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| This is what the Nickelodeon vault looked like in the mid 90s... a swirling vat of luminous green liquid that many people cowered around and studied. |
We are steaming through October 2020, y'all. Quarantine is hitting hard and limiting total "fun" time outside, but it is allowing a lot of time for watching horror movies, especially some good ol' John Carpenter movies. Hopefully my tribute here is just what the doctor ordered for your quarantine movie viewing needs, and today's entry is yet another spooky tale that's high on the rankings.
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| Some will think this looks less spooky and more like a Walmart Halloween decoration |
Skipping over Starman (which I haven't seen) and Big Trouble in Little China (which I've only seen once, unfortunately), we arrive in 1987. This year, John Carpenter wrote and directed a sinister religious thriller kind of in the same vain as a William Peter Blatty novel: This is Prince of Darkness, a movie that teaches us that while God is cool, there's an Anti-God made of Nickelodeon slime that's chilling in an 16th century Catholic church that nobody knew about ever. Carpenter became inspired for the project while researching theoretical physics and atomic theory. He recalled, "I thought it would be interesting to create some sort of ultimate evil and combine it with the notion of matter and anti-matter." This idea, which would eventually develop into the screenplay for Prince of Darkness, was to be the first of a multi-picture deal with Alive Pictures, where Carpenter was allocated $3 million per picture and complete creative control. Carpenter wrote the screenplay but was credited as "Martin Quatermass", because Carpenter I believe at one point stated he thought it was pretentious for his name to pop up over and over again.
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| When you catch yourself humming along to "Mommy Shark" |
So what is Prince of Darkness about? Well there's only one way to find out. If it's your first time here, I'm about to walk you through the whole movie. If you want to watch the movie first so as to avoid spoilers, stop reading now and do so. If not? Let's move on!
The movie starts out as a priest (Donald Pleasence) invites quantum physicist Professor Howard Birack (Victor Wong) and his students to join him in the basement of a monastery belonging to "The Brotherhood of Sleep", an old order who communicate through dreams. The priest requires their assistance in investigating a mysterious cylinder containing a swirling green liquid. Among the thirteen academics present are wise-cracking Walter (Dennis Dun), demure Kelly (Susan Blanchard), and lovers Brian Marsh (Jameson Parker) and Catherine Danforth (Lisa Blount). They decipher text found next to the cylinder which describes the liquid as the corporeal embodiment of Satan. The liquid appears sentient. The academics use a computer to analyze the books surrounding it, and find that they included differential equations. Over a period of two days, small jets of liquid escape from the cylinder. Members of the group exposed to the liquid... much to the same effect the poor souls on Nickelodeon were exposed to their liquid... and become possessed by the entity, attacking the others. Anyone attempting to leave is killed by the growing mass of enthralled schizophrenic homeless people who surround the building, led by a long-black-haired, scruffy creepy looking fellow by the name of Alice Cooper. No really... that Alice Cooper.
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| "I have a message for your... and you're not going to like it... Liberty Mutual bundles home and auto insurance plans, so you only pay for what you need." |
Birack and the priest theorize that Satan is actually the offspring of an even more powerful force of evil, the "Anti-God", who is bound to the realm of anti-matter. The survivors find themselves sharing a recurring dream, which they later deduce is a tachyon transmission from the future... the future a demonic voice states is "one-nine-nine-nine"... or the year 1999. HA! "Future". Anyway... showing a shadowy figure emerging from the front of the church. The hazy transmission changes slightly with each occurrence of the dream, revealing progressively more detail. The narration of the transmission each time instructs the dreamer that they are witnessing an actual broadcast from the future, and they must prevent this possible outcome. Walter, trapped in a closet, witnesses the possessed bring the cylinder to a sleeping Kelly. It opens itself and the remaining liquid absorbs into Kelly, transforming her into the physical vessel of Satan: a gruesomely disfigured being, with powers of telekinesis and regeneration. I'm not really sure where the regeneration comes into play, because her skin continues to fall apart as the story goes on and yet no healing in sight. Oh well... maybe she's just a very selfless Prince of Darkness. Kelly attempts to summon the Anti-God through a dimensional portal using a mirror, but the mirror is too small and the effort fails.
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| "Oh man, if John finds out I spilled a whole box of Goldfish in there, he is going to be so pissed." |
While the rest of the team is occupied fighting the possessed, Kelly finds a larger wall mirror and draws the Anti-God's hand through it. Danforth, the only one free to act, tackles Kelly, causing both of them to fall through the portal. The priest then shatters the mirror with an axe, trapping Kelly, the Anti-God, and Danforth in the other realm. Danforth is seen briefly on the other side of the mirror reaching out to the portal before it closes. Immediately, the possessed die, the street people wander away, and the survivors (Marsh, Walter, Birack, and the priest) are rescued. As soon as the ordeal finishes, Marsh has the recurring dream again, except now Danforth... who is apparently possessed... is the figure emerging from the church, after all this time! Marsh awakens and finds Kelly, gruesomely disfigured, lying in bed with him. This is shown to be another dream... and he awakens screaming. Rising, he approaches his bedroom mirror, hand outstretched, not knowing if he is in our realm or the Anti-realm...
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| "Wait, did Alice go through wardrobe?" "Nope." "Wow, he's good." |
So that's Prince of Darkness. A more obscure entry in John Carpenter's filmography, but I actually find it fascinating in that it's a totally original, albeit bizarre, idea. To think there's a father of Satan out there much more powerful than he is, and also to have a grounding in the field of science. I love the deduction behind it all, having to bring a team of students into a church and figuring out what is happening, who the Anti-God is and where He comes from. That's another thing; once again John Carpenter uses a single setting for the majority of his pictures, isolating his characters in one place so that they can't escape. The homeless people outside creating the barrier and keeping our characters cornered in one locale to fight evil; it never gets old, and I love that he kept finding new and creative ways to do it.
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| This guy was supposed to be in college. Forget the fact he's clearly thirty-five and stalking college chicks. |
As for the characters, I like the adult characters, but some of the college characters you can tell were written to be pretty forgettable. I get you have to have stock characters or throwaway characters in a slasher movie. If the movie took the time to get you acquainted with every character, regardless of who it was going to kill or not kill, each slasher movie would be like three hours long. If Peter Jackson started directing horror movies, that's what we'd get... but in terms of characters I liked, there's Donald Pleasance as the Priest, because who wouldn't? Though, he is very Sam Loomis'y in the role of the Priest. It feels like the part was written with him mind, and he'd be more fit to run around in a beige trench coat with a nickel-plated revolver screaming "HE'S PURE EVIL EVERYBODY!! PUUUURE EVIL!!" I also like Victor Wong as Professor Birack, he's inquisitive and demanding. Victor Wong also played Walter, a shop owner in Tremors, one of my all time favorite black-comedy/sci-fi movies.
As usual, the cinematography is brilliant, and it comes from that Panavision feel John Carpenter gives all of his movies. The setting outside of the church has kind of a sepia look to it, if you ask me, giving us a very dusty, western like setting. The inside of the church meanwhile is very clean, but gothic and eerie. You get two conflicting looks to the film that way, and it juxtaposes itself quite nicely. If you haven't watched Prince of Darkness, add it to your list. It's another slasher masterpiece... a "Slash-terpiece", if you will... by the man himself. It's a more obscure entry, but runtime for the film certainly isn't an issue at only an hour and forty-one minutes. Give it a try! It's a twisted take on mixing religion and science-fiction into the ultimate terror!
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