Prince of Darkness

Plot synopsis:
The movie opens with a dying priest clutching a metal box. The priest was protecting the box and soon it is found out why. The box contains a key that opens an area beneath a derelit church. The area contains a room that holds a terrifying secret.A Vicar (Donald Pleasence) begs for help from a professor called Howard Birack (Victor Wong) and a group of physics students to investigate this room and a mysterious cylinder in the basement of the derelict Los Angeles church. The cylinder contains a twisting, green gooey liquid. The students attending the experiment are Walter, Susan, Wyndham, Kelly, Lisa and Catherine. Among these people investigating this is a Metaphysican who is named in the film as Marsh (Jameson Parker). Next to the cylinder is a book inscribed in three different languages which they try to decypher.After reading the written passages found next to the cylinder, it is discovered that the liquid is actually Satan, the devil incarnate. The liquid itself appears to be a living organism, producing increasingly complex data that is revealed by computer decoding to include differential equations and sending the computers into data overload. One of the students decides to call it a night and is brutally murdered by a tramp (Alice Cooper) with part of a bicycle frame. Another student called Wyndham is brutally stabbed with scissors after having bugs crawl on his face and body.The next two days develops into something sinister, small jets of liquid escape the cylinder and possess the group one at a time, causing them to attack and incapacitate the remaining students. From outside Wyndham returns back from the dead and says he has a message from Satan for the rest of the group and just after he says the words: "You're not going to like it". His body erupts with beetles emerging from his body. He loses his head and more bugs crawl out until he whole body disolves and only his suit remains. A student called Conor tries to take his own life with a piece of stair bannister that he proceeds to jab into his throat.They try to escape the church and they are stopped outside by possessed homeless people who are trying to kill them. Birack and the Vicar soon start to realise that Satan is actually the son of an even more dangerous and powerful force of evil, the "Anti-God",who Satan plans to bring into this world and therefore damn it for eternity.The survivors that still remain find themselves sharing the same dream, apparently a subconcious vision that has been sent as a warning to not just the group but also mankind from the future year which is supposed to be taken in the year 1999 shows a distorted vision sequence of a shadowy figure emerging from the front of the church. The vision and the shadowy figure shown seem to change slightly with each and every reoccurance of the dream. A voice overheard as the vision plays out each time warns the 'dreamer' that they are witnessing an actual broadcast from the future and they must alter the course of events to prevent Satan from completing his evil plan.Eventually, the cylinder is opened and the entire gooey substance is entered orally into the body of Kelly, one of the students who becomes the ultimate incarnate of Satan: A gruesomely disfigured being, with powers of Telekinesis and regeneration, who attempts to bring the Anti-God through a dimensional portal using a powder puff mirror. A task that he fails at first because the mirror is too small to bring his father into the human world. Realising his mistake, Satan finds a larger wall mirror, and begins to pull the Anti-god's hand through it as most of the group are immobilised in fights with the other possessed members.Catherine Danforth (Lisa Blount), who Marsh is in love with, begins to sob. She doesn't know what to do, whether to save Marsh from the possessed Conor or stop Satan's plan. She feels that seeing as she is the only one not immobilised like the others, decides to stop Satan's evil plan and tackles the possessed Kelly with both of them falling through the portal in the mirror. The Vicar then smashes the mirror with an axe, trapping Satan, the Anti-God and Catherine on the other side of the mirror. Catherine is seen briefly on the other side of the mirror reaching desperately out to the portal before it closes, leaving her in total darkness. Immediately the possessed drop dead and the homeless people who are no longer under Satan's spell walk away from the church. Walter sees this as an advange and runs away into the night. The survivors are rescued, feeling relieved that the evil has been prevented and the nightmare is over.At the end, Marsh has the recurring dream again, except that this time it's a possessed version of Catherine that is now the figure emerging from the front of the church as they all visioned earlier. He appears to awaken, and rolls over to find Catherine, gruesomely disfigured with her face covered with blood or what looks like bloody muscle instead of skin, lying in bed with him. He awakes, this time for real. Glistening with sweat, shocked and screaming, he gets up off the bed and approaches his bedroom mirror, hand outstretched. The film cuts to black just before his fingers touch the mirror, thus giving the audience the impression that the horror isn't over....

Tags: comedy, murder, paranormal, cult, good versus evil, psychedelic, philosophical, claustrophobic, romantic, suspenseful

Review:
In the same way that I see Prince of Darkness as Carpenter's best film, the haunting music throughout makes for his best work as a composer.
I love this film to death alongside with The Thing (1982) is the second installment in what Carpenter calls his "Apocalypse Trilogy", which began with The Thing (1982).It is one of my all time favorite supernatural horror flick from the 80's.
