Prince of Darkness

Film: Price of Darkness
Genre: Horror
Director: John Carpenter
Year: 1987
Starring: Donald Pleasance, Victor Wong, & Jameson Parker




As I stated in my Vampires review, John Carpenter is one of the film autuers who's heyday was in the late seventies and early eighties. Sometimes autuers would try and attempt different genres in each of their films, or different subgenres of one specific field. For the most part, Carpenter is known for his horror films, or horror sci-fi works. Prince of Darkness is Carpenter's "haunted house" film, in a similar vein as House on Haunted Hill, and House of Wax (not the one with a certain hotel heir.)

In Los Angeles in 1987, a priest who lives in an abandoned church dies protecting a horrible secret that had been held for two-thousand years. Upon the discovery of a key the dead priest kept with him, another priest (Donald Pleasance) takes a professor of metaphysics (Victor Wong) to investigate a strange canister that resides in the old church. Wong brings in a team consisting of his students, and a group of scientists to properly research the over-sized lava lamp. Over the course of the night the liquid within the canister starts to react, and brings about a world of evil upon the church, turning people into zombies, mirrors into portals, and a rather large amount of creepy crawlies.

With this being made in the latter half of the eighties, it was made by Carpenter past his prime. But, the film still has a creepy atmosphere like The Fog and The Thing, where Carpenter is king, and brings to the table whenever possible. Along with his signature long shots, the film also contains those practice effects similar to those in Big Trouble in Little China, and The Thing, but at a much smaller scale. With the more subtle effects, the audience can focus more on the characters, rather than the blood splats and body effects.

Though the atmosphere is great, the writing and acting can be lacking. You get the feeling that the old church is supposed to be creepy, you are not exactly sure why it is there. However you do understand what is in the canister, but was a whole the idea of what it is doing is left largely unanswered. There is where many critics found fault in the film, but let us think about this for a bit. Isn't that the point? To be left in dark, not knowing what it is that is trying to kill you and use your body as a vessel of evil, and marmalade. Also, the bugs in this film are actual insects, unlike today where they are just slapped on the film with Photoshop or a migrant worker. With actual crawlies, audiences are far more likely to be creeped out with real things, than with digital things (scientific terms, these are.)

Memorable moments:

• A zombie played by rocker Alice Cooper kills a scientist by stabbing him with half of a bicycle. (a murder unseen in any other movie. (to my knowledge anyways.))

• The shot where someone first goes though a mirror into the alternate world, where the absolute evil is held. Though the effects are simple, the basic image of two fingers appearing in shinning darkness is striking, and truly gives an other-worldly feel.