Rent Prince of Darkness (1987)

Mediocre scares - Prince of Darkness review by VG

A politically problematic, overwritten and at times fairly dumb but still partially suspenseful and atmospheric occult horror of faith and science.

A near-total misfire - Prince of Darkness review by LC

Stylistically, this is recognisably a John Carpenter movie, with another group of isolated characters battling for survival, set against a moody synth soundtrack - unfortunately however, it falls flat on pretty much every level. Where the mix of SF and horror worked brilliantly in 'The Thing', here the attempt to merge supernatural horror with scientific theory just feels messy, whilst the threat element is too nebulous ( we have an eerie glowing container, murderous tramps, zombies who shoot water from their mouths, people who turn into bugs, and a demon from a mirror dimension) to act as a strong hook. Worst of all, the characters are all flat and uninteresting, so it's hard to care when they die anyway - even Donald Pleasance can't save this script.

Bringing Ultimate Evil to the World....but possessing tramps and few witless students. - Prince of Darkness review by Strovey

Prince of Darkness was made when the director John Carpenter was arguably at his strongest. His reputation of making cheap slashers with thin plots and unknown actors appear better and more robust than they were went before him. By the time this film was made, Carpenter already had Halloween under his belt, Christine, Starman, Escape from New York and Assault on Precinct 13 to name but a few. Here Carpenter again appears to be working on a low budget with mainly unknown actors, save for Pleasence, who was never a snob about the type or budget of a film, and was a previous Carpenter collaborator and a guest starring Alice Cooper.

The problem here was Pleasence was such a sure-footed and solid actor every time he appeared on the screen it showed up those around him. The supporting cast tries really hard and you can almost see the sincerity on their faces but it is obvious that in the majority of cases they are there to be victims.

The setting is mainly the abandoned church where the evil washing up liquid is discovered and straightaway we are put in mind of Assault on Precinct 13, one location and trapped group of ‘goodies’. In this case, they are a motley crew of student physicists, we have this underlined with the incredibly clunky dialogue of Lisa Blout’s character explaining Schrodinger’s Car to another character. In fact, all of the student's dialogue seems stilted and unnatural from the get-go.

This is not to say that the film is not an attempt to ask an interesting question about the very meaning and origin of what we consider evil. Scientists and a priest teaming up without major falling outs and trying to work together is certainly something that is not seen too often. But it seems as we go on Carpenter succumbs to the cheap thrills of meaningless murders, odd zombies and possessed people whose purpose is confusing to say the least.

Characters do the same thing that characters have been doing in these types of films for years, wandering about looking for missing people on their own, slowly turning around so they can be murdered, the standard level of stupidity. Here it gets very tiring.

To be fair it is not utterly witless, the beetle-man is fun although anyone who knows their insects knows that those are beetles and not cockroaches.

The cinematography and sets can hardly be mentioned in truth. A lot of dark or semi-dark shots and at some point it seemed to be the sets from the police station used in Hill Street Blues. Lots of wood panelling and doors.

Nothing much really happens particularly as the film goes on and in the end you are secretly placing bets on who survives and who does not and what happens at the very end. We all know when evil is beaten it is not by now.

All in all, Prince of Darkness was a great idea that with a bigger budget and a bit more time spent on it could have been a good horror film. Here it was cheap and looked like a TV series glued together and without being overly critical or mean the acting looked like 1980s TV show acting.

I did not really care about the characters and their fates and I did not get frightened that Satan’s dad was going to come out of his mirror door and do, well who knows what, to the world and mankind. There seemed to be no suspense or peril throughout.

Prince of Darkness was like The Thing meets Assault on Precinct 13 and as good as that sounds it was entirely the opposite. A good chance wasted.