Filled with great direction,a wonderful cast,a creepy score and great special effects,Prince Of Darkness is John Carpenter at his best.Prince Of Darkness tells the of priest Father Loomis(Donald Pleasence)who has discovered a secret that has been hidden in a church for many years:a green container that is holding a green liquid that represents the Father of Satan,an Anti-God that is pure evil.
Now with the help of Physics teacher Professor Howard Birack(Victor Wong),his students and others Father Loomis has to stop the Anti-God or it will be doom for the world.Prince Of Darkness is a great solid Underrated Horror film that not only marked the return of John Carpenter to the Horror genre but to his low budget roots as well.
Prince Of Darkess is the second film in Carpenter's great Apocalypse Trilogy beginning with The Thing and ending with In The Mouth Of Madness and right from the opening credits Prince Of Darkness pulls you into a horrifying nightmare that gives you a sense of dread and such impending doom a scary movie that scares you with the feel of fright and death all around.
Susan Blanchard(Lisa)Peter Jason(Dr. Paul Leahy),Jesse Lawrence Ferguson(Caulder),Dirk Blocker(Mullins),Ann Yen(Lisa)and Anne Howard(Susan)give good performances as well.The direction by John Carpenter is brilliant,with Carpenter always moving the camera while using great angles and giving the film a dark and creepy atmosphere.
Wonderful make-up effects by Carrisosa.In final word,if you love John Carpenter or Horror films,you will love Prince Of Darkness,a scary and frightening Horror that is very underrated and is Carpenter at his best.
This is John Carpenter's most complex and underrated film.Prince of Darkness is an eerie, atmospheric, Lucio Fulci/HP Lovecraft style piece of Gothic horror that can hold it's own against any piece of sh*t horror movie that comes out now days about biblical horror (People who try now days usually come up with mindless Exocist 4:the Beginning bullsh*t).The story revolves around a priest and a group of scientists gather in an old church and try to solve mystery behind a vat of some green goo that just happens to be concentrated evil.Meanwhile, Alice Cooper and a whole sh*tload of homeless people stakeout outside the church and kill everyone who steps outside, and everyone inside is being turned into zombies.Donald Pleasance gives a phenomenal performance, and Victor Wong gives an equally good performance.John Carpenter's writing (under a pseudonym)is top notch this round,with a social commentary on the catholic religion that's equally as powerful as the commentary on 80s materialism in They Live.The only thing wrong with it is the real crappy make-up efx by Mark Shostram(except for the Satan b*tch,who looked pretty bad a$$).I remember when I used to read about this movie when I was a kid and how horrible reviews were on it.
Everybody made it out to be one of the worst movies ever made.Every review I read was all about how crappy the movie was.But they also said the same about The Thing, and that's considered to be one of the greatest horror films ever made.Maybe Prince of Darkness is just to intellectual for the American public.But after reading the reviews for it on this website, sounds like some people just don't understand the commentary and the complexity of the story,unless they're a true hardcore fan of John Carpenter like me.It's one of my absolute favorite John Carpenter movies and I'm telling you now,don't skip this movie,it's f*cking incredible..
I've just watched it on DVD, and I screamed twice, which is more than most horror films get out of me.This is the sort of thing that really scares me - demonic entities, bodily possession, slow burning tension and that nagging, ominous feeling that something horrible is happening just out of frame.All the more effective is the fact that the demoniacally possessed in this film look absolutely normal, right until they spray green gunk on your face.
Carpenter is tranquil with a good use of the widescreen format (Before the DVD era I hated those fullscreen editions on VHS and I went crazy looking for widescreen versions of some of his films because I think that with this director you lose a lot without the "black bars") but sure he can scare you if you put your mind off and let him get you into his world.
Prince of Darkness (1987) has to be one of the most boring horror films ever, John Carpenter really fails here, there's nothing good on offer, no excitement, no special effects, no gore, NOTHING!!!
If your a fan of Carpenter, then do yourself a favour and stick with "The Thing" or "Christine", at least they are exciting horror movies, with good special effects and interesting characters.Prince of Darkness is horribly boring and i can only award this film 1/10..
This is another one of my favorite movies of all time, it's kind of also my seventh favorite film from one of my favorite movie directors "John Carpenter" if you can believe that; and the second in his apocalypse trilogy.One of the things I always love about his films are how each film is always creatively different, this film no doubt is a different kind of sci-fi horror film you don't see every day.
It's true it seems like a wild concept, but the thing is we don't truly know what happened thousands of years ago in history, and of course there were the archeological findings of the Sumerian texts about a people called the Aunnaki which honestly made me thought twice about the faith I'm in; so who's really to say what is.But also, the plotline is kind of Lovecratian, just like in H.P.'s stories they were always about otherworldly threats but also carried a bit of an atheistic philosophy in which Lovecraft himself was, so the film sort of stays true on both matters.I like the protagonists, it's true there are two characters that are suppose to be the main leads played by Jameson Parker and Lisa Blont they do fine they serve their functions but to me their kind of the weak point of the film as both are uninteresting and two dimensional making them almost generic by their nature.
