Prince of Darkness is a 1987 movie written and directed by John Carpenter that could be described as a return to the supernatural horror of The Fog but with some important differences.
Donald Pleasence is a very worried Catholic priest. An older priest has just died. That priest had belonged to an order called the Brotherhood of Sleep. For two thousand years a priest from that order has acted as a guardian of a terrible secret. Something that must remain confined. But it appears to be breaking out of its confinement.
Odd things are happening. Insects are behaving strangely. Homeless people are behaving very strangely indeed, as if they had some mysterious common purpose. The sky looks a bit funny. Everything just seems a tiny bit wrong somehow.
There’s also the old deceased priest’s diary, and a very ancient manuscript.
The priest begs Professor Howard Birack (Victor Wong) for help. Birack believes in science not religion but he works on the frontiers of theoretical physics so he’s rather open-minded about ideas that sound crazy. Birack recruits a team of graduate students. They are going to investigate this matter scientifically.
What they have to investigate is a very ancient cylinder in a 500-year-old church crypt. They’ll need someone with experience in translating ancient religious texts as well. That manuscript may contain vital clues. In fact it contains things you would not expect in an ancient religious manuscript.
Donald Pleasence knows something of the history of the Brotherhood of Sleep. It’s very disturbing. It casts doubt not just on the accepted version of Christianity but on accepted scientific principles as well. There is a very ancient evil which is not the evil in which everyone has always believed. That evil is now awakening.
Or investigators do not even know what they’re dealing with much less what to do about it. And that evil may be intent on picking them off one by one. Maybe not killing them. Maybe something much worse.
This is a kind of variant on the classic haunted house story in which a group of people are stuck in a house in which ghostly manifestations are happening. The differences being that this is a haunted church and while the manifestations might be supernatural they are not ghostly as such.
Of course it could be debated whether this is a supernatural horror movie or a science fiction horror movie.
The ideas here are very cool and very frightening. The enigmatic nature of the evil makes it more scary. Carpenter builds the tension very effectively.
The special effects are generally impressive. This was 1987 and for commercial reasons there were going to have to be gross-out gore scenes. I always find such scenes to be cheesy even when they’re done well. Gore is just something that doesn’t impress me. I think that the ideas here are clever enough and creepy enough to make the gore unnecessary. I am of course in the minority on this issue and in strictly commercial terms Carpenter knew what he was doing.
I rarely notice film music but Carpenter’s music for this movie (which he composed himself) is memorable and very disturbing.
Donald Pleasence is of course very good, and Victor Wong is marvellous as the eccentric but brilliant and determined Professor Birack. The other cast members are all very solid. Look out for Alice Cooper in a memorable appearance as a terrifying homeless person.
Prince of Darkness has some affinities with Carpenter’s 1982 The Thing in that both movies deal with possession, of sorts. It also has definite affinities with The Legend of Hell House (1973) with its scientific investigation of a haunted house.
Prince of Darkness is a fine creepy horror film. John Carpenter really was on fire in the 80. Highly recommended.
I had previously only seen this movie in a terrible pan-and-scanned VHS release so seeing it on Studiocanal’s Blu-Ray release was a revelation. This release is packed to the gills with extras.