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 Carpenter certainly knows how to set the mood. Artistic combination of soundtrack and story. Loses only one star for very minor storyline haze, but all in all, a fun and spooky time. Creepy folks and special effects. For even more fun, buy some of that green "slime" they sell in novelty stores and huck it on your buddies in the middle the movie... They'll love that.
Carpenter has been working with smaller than normal budgets for his genre films for so long, I don't know what he'd make of a large budget film. Starman and The Thing are exceptions to the rule. While the latter did quite well, the former tanked at the box office. The modest returns on his unique, quirky genre films have kept him doing what he does best but with less than unimaginative directors. Perhaps that's all for the best. Some of his best films have been low or medium budgeted films. It allows Carpenter a freedom to do what he wants without much interference. Try and seek out his under rated but nicely done remake of Children of the Damned.
Said heroes are a bunch of not particularly heroic mainly science postgrad students under the uncertain leadership of Victor Wong's physics professor. The latter gets a trifle annoying with his thoroughly daft wordsurfing through half-baked soundbites taking in everything from quantum mechanics to Godel's Theorem. Happily, however, he realizes the folly of getting too close to any sort of paranormal phenomemon without taking a completely bonkers Catholic priest along and the principle reason why this is such a joy is that the latter role is one of Donald Pleasance's finest hours. This is vintage John Carpenter at his most exuberant, with his signature bass-heavy self-composed rock score and relentless pacing. The balance between a measure of real suspense and a tongue firmly lodged in cheek is accomplished far more surely than it was a decade later in Wes Craven's mildly amusing but increasingly tiresome Scream franchise.
I like horror films, and I like John Carpenter's stuff a lot (I DO get tired of his extremely mediocre soundtracks). The problem with "Prince of Darkness" is that it's VERY typical of the mid-eighties horror film and Carpenter didn't find the inspiration to make it special like he does sometimes. The cast looks like somebody took the actors of just about every other John Carpenter film of the preceding decade, put them in a pot and dumped them into the movie without bothering to give them new characters to play. Mostly they go through the motions in a less than convincing way. The most convincing job comes from the bugs that explode out of one guy's neck as his head falls off (I mean you REALLY believe those bugs wanted out of that guy's body the way they crawl out of there). In all seriousness, it's not THAT bad (but it's close), but if you haven't seen it, rent it first just to be sure it's your kind of horror movie before you buy it. |
One of John Carpenter's under rated minor classics, Prince of Darkness suffered due to a relatively low budget, some underwhelming performances (although the late Donald Pleasance is, as usual, outstanding). What if the Devil had been captured and sealed in a cylindrical chamber. Science wants to understand the essence of evil without letting him escape. Unfortuantely, he's slipping out here and there to raise havoc. 
When I saw this movie as a teenager, it scared the bejeesuz out of me in broad daylight. Maybe it was a small town religeous upbringing or maybe I was just a little wussy-boy, but it certainly didn't pack the same punch 14 years later.
