now", also released in 1979, and argued that "as a journey to the heart of darkness" "Stalker" looks "a good deal more persuasive than Coppola's." As well, "Slant Magazine" reviewer Nick Schager has praised the film as an "endlessly pliable allegory about human consciousness". In Schager's view "Stalker" shows "something akin to the essence of what man is made of: a tangled knot of memories, fears, fantasies, nightmares, paradoxical impulses, and a yearning for something that's simultaneously beyond our reach and yet intrinsic to every one
Kurtz (Heart of Darkness) Marlon Brando), based on Conrad's character, who has gone rogue far up a river, deep in the Southeast Asian jungle. The script acknowledges "Heart of Darkness" as a source of information, and the last words of Colonel Kurtz, "The horror! The horror!", echo those of his namesake in the novel. In the mostly poorly received 1994 TNT version of the story directed by Nicolas Roeg, Kurtz, who has gone insane and is now doing the most horrible and blasphemous deeds, was portrayed by John Malkovich. The video game "" (2010) features a character in many ways similar to Kurtz; a