Prince of Darkness Year: 1987 Director: John Carpenter Written by: John Carpenter Threat: The Devil Weapon of Choice: Animate Green Liquid Based upon: nothing IMDb page:

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Rish's Reviews
I saw this on television years ago, and it gave me nightmares. Man, just about everything in those days did.
Seeing it again, two things occurred to me: 1) Just how cheap this movie must have been to make, and 2) how much of it was too silly to be scary.
In the creepy basement of a creepy abandoned church lies a container of creepy green slime. A group of graduate students, their teacher, and a priest spend the night in the church to investigate it. The green goop hits the fan when it is revealed that the container somehow houses the son of the devil . . . and that he's waking up from a long, evil sleep.
I once incurred the wrath of many a Horror fan by saying that John Carpenter makes good, but wholly unsatisfying horror films. This one definitely isn't one you want to cite to prove me wrong.
Donald Pleasence, as the priest, had a lot of nonsensical, rambling dialogue, as the man always does, but far less of it worked here. He did cry in one scene, though. The rest of the cast (except for the guy from "Simon & Simon") were complete unknowns. Oh yeah, and Alice Cooper was in it. The cast is adequate (except for one bad actor) and very diverse. Amazingly, there was a black guy, a fat guy, AND a nerdy guy, instead of just one of those.
Also, two of the Asian dudes from Little China were in this. The young one had the strangest dialogue I think I've ever heard, and was mostly used for comic relief. A couple of times, it really worked (especially in tense situations), but other times, I really scratched my head. A lot of it was hard to grasp, both story and character. The movie felt like the director was trying to combine what he had learned on Big Trouble In Little China with what he had always known since Assault on Precinct 13. But this was inferior to both of those.
One thing that really bothered me about this flick as a youth was the bums (the movie calls them "street people"): the way they were dirty and malevolent, but mostly just stood there, staring. It worked pretty well, even all these years later. My best friend and I would often pretend that anyone we saw walking on the side of the road was one of these, derelicts or not, and scream as we pointed at them. It caused me to pee my pants on at least five occasions.
A couple of the scares work really well. Mostly the way characters pop up to kill you. I admired the neat, simple effect of the big green canister. Most of the work on this film would've cost nothing. I bet the two main expenditures were the green light thing and Donald Pleasence. It had really good music, as do most Carpenter films, scored as usual by Carpenter and Alan Howarth. A lesson this film teaches us is, lesser beings like worms, ants, beetles, and homeless people, are easily controlled by the devil.
As a boy, I thought the flick had tons of atmosphere and tension, but some of that just felt dull fifteen years later. The film felt padded out, and occasionally meandered inanely for no good reason. My Irish pal thought the writing was really good, constantly muttering, "How does he write such great dialogue?" but I found it wayward and mostly-pointless. I also don't get the ending at all. I wondered if maybe we weren't supposed to.
Okay, I never really peed my pants. I never really met Connie Chung either. Are you happy now?
This is one of Carpenter's less successful efforts. But even so, it wasn't awful (not even close), so
I'd Recommend It To: Carpenter/Pleasence completists/fans.

Total Skulls: 8

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?