It really the three characters in the film that are the true main protagonists and thankfully have more than enough screen time to be that, which was a wise choice.All three are over course John Carpenter alumni, Dennis Dun is great, it sort of looks like that actor Reggie Lee from the TV show "Grimm" but isn't.
From the lighting, some of the seediness of the architecture, the long dark hallway which always gave me the creeps I honestly won't go down there unless I had a 12 gauge (characters in this film probably which they did).I really like some of the effects which are solid and really do add to the creepy vibe, from some good blood/gore effects, along with the big green ooze canaster where the dark prince resides which I'll admit looks like the ooze canaster from "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", hmmmm did John Carpenter read the comic book series.
The character never really comes forth till the end of the film, which is fine by me because here the dark prince is a force of evil from beginning to end, you really feel its presence as it's psychic influence is just creating an oppressive and evil atmosphere.There is a usual the feeling of isolation which is a common theme in Carpenter's films as we see in the third act the protagonists are literally on their own as no one really knows where they are, but are just stuck between a church and a hard place as the army of tranced people (in which Alice Cooper has a cameo role which is cool since I'm a fan of his music) are covering the outside, as well as those ooze zombies from inside that spray out ooze from their mouths; so either way their all fracked.Once scene that I found memorable and always chilled me is how the protagonists have these strange dreams that look like found footage (yeah this film sort of predated that sub-genre), we see the camera roughly moving on the church location and there is this voice that keeps saying "this is not a dream" and the camera pans to a dark figure.
It's like Carpenter couldn't make up his mind where he wanted to go, and by the time he did, it was too late either because of budget concerns or getting the film released on time.My original take on this flick was that a bunch of university students are called together to, perhaps, study the nature of evil from different perspectives.
There is an abandoned church in Los Angeles.A priest invites Professor Howard Birack and a group of academics and students to the basement of that church to investigate a mysterious cylinder.The cylinder contains some swirling, green liquid.Soon we find out the liquid is actually Satan himself.And soon the liquid starts possessing the members of the group.And no one is safe...Prince of Darkness (1987) is a horror/sci-fi film directed by John Carpenter.It's the second installment in Carpenter's Apocalypse Trilogy, which began with The Thing and concluded with In the Mouth of Madness.This is a good horror film.I saw it for the first time in the early 90's on VHS.The next time I saw it on TV in the year 2000 and just a few days ago on DVD.This is still a scary movie.When you see the bunch of possessed people on the street, and somebody trying to escape from those people.Or one covered with creepy-crawlies.I could mention many scenes that give you the creeps.The cast is good in this movie.The legendary Donald Pleasense portrays the priest.Jameson Parker is Brian Marsh.Victor Wong plays Prof.
I don't know, but it is unquestionably one of his best films.The plot centers on the last member of a religious sect, who dies with information on a long-kept secret residing in the basement of an abandoned Los Angeles church; Donald Pleasance (finishing his Wood/Lugosi-esquire collaboration with Carpenter) plays the unnamed priest who investigates, and eventually enlists the help of a local professor of metaphysics (an inspired Victor Wong) and a gaggle of college students to investigate...a large cylinder of swirling green goo.
Lisa Blount ("Dead & Buried"), Jameson Parker, and Dennis Dun (as a wisecracking, hilariously outspoken disbeliever) turn in the most memorable performances among the students; Wong, Pleasance, and Peter Jason ("Ghosts of Mars") fare well as the supervising adults; and Alice Cooper has a short but seriously creepy cameo as the leader of a bunch of possessed derelicts.Carpenter's imagery through the years has ranged from the understated (the relatively goreless, in-the-shadows menace of "Halloween" and "The Fog") to the outrageous (Rob Bottin's brilliant FX in "The Thing").
Prince of Darkness is another excellent fright fest from the master of horror which was unfairly nailed by critics and audience when first came out.Just like some other Carpenter masterpieces like the Thing and The fog;Prince of Darkness became a cult classic couple of years after it's release.The movie's by far the most intellectual effort of Carpenter.The movie's about a group of students led by their professor and a priest trying to prevent the dark lord set his father anti-god free and bring darkness instead of light.Sounds familiar right?Well,not quite.The fight between good and evil takes place in a church.Think about it;Satan trying to set his father anti-god free in a church!Quite controversial for a horror movie.But that's one of the reasons why we love Carpenter;he is a director who has no trouble of sharing his vision with the audience.He's a director with something to say.Besides that;the movie gives everything what we expect from the master.Great Carpenter style of storytelling,a very well written screenplay with some unpredictable twists,a unique atmosphere,good performances from some of the best character actors like Donald Pleasence,Victor Wong,Jameson Parker and Dennis Dun,(not to mention Alice Cooper)and a definite Carpenter ending.Prince of Darkness is one of the creepiest horror movies of all times and for sure it's one of the best films of John Carpenter..
