Prince of Darkness Movie Review

Posted by: MacReady

After working with major studios ("The Thing", "Christine", "Starman" and "Big trouble in little China"), gagged by studiobosses ideas and not having the expected blockbuster, John Carpenter returned to his beginnings. Well O.K., with a budget of 3 Million dollars (with this money Halloween could have been filmed 10 times) not to the very beginning. But back to a status, where he had total control of his films again. This freedom was part of a contract JC made with Alive Films (AF was financially secured by the company Carolco, who had big success with Stallone and Schwarzenegger movies in the mid 80â€™s) . The contract was made for a few movies and gave JC absolute control over his movies again. Only restriction was the tight budget.

The first two movies were "Prince of Darkness" and "They Live" (very nice review done by Manwithagun (you can read it by clicking here) The others never were filmed, because these 2 also didnâ€™t do good at the box office and the contract got terminated.

"Prince of Darkness" is the typical story of good against evil. The script was written by Martin Quatermass (OK John, we know you love the old masters/"Quatermass"-books by Nigel Kneale are true science-fictionjewels). JC also made the music (again together with Alan Howard), which really fits perfect to the movie. Because of his cameramen Dean Cundey and Donald Morgan getting too expensive (after DC photographed "Roger Rabbit" his price really got highsky and DM made more money at shooting commercials), JC engaged Gary B. Kibbe who was camera-assistant on "Big trouble in little China". Enough background (coming back to it later), letâ€™s look at the story:

Deep in the vaults of an old church, a catholic priest (Donald Pleasance) discovers a mysterious vessel. Itâ€™s filled with a green, moving fluid. Itâ€™s the legacy of an old extinct sect: "The Brotherhood of Sleep". Knowing he found something special, the priest contacts Prof. Birack (Victor Wong). Promising better grades for their next exams, Birack takes his elite students on a weekend tour of science to the church. Trying to find out the secret behind the vessel, whatever it may be.

Every one of the students has his own special field, in which she/he is an expert. Which is necessary to solve the puzzle of this strange object. They come to the result, that the vessel is over 7 million years old, the fluid is alive and has telepathic and psychokinetic abilities. After encoding old Coptic hieroglyphs they proof the most inconceivable. Satan himself is locked in this vessel !

If the scientists would have taken a better look at the zombie like people (Lead by Alice Cooper, who i saw live in Vienna on the 23rd of June. WOW ! Heâ€™s 56 and still showing those youngsters how to rock !) outside the church, maybe they would have guessed that something is not as it should be. Also everyone of the group has the same dream. Seeing the outside of the church with a dark human-shape at the door, a voice which tells them that they receive a video massage from the future, sent with tachions. And just when the shape walks out into the light, before they see the face, and just before they hear the complete massage (which tells them the year from which it was sent), they wake up.

And now the nightmare really begins. The fluid opens the vessels lock (like I wrote -> psychokinetic) which is located at the "inside", and begins to "drop" on the ceiling. First drop by drop and later flowing.
One of the female scientists is the first victim. As she enters the vault, a jet of fluid is spit into her mouth. This mutates her into a possessed servant of Satan. Now she also has the ability to infect people. She and the new recruited serve their master well. One after another gets possessed. Bad there is no escaping for the victims, because now the servants on the outside get active, blocking every possible escape route. The fight "good against evil" is here to be fought.

Like always, Iâ€™m not going to write down the whole movie, or all the little sideways of the story. But believe me, it ends like a typical Carpenter movie. What really is cool about this film, is that the scientific stuff truly is proofed. The theoretical travel through time, from Tachions (subatomaric particles) of the future travel to the past/present, really exists. All the antic languages and books were real (organized by Richard Kern who was student of antic Languages at the UCLA). Also the differential equations shown on the computer screens, were real and "correct" (a fellow student of nuclear-physics took care of that).

The make up was really nice done. I donâ€™t have to mention that there are a lot of nice, bloody scenes. But the movie is not a typical splatter movie, it just shows some harder scenes also. The main part i like about the movie is definitely the story, because of the scientific features and the nice ending: "Weâ€™re transmitting from the year â€¦â€¦"

At a scale 1-10 (10 best) this movie gets 8 points.

Runtime: approx. 102 min
Rated: R in the US, 18 (min. age) in most other countries

Editors Note: Thanks to Macready for another Fantastic review. You can discuss this with him where he posted on our Horror Boards here