HackArtober #16 (Scanned Via Tachyon Transmission, w/Bonus Rambling)

Released this day in 1987. One of my absolute Carpenter favorites, absolute horror movie favorites. All-time favorite. 

On the whole, I think a film or text should allow you to make sense -- or make some judgement or mental agreement, if that makes any sense -- with the work on a first association. At least to where you have a decent idea of whether you enjoyed it, or was left intrigued by it, or was left cold or irritated with it.  Life is short and so is spare time, so it's not often I want to see something I didn't like a second time. 

A lot of people disliked Prince of Darkness when it came out. A lot of people still dislike it, although (like the Carpenter-involved Halloween III: Season of the Witch) it's grown in cult status and has seen a lot of re-appraisal and re-evaluation. Like a lot of folks, I missed Prince of Darkness in the theaters. I saw everything Carpenter had directed from 1980 to 1986, falling off the wagon with Big Trouble In Little China and prince of Darkness, for reasons I can't really remember. I did see They Live in the theater, maybe I was playing D&D and Champions instead of seeing movies, and Roddy Piper got me out of the house. 

Anyway, Carpenter's films were getting less of a push from studios and the media since The Thing bombed (still a WTF for a lot of people who saw it and had their minds blown). Prince of Darkness was Carpenter returning to low budget roots and more control, and he made something more like Halloween III than Halloween, which turned off off a lot of viewers. It's even weirder -- and more confusing -- than Season of the Witch's  microchips-meets-Stonehenge nuttiness, which a lot of people couldn't stomach. This time we get a Nigel Kneale-influenced screenplay by Carpenter that's goes all in on the tech-meets-supernatural horror elements via quantum physics and anti-matter (Halloween III was initially written by Kneale -- of the Quatermass series and The Stone tapes fame -- then revised by director Tommy Lee Wallace and an uncredited Carpenter). I have to admit a lot of the jargon and theorizing in Prince of Darkness threw me off quite a bit on a first viewing, but that didn't hurt my enjoyment of the movie itself. Because it's a fucking creepfest with a lot of striking visuals, WTF-moments and tense set pieces. I grew to appreciate it even further after a second viewing, where expectations weren't an issue and I could concentrate on the plot and the dialog and set things more firmly in my head about what was going on. 

It's not for everyone, I mean, nothing is for everyone. But if you saw it back in the day and wrote it off because it's got goopy Satan in a can and a lot of mishegas about science, religion and evil, consider revisiting it. carpenter takes things in some oddball directions that I can understand not working for some folks, but if you can just go with it like an Italian horror flick or something similar, it might flow better for you. For all it's nuttiness, it actually still makes a lot more sense than anything Argento, Fulci or those guys put on film. It's nightmarish but it's not full of nightmare logic. It has an organic flow and there's a plot that makes sense -- just maybe not on a first watch because a lot of tossed out there, a lot of which is thrown at you in stretches of didactic "let me explain my theory" or "this is what we know" dialog. I think it has a sense of dread rarely matched in horror films outside of the apocalyptic creepiness  Fulci's more nightmarish WTFers like The Beyond. 

I think prince of Darkness actually has more of an overall apocalyptic feel than The Thing or In The Mouth of Madness, the bookends of Carpenter's "Apocalypse Trilogy".  Just my opinion, but let me unpack it: The Thing's world threat is (literally) so isolated and alien that it often doesn't feel like the end of the world is imminent. We're invested in the survival of the team members first and foremost and you almost have to be reminded that there's a larger threat if the creature escapes to civilization. There's a palpable sense of dread but it can be secondary to the action and the spectacle of the creature's transformations. In The Mouth of Madness is just so outlandish and all over the place that despite the ending I don't get a real sense of anything but concepts and homages being thrown at the wall, ending included. Prince of Darkness discusses the very concepts of the apocalypse while the team in falling to the growing threat. And they aren't fighting anything with flamethrowers and guns. They're a bunch of nerds who are stumbling into something way over their heads (and ours, probably), the menace is right the fuck in downtown L.A. trying to get out rather than Antarctica, and we're constantly warned and even shown the beginning of the end in the justly famous "dream" sequences throughout the movie. And there's all the religion, God and Anti-God stuff which is creepy even if you're an atheist like me. It has it's cultural and narrative hooks in you in a way that Mouth of Madness works hard to achieve through means of fiction (and fails, imho). 

Anyway, I love it. It's creepy, the dread grows and makes you nice and nervous, it's inventive and creative, it's a very different kind of western horror movie, and it has one of the best signature Carpenter non-endings. Again, I get why Prince of Darkness leaves a lot of folks cold. It's not cheap thrills for those that are looking for pure gore, guts and girls. It's not a tight, nerve-wracking thrill ride like The Thing is, full of wild practical effects (many people seem to dislike the effects in Prince of Darkness, actually, I'm not one of them). It's not a constant (if superficial and self-conscious) mind-fuck like Mouth of Madness.  But I fucking love it, it's my favorite Carpenter film after The Thing and Halloween. Depending on my mood, it might be my favorite. It's the one that I think about the most. So, check it out, or check it out again for another look during this Halloween season to see if it agrees with you this time around. 

Or just watch it again because it's a favorite. 

Or just listen to the soundtrack. It's one of Carpenter's best and is actually full-on scary all on it's own. And you can skip the tachyon beams and the cylinder of green slime and the laughing dead guy and all that stuff if that's the way you feel about it.