![]() ![]() The motif of having people do battle in a confined space is also one that he has turned to in projects time and time again, including Ghosts of Mars, his Masters of Horror episode “Pro-Life,” and Assault on Precinct 13, which itself was inspired by Howard Hawks’ western Rio Bravo.īut Carpenter also takes some big swings with the story that seems pretty bold for 1987… and even now. Prince of Darkness feels very much like a Carpenter movie from top to bottom, from his long, wide, and detailed shots to his use of actors to the haunting score, which he co-created with Alan Howarth. And if things aren’t bad enough, our heroes begin receiving messages from the future in their dreams, warning of the apocalypse that will come if the Devil is allowed to win. The liquid also leaves the canister and begins infecting the students, turning them into zombies that spew the deadly liquid from their mouths. But as the group investigates the liquid and translates old religious texts, they come to a sinister conclusion: the substance in the canister is none other than Satan himself.įrom the canister-which we learn can only be conveniently opened from the inside-the Devil is able to control a group of homeless people (including heavy metal god Alice Cooper!), driving them to attack our protagonists and keep them from leaving. The priest ultimately turns to a physics professor (Victor Wong), who enlists a group of students (including Jameson Parker, Lisa Blount, and Dennis Dun) to do testing of the substance on-site. ![]() ![]() What he finds in the basement is a mysterious green liquid inside a canister surrounded by crucifixes. Prince of Darkness begins with a priest (Donald Pleasence) investigating the death of an elderly clergyman who leaves behind a key to a basement in a rundown church. The end result was very different from the colorful, dreamlike Inferno, applying science to a supernatural story. I thought, ‘Well, shit, I want to do something like this.’ So that’s what my inspiration really came from.” “Narratively, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but that didn’t matter. “I loved Inferno, but the thing that was inspiring to me was it was just so free ,” Carpenter told Consequence of Sound in an interview. ![]() “And I longed to make a low-budget movie where I would have complete control over it-the story, the flow, the characters, the thematic materials,” he recalled in an interview on the movie’s Blu-ray.īut Carpenter also found himself influenced by one of his contemporaries: Italian horror maestro Dario Argento and his 1980 supernatural thriller Inferno. It’s a kind of movie you don’t see much of anymore, if at all.Īccording to Carpenter, Prince of Darkness came at a time when he was tired with the process of making big-budget studio movies. Although it lacked the star power and larger scope of the other two films, Prince of Darkness still comes off as incredibly rich and complex. The film is the second chapter of Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy”-which also includes The Thing and In the Mouth of Madness. So many of his films did not find a loving audience until after their theatrical releases, including The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, In the Mouth of Madness, and 1987’s Prince of Darkness, which celebrates its 35th anniversary this year. John Carpenter is deservedly known as a master of horror, but he often did not get his just due quick enough. ![]()
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