In honor of the witching season, we’ll profile a new Halloween-centric title every day throughout the month of October.
GUYS…THIS IS A JOKE…THIS IS CACA.
Article by Adam Mast
PRINCE OF DARKNESS (R)-1987
Piggybacking on yesterday’s title, THE OMEN, comes an entirely different look at Satan and his attempt at crossing into our world. This one comes courtesy of the great John Carpenter, and it is, perhaps, the filmmaker’s most polarizing work. Carpenter fans either love it or hate it. There is very little in between. Obviously, I love it or you wouldn’t be seeing this title here in our Countdown to Halloween column.
In PRINCE OF DARKNESS, a team of college physicists join their professor (played by a lively Victor Wong) as they engage in a series of tests on an ancient vat of green swirling goo that rests in the dark and murky basement of a church in downtown L.A. What’s inside this cylinder-shaped vat, and more importantly, what the hell does it want? That’s at the very heart of this atmospheric gem from a filmmaking legend.
Listen…folks are drawn to specific movies for a myriad of different reasons and while I’m first to admit that PRINCE OF DARKNESS is strange and confounding in the way that its events unfold, it doesn’t matter. This movie is creepy in a big way and it positively oozes style.
I said it before and I’ll say it again; Whenever I watch a Carpenter film, there’s always something unmistakably Carpenter about it and PRINCE OF DARKNESS is certainly no different. The entire first half of the movie is a set up; An introduction to these intellectual college students with all their crazy “cat in the box” theories and agnostic sentiment. Everything can be explained through science, but when these individuals arrive in the basement of the church and get a taste of the evil trying to break its way into our world, even they begin to question their own thought process.
The science vs. religion debate is one of the most fascinating elements of this picture. And even though PRINCE OF DARKNESS dips more into the “evil is real” side of things, science plays an important role in the movie.
PRINCE OF DARKNESS is methodically paced. The set-up lasts nearly 45 minutes but it makes the second half of the picture all the more terrifying and the entire film is punctuated by an ominous sense of dread. The same sort of dread that flows throughout Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD and Donner’s THE OMEN. And the entire film has an extra layer of ambience brought to life by way of Carpenter’s masterful score–possibly the most underappreciated of his illustrious career.
So much great stuff in this movie. From the possessed homeless community-led by a wonderfully effective Alice Cooper, to Dennis Dunn’s frantic escape from a confessional, to Donald Pleasence’s tear-filled plea to God, to Anne’s horrific transformation, to a simple but eerily effective look at “the other side,” to the brutal ending, to the sinister locale that houses the majority of the terrifying action, PRINCE OF DARKNESS is a misunderstood work of horror from the genre’s greatest craftsman.
*The header of this piece is a line of dialogue from the film and I went with it because sadly, it sums up the opinion of many a Carpenter fan when it comes to the grossly underappreciated PRINCE OF DARKNESS. If you decide to purchase it, be sure to pick up the Shout Factory Collector’s Edition!
COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN
October 16th- “The Omen” – Click Here
October 15th-“Dawn of the Dead”– Click Here
October 14th- Student Bodies”–Click Here
October 13th-“Habit”–Click Here
October 12th- “The Twilight Zone” – Click Here
October 11th- “Creepshow” – Click Here
October 10th-“Shaun of the Dead“-Click Here
October 9th-“Invasion of the Body Snatchers”– Click Here
October 8th-“The Final Girls”–Click Here
October 7th-“Something Wicked This Way Comes”–Click Here
October 6th- “We Are Still Here”–Click Here
October 5th-“Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn”–Click Here
October 4th- “Phantom of the Paradise“-Click Here
October 3rd-“Poltergeist“-Click Here
October 2nd-“The Babadook“-Click Here
October 1st-“John Carpenter’s The Thing“-Click Here
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