| Prince of Darkness (1987) |
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| Director: | John Carpenter |
| Writers: | John Carpenter |
| Starring: | Donald Pleasence, Jameson Parker, Victor Wong, and Lisa Blount |
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The Plot: Prince of Darkness begins with a priest, played by Donald Pleasence, inviting Professor Howard Birack (Victor Wong) to visit his church in Los Angeles in order to investigate a very peculiar finding. Birack begins to assemble a large number of his students along with several other experts. The goal is to fully investigate a large cylinder found in the basement of this church. Filled with swirling green liquid, this cylinder seems to have a great deal of power surrounding it. Among Birack’s brightest students are Brian Marsh (Jameson Parker) and his girlfriend Catherine Danforth (Lisa Blount). As this large assembly of young scientist look to spend the night in this decrepit old church, their preliminary investigations begin coming up quite irregular. The green slime appears to be sentient, and it is rapidly increasing its complexity. The lid on the cylinder dates back seven million years and yet shows a great deal of intellect in its design. Nothing seems to add up in a logical sense, and yet things become even more frightening due to the homeless strangers who are currently surrounding the church. These people, who appear to grimace at anyone that stands inside of the church, show no physical reaction to our characters who are currently inhabiting the church. As the night moves on, it becomes more and more obvious that whatever is in this cylinder holds a very dark secret that may very well hold clues to the end of mankind as we know it. |
| The Review |
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The movie is surprisingly well researched for a quick and independent horror movie that was made by a director who was already quite busy during this decade. The film presents numerous scientific abnormalities that completely defy all logic, but the film doesn’t try to avoid discussing these matter. In scenes where the green gelatinous goo is first being discussed, there are lines of dialogue discussing how a cellular being is being formulated out of thin air, which defies Louis Pasteur’s discoveries, and then going from a lower state and becoming more and more complex, which essentially breaks the second law of thermodynamics (which states the opposite, that objects slowly slip into chaos and not become more organized). There are brief discussions of tachyon transmissions, differential equations, and the relationship between matter and anti-matter. Prince of Darkness may not be 100% grounded in scientific reality, but for a horror geek who likes science, there is a lot to draw you in with this movie. And yet, within all of this insanity, we also have a very strong time travel subplot that pushes the film and actually becomes the most organic piece of horror within the movie.
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| The Conclusion |
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