Review of Prince of Darkness (1987) by Ben E — 10 Jun 2012

Professor Edward Birack: There could be a limit as to what he can do as a volume of liquid. .

"It is evil. It is real. It is awakening.".

Signature Carpenter, though not even close to his best work. I managed to enjoy Prince of Darkness a great deal more than I should have. That tends to happen to me when I watch Carpenter movies. Even the ones that a lot of other people don't like, such as this and Village of the Damned, I get a great deal of satisfaction out of. Maybe it is that no matter what, when I'm watching a Carpenter film, I know I'm going to have fun. His stories are, for the most part, different and original. Maybe they aren't the most subtle horror films and maybe they aren't the most intelligent, but damn if they aren't entertaining, interesting, and a lot of fun. That's what I got from Prince of Darkness. The story isn't groundbreaking, but it is something, to some extent, that you will have never seen before. .

Carpenter uses an element he loves; that he has used several times in other films like The Thing, They Live, and Village of the Damned. He uses the supernatural taking over human bodies. The film revolves around an old church where a priest finds a cylinder containing a swirling green concoction. A team of scientists is brought in to figure out just what it is. The truth is dark and evil. The story isn't what you'd call terrifying, but Carpenter is able to get a certain amount of jolts and genuine creepiness out of the details. The scares are pretty standard, but every piece of this film has Carpenter's fingerprints all over it; so you know what you're getting. What I was getting was what I expected and pretty much what I wanted.

The cast is nothing special. There's some decent acting by actors I'm not familiar with and some terrible acting from actors no one should be familiar with. There are however two familiar faces to me. Donald Pleasance plays the priest, who Carpenter had used before in Halloween, and, although not in a speaking role, Alice Cooper as a taken over body. Like the cast nothing in the movie is overly great. It's all just decent and solid entertainment. If you are just a casual Carpenter fan and only like his largely successful films like Halloween and The Thing; you probably won't like this too much. But if you are like me, you will get a great deal of pleasure from watching anything Carpenter, and Prince of Darkness is no different. .

Not my favorite John Carpenter movie, and definitely nowhere near the best of the genre or of his work in general, but still a satisfying watch. I'd recommend this to the horror buffs and the hardcore Carpenter fans, although those two pretty much go hand in hand. I wouldn't recommend it to the casual fans of the genre or to causal Carpenter fans. It just wouldn't do it for them.