The Religious Horror sub-genre rarely works for me. I usually don’t find it credible, much less scary (a strange stance, I know, for someone who loves supernatural Horror, but there it is). The religious aspect of the story needs to be presented in a unique way for it to hold my interest. In 1987, John Carpenter made a Religious Horror film that did it for me. More than that, it hooked me so completely that I have returned to the movie for several viewings every October. Consequently, PRINCE OF DARKNESS is my all-time favorite scary movie.
More below!
PRINCE OF DARKNESS begins as an elderly priest dies in his bed holding a small container. A local priest named Father Loomis (Donald Pleasance) is called to receive the dead man’s remains. Inside the container, he finds a key. He summons Howard Birack (Victor Wong), a theoretical physicist at USC, to come and take a look at what the key opens. There, in the basement of an abandoned church, they find an elaborate chamber housing multiple crucifixes, an ancient book in multiple languages, and a large, locked cylinder holding a mysterious green, swirling fluid inside. Believing that science is the only way to prove to the outside world that the spiritual danger he senses from this object is real, Loomis urges Birack to help him study the finds. Birack enlists his graduate students to spend the weekend in the church employing state-of-the-art technology and scientific method.
The problem is… the thing inside the cylinder is ready to escape. Ready to escape and set itself lose on the Earth.
PRINCE OF DARKNESS imagines a scenario in which science and religion don‘t simply coexist, they are indistinguishable from each other. This is a film that takes the stance that both disciplines are right, but not at all in they ways they imagine. By accepting, then breaking down the basic tenets of both ideals, John Carpenter brilliantly answers the objections of audiences who demand realism in their Horror movies. At the very beginning of the film, Professor Birack tells his students (and the audience) that accepted reality is simply not true - that on the sub-atomic level, everything is turned upside down - so forget all you know. This is very wise advice from that character and from John Carpenter. It practically forces us to accept the following events at face value. A crucial necessity for any Horror film.
It helps, of course, that PRINCE OF DARKNESS is one of John Carpenter’s best made films. The thrills and chills in this one are achieved, as in all of his Horror films, through atmosphere and pacing. The whole film has a wonderfully oppressive, apocalyptic vibe. The build is so relentless, yet so subtle that when Hell finally breaks loose, this small, intimate film feels epic. I say ‘intimate’ because the vast majority of PRINCE OF DARKNESS takes place in one small location - the abandoned church nestled smack-dab in the heart of downtown L.A. Though only one tiny location serves as ground-zero for the apocalypse, John Carpenter uses good actors, moody, naturalistic lighting, and a carefully crafted soundscape to achieve the feeling that ‘this is it’. You can almost feel darkness descending over the whole world as this film progresses.
PRINCE OF DARKNESS also boasts John Carpenters best score, in which he and his co-composer Alan Howarth create a sonic intensity that is almost unbearable in its tension. The impending doom they create constitutes easily the most effective use of an all-synth score in the ‘80s. Today, the synth scores of that decade sound extremely dated - even some of the best examples sound ‘cheap’ somehow. Not this one. It still sounds great, and it’s still damned scary.
The key to the greatness of PRINCE OF DARKNESS, though, is its ending - the most powerful and effective twist ending I've ever seen. The reveal at the end stood the hair on my arms when I first witnessed it and is still chills me to the bone all these years later. It is a haunting, disturbing image that raises more questions than it answers - and that just makes it all the more creepy. PRINCE OF DARKNESS will stick with you for days.
Indeed, it has stuck with me my whole life…
Parental Guide: Not gory, really, but pretty creepy with some good frights. 13+.
PRINCE OF DARKNESS fun facts -
Father Loomis is played by Donald Pleasance and is named after the character he played in the Halloween movies.
The church used in this film now houses the Union Center for the Arts. It is on the registry of historic places.
Alice Cooper plays a role as a homeless person. His character kills a man with a broken bicycle. The “bicycle kill” was adapted from a gag in Cooper’s stage shows in which he would kill someone with his mic stand. The bike used in the film was modified from his own prop.
The recurring dream sequence was shot on videotape, then filmed again as the tape played back on a cheap television screen.
Broadcast voice - “This is not a dream… not a dream.”
Professor Birack - “…we've discovered something very surprising: while order does exist in the universe, it is not at all what we had in mind.”
Frank Wyndham - I've got a message for you. And you're not going to like it. “Pray for death”.