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Prince of Darkness (film)
Encyclopedia
Prince of Darkness is a 1987 horror film directed, written, and scored by John Carpenter
. The film is the second installment in what Carpenter calls his "Apocalypse Trilogy", which began with The Thing (1982) and concludes with In the Mouth of Madness
(1995).
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, Wyndham, Kelly, and Catherine. Among these people investigating this is a Metaphysican who is named in the film as Marsh (Jameson Parker
), Lisa, a theology student who can translate ancient scriptures, Susan, a professional radiologist, and Dr. Lahey. Next to the cylinder is a book inscribed in three different languages which they try to decipher.
After reading Lisa's translation of 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 as small jets of liquid escape the cylinder and possess the group one at a time, causing them to attack and incapacitate the remaining students. Kelly is injured, and a bruise forms. The bruise eventually, Catherine realizes, is the astrologer's staff seen in ritual magic. Kelly has been marked. From outside Wyndham returns back from the dead and says he has a message from Satan for the rest of the group. He says the words: "Pray for death" and his body erupts into a swarm of beetles. He loses his head and more bugs crawl out until dissolves and only his suit remains. A infected student called Conor, a Christian trying to fight the effect of the liquid, tries to take his own life by jabbing a piece of stair bannister 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 1999. It 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, having been chosen. She 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. 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. 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, no longer under Satan's spell, walk away from the church. Walter sees this as an advantage and runs away into the night. The survivors are rescued, feeling relieved that the evil has been stopped 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 emerges from the front of the church. 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....
and atomic theory
. He recalled, simply, that "I thought it would be interesting to create some sort of ultimate evil and combine it with the notion of matter and anti-matter". This idea, which would eventually develop into the screenplay for Prince of Darkness, was to be the first of a multi-picture deal with Alive Pictures, where Carpenter was allocated $3 million per picture and complete creative control.
Executive producer Shep Gordon was also manager to singer Alice Cooper
and suggested Cooper record a song for the picture. Carpenter also cast Cooper in the picture as one of the homeless zombies. Cooper also allowed the use of his 'impaling device' from his stage show to be used in the film in a scene where Cooper's character kills Etchinson. The song Cooper wrote for the film, also titled "Prince of Darkness", can be heard briefly in the same scene playing through Etchinson's headphones, although the song was not released until a year later.
Carpenter brought back to the film people that he had worked with previously, including Victor Wong and Donald Pleasance. Peter Jason, soon to become a Carpenter regular, was also in the film.
The film was shot with wide-angle lenses, which combined with anamorphic format created a lot of distortion.
Although Carpenter wrote the screenplay, in the film's credits the writer is listed as Martin Quatermass, a homage repeated in the film with Kneale University. These were in reference to the British
film and television writer Nigel Kneale
and the famous fictional scientist he created, Professor Bernard Quatermass
. The storyline features elements associated with Kneale (the ancient evil aspect of both Quatermass and the Pit
and The Quartermass Conclusion
, the idea of messages from the future from The Road, and the scientific investigation of the supernatural from The Stone Tape
). Carpenter returned to the idea of clerical secrecy in Vampires
.
Kneale, however, was irritated with this use of the character's name in the film's credits, as he feared that the impression may be given that he had something to do with the film. Previously, he had written the original screenplay for the 1982 film Halloween III: Season of the Witch
for Carpenter, but had been so incensed with all of the changes director Tommy Lee Wallace
had made to it that he had his name removed from the credits.
and Lisa Blount
, are unpleasant enough to create an unfortunate ambivalence about their eternal destinies”. In his review for the New York Times, Vincent Canby
called the film a "surprisingly cheesy horror film to come from Mr. Carpenter, a director whose work is usually far more efficient and inventive."
In 2004, Jim Emerson wrote that Prince of Darkness was an undervalued horror film: "What makes me goose-pimply about Prince of Darkness is its goofy-but-ingenious central conceit and its truly Surrealistic imagery, some of which could have sprouted out of Buñuel
and Dali
's Un Chien Andalou."
John Carpenter
John Howard Carpenter is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, editor, composer, and occasional actor. Although Carpenter has worked in numerous film genres in his four-decade career, his name is most commonly associated with horror and science fiction.- Early life :Carpenter was born...
. The film is the second installment in what Carpenter calls his "Apocalypse Trilogy", which began with The Thing (1982) and concludes with In the Mouth of Madness
In the Mouth of Madness
In the Mouth of Madness is a 1995 American horror film directed by John Carpenter and written by Michael De Luca, who was at the time of the film's release in charge of New Line Cinema...
(1995).
Plot
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 derelict church. The area contains a room that holds a terrifying secret.A Vicar (Donald Pleasence
Donald Pleasence
Sir Donald Henry Pleasence, OBE, was a British actor who gained more than 200 screen credits during a career which spanned over four decades...
) begs for help from a professor called Howard Birack (Victor Wong
Victor Wong
Victor Wong was a Chinese American character actor who appeared in supporting roles throughout the 1980s and 1990s.-Education:...
