Spooktober III Review 17: Prince of Darkness

Prince of Darkness (1987)
John Carpenter

"You will not be saved by the holy ghost. You will not be saved by the god Plutonium. In fact, YOU WILL NOT BE SAVED"

Would you believe me if I told you there were still two John Carpenter films I had never seen? Well, it's true, and it's even worse than that: up until a few weeks ago, I hadn't even heard of them. And while I wish I was talking about Memoirs of an Invisible Man or Escape from LA, I'm referring to a couple of supposedly underrated horror classics, Prince of Darkness and In the Mouth of Madness (stay tuned).

Carpenter is one of my favorite filmmakers ever. He's got an iconoclastic and counter-cultural viewpoint while also possessing real filmmaking chops, which is something that is rarer and rarer to find in our postmodern Hellworld. As an example, let's compare a couple of films that I feel have very similar purposes, but are handled in two distinct ways. One is The Post, a film about the publishing of the Pentagon Papers. Sure it's a historical political drama about the Nixon administration, but it was released to capitalize on the liberal fetishization of mainstream journalism and to wag a finger at the illiterate fascists in the White House (who will never see it ever). The other is They Live, which John Carpenter made to put a cherry on top of the horror that was the Reagan years in America. Instead of creating some one-to-one historical drama about Iran Contra or whatever, Carpenter told us all what we needed to hear: we are being ruled by violent and grotesque monsters through capitalism and mass media, and we need to destroy it all.

One film made $150 million. The other made $10 million. One is the movie equivalent of a bad Doonesbury comic strip. The other is like a Hieronymous Bosch triptych featuring Rowdy Roddy Piper. One is shit; the other is art.

But this isn't a look at the innumerable ways John Carpenter is a far better filmmaker than Steven Spielberg. We're here to talk about 1987's Prince of Darkness.

What it's about: A recently closed Catholic church in the bad part of town is harboring a dark secret (uh, no, not that). Deep within the labyrinthine bowels of the church is the lair of a mysterious Catholic sect known as the Brotherhood of Sleep, whose existence is kept a secret even from Rome. There they keep vigil over a strange sealed vessel filled with swirling green goo. A scientific research team, hired by the last of this secret order, sets up shop to investigate the strange nature of this ancient vessel, and hopefully prevent the apocalypse.

What's interesting: You can immediately tell this is a John Carpenter film, and I mean immediately. Even before the credits start, the minimalist keyboard music begins to play, and you get that warm and comforting feeling that strange madness is sure to follow.

This is also a slow burn of a film, at least at the beginning. The credits go on for, no joke, 15 minutes. It's done interstitially between threads of seemingly unconnected plot and characters (a catholic priest here, a college professor there, a dude with a sick mustache everywhere), so it takes a while to get a feel for what the narrative is going to become. Things pick up nicely once we get into the church and start learning about the mysterious vessel, but the first act feels needlessly bloated.

The story is a nice blend of metaphysical nonsense and religious mumbo jumbo. Carpenter is clearly intrigued by end of the world stuff, and creates a harmonious marriage between religion and science by making Jesus a space alien who tries to put us on the right path (yes, really) and Satan an anti-particle to God. It's weird, heady stuff, but done in a pop-science kind of way. Like something Lovecraft would have come up with if advanced theoretical physics existed in the 1920's.

Once the vessel opens up and starts spraying its green juice into the mouths of the research team, the movie takes on a more standard Carpenter flavor. As soon as a human being gets juiced, they become mindless servants to the green fluid, killing and maiming all those who oppose the triumph of the juice. At one point, a grad student tries to leave, and a couple of the juiced up zombies turn him into a pile of beetles. Another has his neck snapped. A third slashes his own throat with a bit of jagged wood. The deaths are generally creepy and fun.

One of the poor students bumps her arm while looking at the vessel, and develops a strange mark on the resultant bruise. This means that she's the chosen one, and becomes the de facto leader of the juice zombies. Also her flesh melts off, so that's cool.

And after wading through the shit lake that is Halloweens 4 through 6, it was nice to see Donald Pleasence in a film where he's actually trying, and seems to be putting forth a solid effort. Prince of Darkness only came out a year before Halloween 4, but he seems 10 years younger. You can tell he enjoys working with Carpenter, and vice versa, which is good to see.

Other films I thought of: Hmm, I dunno. Is there another John Carpenter movie about a bunch of characters trapped in an enclosed space, trying to prevent a globally cataclysmic event from happening, all while being menaced by villains who look human? If there is, please email me and let me know.

Miscellany: John Carpenter's fascination with the homeless (which would continue strongly in the following year's They Live) is well represented in Prince of Darkness. An army of "street people" descend on the church, drawn toward the power of the juice, and they violently prevent anyone from trying to leave the church before the great juicing takes place. One of the street people (listed in the credits as 'Street Schizo') is none other than Alice Cooper. He says absolutely nothing throughout the film, but he does impale a man with half of a bicycle. Reading through IMDB, it sounds like he just wanted to hang out on set since he was a big Carpenter fan, but was invited to play one of the characters.

Recommendation: If you're a fan of John Carpenter: absolutely. Like I said, it's a little slow to get going, but the third act rules, and there's enough B-movie weirdness in the middle to keep things interesting. It's a broader meta-story than most of his other films, and there's not really a hero to speak of, but it's still a very Carpenter film. It's not one of his best, but it's certainly underrated or at least under-viewed.

Unremarkably good