Classic Horrors Club

For his first 10 films, John Carpenter could do no wrong. Then came Big Trouble in Little China. I realize it’s beloved by many, but for me it was the beginning of a new era from which he never recovered. What happened post-1986 might be best explained by the talent of the writer-director not quite reaching his ambition. I don’t blame any creator for evolving; however, my favorite Carpenter period is the simple one… the one with perhaps less lofty goals.

Touted as Carpenter’s return to horror after Starman (1984) and Big Trouble in Little China (1986), Prince of Darkness (1987) was the second disappointment in a row for me. I don’t know that I remembered why, but until recently, I never watched it again.  Over the years, though, as it gained its cult following and I continued to read about its depiction of evil as something scientific, I became more and more interested in revisiting it.

Sure enough, these are the aspects of the film that proved to be most compelling for me 36 years later. However, the more standard horror consequences that spring from them were still a disappointment. The set-up is original, the payoff is not. The movie goes to great effort to create a defined, physical explanation for evil, yet provides the same outcome as any other horror movie about conjuring the devil. People become possessed and kill other people.

It’s almost like two movies in one. The first part is one I would have found “slow” back then, but savor now. The second is one I would have expected back then, but find routine now. As a whole, it’s not slow, but it is sometimes repetitive. It’s 102-minute running time feels bloated. I don’t know what Carpenter could have cut and, contradictorily, it might need a little more explanation for events.

Then again, that could expose a good idea that’s not fully realized. It’s not hard to grasp that Satan is forming out of green goo in a large cylinder that’s been sealed for centuries. But by the time the characters start talking about matter and anti-matter, tachyon transmissions, and dimensional portals, it feels like everything but the kitchen sink. It seems like it should lead to something more grand than a female Freddy Krueger lookalike.

This doesn’t mean that the whole thing isn’t creepy. The story unfolds within an abandoned church around which homeless people flock. The closer Satan gets to being born, the more dangerous they become, killing anyone who tries to escape. There’s that external threat and the internal threat as the various students and scientists gathered are squirted in the mouth with a clear liquid that turns them into zombies.

As much as Prince of Darkness is about science, it’s also about religion, which is represented by a character called simply “Priest,” played by Donald Pleasence. His discovery opens the film with some energy, then we see him deflate before our eyes as science threatens to disprove what he’s believed his entire life. It’s interesting, though, that when science seems to explain everything in black and white, there are still a lot of gray areas.