) 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, Wyndham, Kelly, and Catherine. Among these people investigating this is a Metaphysican who is named in the film as Marsh (Jameson Parker
Jameson Parker
Francis Jameson Parker Jr. is an American actor, best known as the co-star of the 1980s television series Simon & Simon.-Biography:Parker studied drama at Beloit College...
), Lisa, a theology student who can translate ancient scriptures, Susan, a professional radiologist, and Dr. Lahey. Next to the cylinder is a book inscribed in three different languages which they try to decipher.
After reading Lisa's translation of the written passages found next to the cylinder, it is discovered that the liquid is actually Satan
Satan
Satan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...
, 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
Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans more than four decades...
) 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 as small jets of liquid escape the cylinder and possess the group one at a time, causing them to attack and incapacitate the remaining students. Kelly is injured, and a bruise forms. The bruise eventually, Catherine realizes, is the astrologer's staff seen in ritual magic. Kelly has been marked. From outside Wyndham returns back from the dead and says he has a message from Satan for the rest of the group. He says the words: "Pray for death" and his body erupts into a swarm of beetles. He loses his head and more bugs crawl out until dissolves and only his suit remains. A infected student called Conor, a Christian trying to fight the effect of the liquid, tries to take his own life by jabbing a piece of stair bannister 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 1999. It 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, having been chosen. She 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. 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
Lisa Blount
Lisa S. Blount was an American film and television actress and Oscar-winning producer.-Career:...
), 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. 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, no longer under Satan's spell, walk away from the church. Walter sees this as an advantage and runs away into the night. The survivors are rescued, feeling relieved that the evil has been stopped 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 emerges from the front of the church. 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....
Cast
- Donald PleasenceDonald PleasenceSir Donald Henry Pleasence, OBE, was a British actor who gained more than 200 screen credits during a career which spanned over four decades...
as Priest - Victor WongVictor WongVictor Wong was a Chinese American character actor who appeared in supporting roles throughout the 1980s and 1990s.-Education:...
as Professor Howard Birack - Jameson ParkerJameson ParkerFrancis Jameson Parker Jr. is an American actor, best known as the co-star of the 1980s television series Simon & Simon.-Biography:Parker studied drama at Beloit College...
as Brian Marsh - Lisa BlountLisa BlountLisa S. Blount was an American film and television actress and Oscar-winning producer.-Career:...
as Catherine Danforth - Dennis DunDennis DunDennis Dun is a Chinese American actor from Stockton, California, currently residing in Los Angeles.-Film and TV:Dun has had prominent roles in several films, notably Year of the Dragon , Big Trouble in Little China , The Last Emperor , Prince of Darkness , and A Thousand Pieces of Gold , Warriors...
as Walter - Susan BlanchardSusan Blanchard (actress)Susan Blanchard-Frank is an American actress, best known for playing Mary Kennicott Martin, R. N. #2 on the ABC soap opera All My Children from 1971 to 1975....
as Kelly - Anne HowardAnne Marie HowardAnne Marie Howard is an American actress, former spokeswoman for Ditech.com and current spokeswoman for the National Association of Realtors....
as Susan - Ann Yen as Lisa
- Dirk BlockerDirk BlockerDennis Dirk Blocker is an American actor and the son of late actor Dan Blocker, of the popular TV series, Bonanza.Dirk Blocker began appearing in American television in 1974, acting in an episode of Marcus Welby, M.D. at the age of sixteen...
as Mullins - Jessie Lawrence FergusonJessie Lawrence FergusonJessie Lawrence Ferguson is an American actor born June 8, 1941 in New York City. His first major role was in Starsky and Hutch in 1979.He is best known for his roles in Boyz n the Hood and John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness and Sam Raimi's Darkman.He has also had roles in Star Trek: The Next...
as Calder - Peter JasonPeter JasonPeter Jason is an American actor who performs in many plays, movies, and TV commercials, including Desperate Housewives and Deadwood. In his free time he makes his own furniture out of wood. He has appeared in 12 Walter Hill films, 7 John Carpenter films, has acted in over 100 commercials and...
as Dr. Leahy - Thom BrayThom BrayThomas Edward "Thom" Bray is an American actor perhaps best known for his role as Murray "Boz" Bozinsky in the detective TV series Riptide....
as Etchinson - Alice CooperAlice CooperAlice Cooper is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans more than four decades...
as Street Schizo
Production
The idea for the film came about as Carpenter had been researching theoretical physicsTheoretical physics
Theoretical physics is a branch of physics which employs mathematical models and abstractions of physics to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena...
and atomic theory
Atomic theory
In chemistry and physics, atomic theory is a theory of the nature of matter, which states that matter is composed of discrete units called atoms, as opposed to the obsolete notion that matter could be divided into any arbitrarily small quantity...