The acting ranged from so bad that it was funny (Walter panicking in the closet, jumping around and screaming "they're trying to kill me") to Donald Pleasance's overly ambitious attempts to try to make it seem as if he's taking this seriously.The movie revolves around a strange, secret society within the depths of the Catholic Church (very original) known as "The Brotherhood of Sleep" (which I was very tempted to join at times while I watched this!) Apparently this brotherhood had for some reason and in some way contained (what would I call it) the essence of Satan in some green, gooey liquid stored in a sealed container in the basement of a church.
It is for this reason that many people regard this as the greatest Horror movie ever made.Playing something like a Carpenter 'best of...,' with elements from the plots of the Thing, Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween and even Starman, the movie throws about half a dozen menacing forces at its protagonists.
Prince of Darkness is the second installment in John Carpenter's Apocalypse Trilogy and just like the previous "The Thing" It managed to scare the hell out of me with the unsetting atmosphere and the great use of creepy VHS clip.I encourage anyone to watching Prince of Darkness late at night to get the best experience out of the movie cause once you finally got into the story it will suck all your attention and make you unaware of the surroundings to the point that when you think you saw something behind your back or in the corner of your eyes while being creeped out by the movie it definitely will send shivers down your spine and make you jump better than any modern day jump scares scene..
Confused and frightened the priest Makes a call and brings his discovery to a circle of top scholars and scientists, who eventually learn the secret of the strange liquid and hell is unleashed But can they survive to tell the tale The cast is great carpenter really nails another movie with his directing It has a real classic feel to it I loved it try it.
By the time of its release Carpenter had already a good reputation as a horror-movies director (Halloween, The Fog, The Thing) and perhaps people that went to see this film only did so for this particular reason.
the scene when the girl possessed by the evil ghost goes on typing I LIVE,I LIVE,I LIVE..is maybe one of the scariest I've ever seen.Carpenter directed this low budget movie after the flop of "Big trouble in little China" and released a great scary movie,absolutely not superficial,in fact if we forgive him for some "gore" scenes at the end of the movie,I have to say that his idea to show God and the devil like two faces of the same medal is at same time good and terrible..a film you'll love or hate but surely it won't be indifferent,it could damage your dogmas!
John Carpenter's "Prince of Darkness" is clearly not as good as "Halloween" and "The Thing",but it offers some truly creepy and haunting moments.A scientific research team finds a mysterious cylinder full of green fluid in a deserted church.It is in fact the Devil,contained in this prison since time began which can only be opened from the inside.Unfortunately it's beginning to stir and strange events occur.It seems that the Devil wants to release himself."Prince of Darkness" is a pretty good shocker with interesting story to boost.The acting is reasonable and there are a few regulars in the cast including Donald Pleasence.The soundtrack by John Carpenter is very moody and chilling.So if you're a horror fan give this one a look.My rating:7 out of 10..
The second instalment in John Carpenter's Apocalypse Trilogy, Prince of Darkness finds the legendary filmmaker blending the elements of quantum physics & religion into one atmospheric horror that's consistently gripping, entertaining & suspenseful but slightly goofy as well.The story of Prince of Darkness takes place inside an abandoned church where a research team is invited by a priest to investigate an old secret that has been kept there for many years.
Another aspect worthy of a mention is the film's thrilling score composed by John Carpenter himself, for those synth-heavy tracks add an eeriness to its already dark, menacing & ominous mood.On an overall scale, Prince of Darkness is another insidious feature from The Horror Master that may appear a bit dated today but its taut atmosphere & interesting story will manage to keep most viewers around until the end.
Asked to investigate a giant canister of bright green fluid found in the basement of an abandoned church, a group of quantum physics students begins to suspect that the liquid may have diabolical origins in this John Carpenter horror movie.
Also, keep a watch for Alice Cooper doing a good job as the homeless leader.Once again Carpenter shows that he really knows how to make a low- budget go a long way because the film looks great and the church location is suitably eerie.
I say this because even after the cult-classics, Halloween, The Thing, The Fog, John managed to pull off another excellent horror movie in, Prince of Darkness.
Overall, this is not Carpenter's best ("The Fog" still gets my vote over "Halloween" and "The Thing"), but this low budget movie puts most mainstream horror films of the time to shame.Definitely worth a watch.