Amazon.com: The B picture lives on in the films of John Carpenter. Prince of Darkness weds supernatural horror with quantum weirdness, when a group of theoretical-physics students, led by their professor, Birack (Victor Wong), joins forces with a priest (Donald Pleasence) to forestall the coming of the Dark Lord. His Darkness has been imprisoned in a cylindrical container as a swirling green plasma since time immemorial, and is now beginning to find his way out. All of this is bolstered by a lot of fancy science talk (all of which is real, I can assure you--someone did his homework), which allows us to settle down, say okey dokey, and enjoy the thrills that this presages. As the title character spreads his contagion through the group of students, holed up in a church to study the sequestered Satan, the film shapes up as an homage to George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, much like Carpenter's earlier film, Assault on Precinct 13. But this adds the twist of quantum physics dovetailing with religious orthodoxy, and in the bargain spawning numerous zombie minions. There are plenty of squishy splatter opportunities, the kind that make some affected people say, 'This is a bad movie!' while they grin from ear to ear. Look for Alice Cooper as a street schizo. I think you'll recognize him. --Jim Gay
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Average Rating:
Rating: - Great Horror for it's time
John Carpenter was always good. In Prince of Darkness, he out did himself for the time period this was made. Great story & special effects. Highly recommended.
Rating: - Under-rated for good reason...
With 101 reviews to-date, there's not much to add, so I'll briefly explain the one-star rating: 1) Cliches abound - naturally, people pair off or stray from the others, the easier to be killed; 2) Boring - because zombies move slowly, so does the action, the biggest sin in a horror film; 3) Inconsistent - how do you kill a zombie? This film fails to answer the question; in one scene, a zombie is decapitated (the usual way to dispatch a zombie) but he promptly puts his own head back on and continues his rampage, while another zombie is tossed from a second-story window and dies immediately...huh? 3) Ridiculous - a church in an urban setting along a main road is the scene of a two-day siege by a zombie army, surrounded by street zombies (led by Alice Cooper) who ring the building and stand transfixed, preventing no one from leaving...and nobody calls the authorities? I give it one star for Alice Cooper.
Rating: - Some secrets aren't meant to be tampered with
Fans of science and religious horrors will find this to be an interesting combo, one that has been fighting the other for as long as we know. This however is not the source of friction in the movie, here the science takes a huge lead and infuses the movie with eerie sense of reality that some might not feel otherwise, for those who aren't afraid of the devil, this movie will chill them as there is some gross, dark stuff going on that walks a fine line between bizarre and disgusting, seeping into the real world, threatening everyone's sanity.
When professor Birack, a theoretical physicist, takes his students for a weekend of exploring in an abandoned church, he doesn't want to tell them what is going on, instead they slowly discover that their faith in science and existence is going for a ride and some are not coming back. This happens because a priest guarding a heavy secret dies leaving behind a tiny ... Read More
Rating: - What if God was really the Devil? VERY underrated Carpenter film!
Prince of Darkness is not John Carpenter's best movie (that would be--no, not Halloween--Assault on Precinct 13), but it certainly ranks right up there with the best, and it is certainly his most underrated film. Unfortunately it is relatively overlooked compared to his more famous films.
Carpenter wrote the screenplay under the pseudonym "Martin Quatermass," a nod to the old Hammer Quatermass sci fi films, which he clearly loves. His script is an impressively intelligent one, and that is saying a lot. The characters in a movie cannot sound any more intelligent than the screenwriter is. (Too bad so many movies are written by ignoramuses.) Here Carpenter gives us a group of characters consisting almost solely of scientists and graduate students, and he nails it completely. As a graduate student myself I must say that this movie really does an excellent job capturing that world with its dialogue. ... Read More
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- Great Horror for it's time
- Under-rated for good reason...
- Some secrets aren't meant to be tampered with
