stones78
So maybe I'm stretching "classic" a bit, but this film never got the good reviews I felt it deserved, an I'm a veteran of many things horror. The subject matter is fairly original. Did you ever hear of Satan as a green fluid held prisoner under a creepy old church? I didn't think so. Watch how Donald Pleasance overacts, but he's engaging, and makes anything he's in that more enjoyable. A few more familiar faces include Jameson Parker, who's sporting a Freddie Mercury mustache, Dennis Dun, Alice Cooper(that's right)and Victor Wong. I found this film very suspenseful with some interesting kills, and cool scenes. It's not a film that ends nicely, like many John Carpenter films, so you may feel empty after watching it, but the ride should be worth it. There are a few negative things, however, that bear mentioning, such as poor character development, as there's really no one to root for, and an awful, forced love scene that's almost as bad as the one from The Fog(1980), as it wasn't needed at all. Getting those out of the way, I still recommend this film, as I don't think Carpenter made many more good ones after this came out.
spencergrande6
The atmosphere is incredibly dense, it's an unrelenting thickness suffocating everything else, including plot, character and common sense. But man does it work and brilliantly.The score is typically moody and great, and it's used effectively as a constantly reverberating background beat to the slow unveiling of hell on an uncoupling earth. This film works so well because it's truly unrelenting, and I don't mean in the Evil Dead sense of constant assault, but in its unbearable grip on your audio and visual senses. It's a slow strangling.This film also made me realize how great of a stylist Carpenter is. I always knew that on some level, but watching this again for the second time I realized how casual Carpenter is in his brilliance. His shots have an off-the-cuff elegance, almost as a painter so in control of his work he doesn't have to stop and savor his great images because they all are in a way, each shot into the next, a kind of constantly evolving masterful painting of horror. Shots of crosses through fence links, zombie faces awash in black and shadow, the lighting of an Argento witches movie, the soft surrealism of water dripping upward yet slowly outward towards hell, visions of ants invading the back grating of a TV set, white light from inside calling to them.It's kind of amazing. I really really wish the plot came together a bit more. I like the obtuseness of it to a point (how much could the characters really know about it all) but because of that a lot of the revelations come from people hypothesizing out loud in a way that you know the movie is trying to explain itself without actually having to -- having its cake and eating it too.
Jim Mullen Tate (TheFearmakers)
Written by Martin Quartermass, who is in fact the director, John Carpenter, his very own PRINCE OF DARKNESS has a good number of death scenes or near- deaths wherein the bodies come alive again to stalk the shadowy corridors and keep survivors at an even tighter restraint of space: And not the kind of screaming and suspenseful pandemonium that usually occurs when people die, one after the other, as the formidable antagonist, who in this case is The Devil, trapped inside what looks like a lava lamp imitating a barber shop pole full of Gatorade (which could be CHRISTINE's anti freeze): spewing deathly liquid into the mouth of, first, one of four sexy ingenues, and our personal favorite lass, serving as the most palpable killer later on, and even outshining Cooper, who remains spooky and peripheral outside, mostly unseen past the first and second act.Anyone looking for a jolting horror experience, this might not work since the spookiest moments occur in a shared dream by anyone who falls into a nap. As for the antagonist... who's spoken of a lot and only viewed within the glimpse of each quick dream... perhaps having Lucifer himself as a horror flick heavy is aiming too high for mainstream audiences, or fans of HALLOWEEN and its myriad of clones. Symbolically speaking, this particular DARKNESS is more like scanning the blueprints of a haunted house than being frightfully lost and vulnerable inside one. Alice Cooper and the homeless zombie troupe aside, the real human villain is a she, who, like Satan in many a book and film, has a human name few can remember. This is a reoccurring bit of subtle Carpenter humor: "Have you seen Susan?" "Who?" "Susan, the Radiologist, with the glasses."Anne Howard is the girl next door type who does wear glasses but only at first, until taking them off or getting them taken off in a very green, wet manner — then turning into a pale zombie that eventually snowballs a host of others to take care of the survivors, including an actor who was pretty much the main action-star of Carpenter's Kung Fu comedy BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA while Kurt Russell watched in amazement... But here, Dennis Dun is horribly miscast as the sarcastic and reluctant character i.e. our token comic relief... He seems to be reading lines, and his forced glib humor doesn't elevate the chaos or allow the audience to escape the bedlam, as intended. On the plus side: It seems that no matter how many deaths or gruesome bodily-takeovers occur, the movie remains as mellow and constant as the signature synthesizer music by the director himself, providing an even-keeled, foreboding pulse that rarely speeds up, making even the most gory deaths seem completely normal, and commonplace...In this location, they are... For PRICE OF DARKNESS, according to Carpenter in a DVD/Blu Ray Commentary track with his stock actor/buddy Peter Jason... the latter who told us, personally, in a Cult Film Freak podcast, that his decision to become a crying zombie was an idea from his personal friend, actor extraordinaire David Warner (who loved Peter's interview but couldn't do one himself)... Carpenter revealed this film was actually more like Howard Hawk's THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD than his own THE THING in that much of the story has a group of scientists roaming from one room into another...The differences between both THING flicks (of the 50's and 80's) are many, but there's one thing that makes DARKNESS superior to Hawks's science fiction chiller: the number of people dwindle as the film progresses, which means things actually occur in-between, and while the killings aren't extremely scary, there's a palpable sense of dread from the very on-set: cutting from a darkened corridor to the shiny exterior of U.S.C. where existential Philosophy professor Victor Wong teaches his class something about what's actual and what isn't... a theory he alters while aiding the Priest... And where cinematic Christianity and/or Catholicism usually has a temperamental knee-jerk reaction against scientific theories, because of the connection between our two polar opposite but equally wise old-timers, both religion and science is neatly hybrid, which makes Carpenter's script actually quite deep, thought-provoking, and refreshingly open-minded...But for those who stray from movies that may as well be Christian or Faith-based since, after-all, if centering on the Devil there must be a hero in God and Jesus Christ, don't fret: According to a scroll discovered inside the church, Christ was more of a paranormal researcher than a messiah, and, with an extra terrestrial origin, he was sent to Earth to, along with his disciples, simply keep Old Scratch at bay... So that's the backstory, and what a controversial prequel Jesus Christ: GHOST HUNTER would have been. But in all seriousness, this lends a touch of science-fiction to the ancient-curse-horror element...Which fits Carpenter's wheelhouse, and this is definitely his labor of love that's fitfully murky, creepy and remains entertaining from beginning to end despite a few Second Act scenes that drag a bit: And towards the conclusion we go back to one of John's first movies — his own personal Modern-Urban-Western that he also wrote himself, titled ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 about a group of survivors trapped within a particular location and, because of nefarious elements outside (gang members trying to enter a closed-down but sparsely occupied police station), they can't get out: Herein, instead of gun-wielding hoods there's Satan controlling a different kind of zombie altogether, which leads to another realization: While maybe not that original a body count horror since it's fairly obvious, judging by the personalities, who will buy the farm — for a Zombie flick, PRINCE OF DARKNESS is a morbid, meticulous and contained one of a kind treat. (More Reviews at CultFilmFreaks.com)