. He recalled, simply, that "I thought it would be interesting to create some sort of ultimate evil and combine it with the notion of matter and anti-matter". This idea, which would eventually develop into the screenplay for Prince of Darkness, was to be the first of a multi-picture deal with Alive Pictures, where Carpenter was allocated $3 million per picture and complete creative control.
Executive producer Shep Gordon was also manager to singer Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans more than four decades...
and suggested Cooper record a song for the picture. Carpenter also cast Cooper in the picture as one of the homeless zombies. Cooper also allowed the use of his 'impaling device' from his stage show to be used in the film in a scene where Cooper's character kills Etchinson. The song Cooper wrote for the film, also titled "Prince of Darkness", can be heard briefly in the same scene playing through Etchinson's headphones, although the song was not released until a year later.
Carpenter brought back to the film people that he had worked with previously, including Victor Wong and Donald Pleasance. Peter Jason, soon to become a Carpenter regular, was also in the film.
The film was shot with wide-angle lenses, which combined with anamorphic format created a lot of distortion.
Although Carpenter wrote the screenplay, in the film's credits the writer is listed as Martin Quatermass, a homage repeated in the film with Kneale University. These were in reference to the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
film and television writer Nigel Kneale
Nigel Kneale
Nigel Kneale was a British screenwriter from the Isle of Man. Active in television, film, radio drama and prose fiction, he wrote professionally for over fifty years, was a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and was twice nominated for the British Film Award for Best Screenplay...
and the famous fictional scientist he created, Professor Bernard Quatermass
Bernard Quatermass
Professor Bernard Quatermass is a fictional scientist, originally created by the writer Nigel Kneale for BBC Television. An intelligent and highly moral British scientist, Quatermass is a pioneer of the British space programme, heading up the British Experimental Rocket Group...
. The storyline features elements associated with Kneale (the ancient evil aspect of both Quatermass and the Pit
Quatermass and the Pit
Quatermass and the Pit is a British television science-fiction serial, originally transmitted live by BBC Television in December 1958 and January 1959. It was the third and last of the BBC's Quatermass serials, although the character would reappear in a 1979 ITV production simply entitled Quatermass...
and The Quartermass Conclusion
Quatermass (TV serial)
Quatermass is a British television science fiction serial produced by Euston Films for Thames Television and broadcast on the ITV network in October and November 1979. Like its three predecessors, Quatermass was written by Nigel Kneale...
, the idea of messages from the future from The Road, and the scientific investigation of the supernatural from The Stone Tape
The Stone Tape
The Stone Tape is a television play directed by Peter Sasdy and starring Michael Bryant, Jane Asher, Michael Bates and Iain Cuthbertson. It was broadcast on BBC Two as a Christmas ghost story in 1972...
). Carpenter returned to the idea of clerical secrecy in Vampires
Vampires (film)
Vampires is a western-horror film directed by John Carpenter in 1998. Adapted from the novel Vampire$ by John Steakley, the film stars James Woods as Jack Crow, leader of a Catholic Church-sanctioned team of vampire hunters...
.
Kneale, however, was irritated with this use of the character's name in the film's credits, as he feared that the impression may be given that he had something to do with the film. Previously, he had written the original screenplay for the 1982 film Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Halloween III: Season of the Witch is a 1982 science fiction horror film and the third installment in the Halloween film series. It is the only Halloween where the story does not revolve around Michael Myers. Directed and written by Tommy Lee Wallace, the film stars Tom Atkins as Dr. Dan Challis,...
for Carpenter, but had been so incensed with all of the changes director Tommy Lee Wallace
Tommy Lee Wallace
Tommy Lee Wallace is an American film producer, director and screenwriter.He is best known for directing Halloween III: Season of the Witch and It.-Early life:...
had made to it that he had his name removed from the credits.
Reception
Prince of Darkness was poorly received critically upon release. In his review for the Washington Post, Richard Harrington wrote, “At one point Pleasence vows that 'it's a secret that can no longer be kept.' Here's another: "The Prince of Darkness stinks." It too deserves to be shut up in a canister for 7 million years". Liam Lacey, in his review for the Globe and Mail, wrote, “There is no character really worth caring about, no sympathy to any of these characters. The principal romantic couple, Jameson ParkerJameson Parker
Francis Jameson Parker Jr. is an American actor, best known as the co-star of the 1980s television series Simon & Simon.-Biography:Parker studied drama at Beloit College...
and Lisa Blount
Lisa Blount
Lisa S. Blount was an American film and television actress and Oscar-winning producer.-Career:...
, are unpleasant enough to create an unfortunate ambivalence about their eternal destinies”. In his review for the New York Times, Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.-Life and career:...
called the film a "surprisingly cheesy horror film to come from Mr. Carpenter, a director whose work is usually far more efficient and inventive."
In 2004, Jim Emerson wrote that Prince of Darkness was an undervalued horror film: "What makes me goose-pimply about Prince of Darkness is its goofy-but-ingenious central conceit and its truly Surrealistic imagery, some of which could have sprouted out of Buñuel
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
and Dali
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
's Un Chien Andalou."