8/17/05

John Carpenter's "Prince of Darkness"

From Forum With No Name's Guilty Pleasures thread:

John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness (1987) makes even less sense than The Fog (Satan as a canister of swirling melon juice?), but takes a page (I suspect, anyway) off of Gregory Benford's novel Timescape to fashion a clunkily effective zombie/Satanic-cult/end-of-the-world science-fiction/horror flick that, for minutes at a time, have you actually worrying for the characters (despite their cardboard nature). Plus there's this video footage (ostensibly from the future) that may just be one of the creepiest ever recorded for a feature film.

Ooh! Ooh! Look what I found!

From Richard Harrington of the Washington Post: 'The Prince of Darkness' stinks. It too deserves to be shut up in a canister for 7 million years.

ChrisJ: PRINCE OF DARKNESS is a far better film (than The Fog). The film is ridiculous, but it's entertaining from start to finish withlots of 'you've got to be kidding me... oh this is a hoot... " moments.

I think Prince of Darkness had an even more dire reputation than The Fog did, but googling around, I find it's built up quite a cult rep. Who would've thunk? I do love that flick.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Critics like Mr. Harrington make me laugh.  Horror isn't just about having an understandable narrative, it's about being effective in its premise.  A lot of great horror isn't necessarily cogent stuff.  Is Dante's The Howling plot such great shakes.  A bunch of werewolves in disguise live in a commune up in the north coastal woods of California?  Led by raving mad John Carradine?  Is it a great horror film of its kind?  Absolutely.

Anonymous said...

I don't think "The Howling" is great myself, but I do like it very much.

Actually, the plotting (thanks, John Sayles--you're not much of a filmmaker, but you're always inventive and intelligent) is kind of clever--Patrick McGee heading a colony of werewolves ("Where wolf?" "There wolf! Here castle!") and trying to propogate a kind of New Age philosophy where you tame your inner wild beast. Kind of makes more sense than, say, some gypsy woman telling you you'll grow plenty hair come full moon. Liked it much better than, say, "American Werewolf in London."