ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - October 23rd
"PRINCE OF DARKNESS" released in 1987
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Upon the death of fellow priest of his order, Father Loomis (Donald Pleasence) comes into the possession of a silver box that contains a mysterious key, which opens a long deserted crypt beneath a church in downtown Los Angeles. Terrified at what he discovers inside, Loomis approached friend and university professor, Howard Birack (Victor Wong), to help investigate. Recruiting his brightest students - including Catherine Danforth (Lisa Blount), Brian Marsh (Jameson parker), and Walter (Dennis Dun) - Birack leads them to the crypt where they examine a mysterious cyclinder containing a swirling green liquid. The liquid itself appears to be sentient, and broadcasts increasingly complex streams of data, which the academics use a computer to analyze, and find that it includes differential equations. They also decipher the text found next to the cylinder which describes the liquid as the corporeal embodiment of Satan.
Over time, small jets of liquid escape from the cylinder, with members of the group exposed to the liquid becoming possessed by the entity, and uses them against the others. Two members of the research group are killed as they attempt to leave the church by a mass of possessed street people who surround it and barricade the doors from the outside. Now trapped inside, Birack and Loomis theorize that Satan is actually the offspring of an even more powerful force of evil, the "Anti-God", who is bound to the realm of anti-matter. That night, the remaing group memebers find themselves sharing a recurring dream (apparently a tachyon transmission sent as a warning from the future year "one-nine-nine-nine") showing a shadowy figure emerging from the front of the church. The hazy transmission changes slightly with each occurrence of the dream, revealing progressively more detail. The narration of the transmission each time instructs the dreamer that they are witnessing an actual broadcast from the future, and they must prevent this possible outcome.
Eventually, the cylinder opens and the remaining liquid is absorbed into the body of student Kelly (Susan Blanchard), who transforms into the physical vessel of Satan: a gruesomely disfigured being, with powers of telekinesis and regeneration. Satan attempts to summon the Anti-God through a dimensional portal using a mirror, but the mirror is too small and the effort fails. As Birack, Loomis, Brian, Catherine and Walter remain the only ones not possessed, they must fight the remaining members of their team, while trying to stop Satan from finding a larger portal to draw the Anti-God into our world, thus beginning the apocalypse!
Over time, small jets of liquid escape from the cylinder, with members of the group exposed to the liquid becoming possessed by the entity, and uses them against the others. Two members of the research group are killed as they attempt to leave the church by a mass of possessed street people who surround it and barricade the doors from the outside. Now trapped inside, Birack and Loomis theorize that Satan is actually the offspring of an even more powerful force of evil, the "Anti-God", who is bound to the realm of anti-matter. That night, the remaing group memebers find themselves sharing a recurring dream (apparently a tachyon transmission sent as a warning from the future year "one-nine-nine-nine") showing a shadowy figure emerging from the front of the church. The hazy transmission changes slightly with each occurrence of the dream, revealing progressively more detail. The narration of the transmission each time instructs the dreamer that they are witnessing an actual broadcast from the future, and they must prevent this possible outcome.
Eventually, the cylinder opens and the remaining liquid is absorbed into the body of student Kelly (Susan Blanchard), who transforms into the physical vessel of Satan: a gruesomely disfigured being, with powers of telekinesis and regeneration. Satan attempts to summon the Anti-God through a dimensional portal using a mirror, but the mirror is too small and the effort fails. As Birack, Loomis, Brian, Catherine and Walter remain the only ones not possessed, they must fight the remaining members of their team, while trying to stop Satan from finding a larger portal to draw the Anti-God into our world, thus beginning the apocalypse!
[talking about the Anti-God]
Father Loomis: It's your disbelief that powers him. Your stubborn faith in, in...
[grasping for words]
Father Loomis: "common sense"! It allows his deception. He lives in the smallest parts of it. In the atoms... smaller... invisible... he lives in all of it. In the sum of its parts. We must translate this book. You must prove it scientifically... to convince the outside world.
Professor Howard Birack: The outside world doesn't want to hear this kind of bullshit. Just keep it locked away. You've already managed that for two thousand years.
Father Loomis: No prison can hold him now.
Top: Professor Howard Birack (Victor Wong) and Father Loomis (Donald Pleasence) struggle to understand the evil that resides in the mysterious green liquid (Above), along with a large research team from the university
The genesis of Prince of Darkness began when producer Debra Hill described a nightmare she had had to John Carpenter, where a vague dark figure exiting a church had filled her with dread. Carpenter developed the story around this idea in hopes of recreating the fear Hill really felt, hoping to make it more atmospheric, and would become the second film in carpenter's self described Apocalypse Trilogy (beginning with The Thing (1982) and ending with In the Mouth of Madness in 1995). Writing under the pseudonym Martin Quatermass - a homage to Professor Bernard Quatermass, the lead character of The Quatermass Experiment (1953) - Carpenter originally wrote Prince of Darkness as a fourth installment of the Halloween franchise, back when the series was to a continuation of unrelated Halloween anthology film, beginning with Halloween III: Season of the Witch. However, when producers decided to bring series villain Michael Myers back for the next installment, Carpenter rewrote the script as a stand alone film and approached independent studio, Alive Films, to produce. As such, this would be the first film carpenter made independently since Escape from New York (1981), not just because of the box office failure of his previous film Big Trouble in Little China (1986), but also due to his frustration with working with the studios, and was to be the first of a multi-picture deal with Alive where Carpenter was allocated $3 million per picture and complete creative control (the second film they made was They Live in 1988).
For the roles of Father Loomis, Professor Howard Birack, and college student Walter, Carpenter specifically wrote for actors Donald Pleasence, Victor Wong and Dennis Dun, due to his enjoyable prior collaborations with them. It was Peter Jason's first film for Carpenter - playing the role of Dr. Leahy - and afterward would also become a Carpenter regular. Alice Cooper originally asked Carpenter if he could come to set just to watch a special effect, due to Cooper's manager, Shep Gordon, also executive producing the film. Carpenter eventually decided to offer Cooper a role as the leader of the homeless zombies, as well as providing a title track for the soundtrack, also titled "Prince of Darkness". Jameson Parker and Lisa Blount were soon added to the cast as leading characters Brian Marsh and Catherine Danforth, joined by Susan Blanchard, Ann Howard, Ann Yen, Ken Wright, Dirk Blocker, Jessie Lawrence Ferguson, Robert Grasmere and Thom Bray playing the rest of the research team.
For the roles of Father Loomis, Professor Howard Birack, and college student Walter, Carpenter specifically wrote for actors Donald Pleasence, Victor Wong and Dennis Dun, due to his enjoyable prior collaborations with them. It was Peter Jason's first film for Carpenter - playing the role of Dr. Leahy - and afterward would also become a Carpenter regular. Alice Cooper originally asked Carpenter if he could come to set just to watch a special effect, due to Cooper's manager, Shep Gordon, also executive producing the film. Carpenter eventually decided to offer Cooper a role as the leader of the homeless zombies, as well as providing a title track for the soundtrack, also titled "Prince of Darkness". Jameson Parker and Lisa Blount were soon added to the cast as leading characters Brian Marsh and Catherine Danforth, joined by Susan Blanchard, Ann Howard, Ann Yen, Ken Wright, Dirk Blocker, Jessie Lawrence Ferguson, Robert Grasmere and Thom Bray playing the rest of the research team.
[Wyndham is being consumed by beetles]
Wyndham: I've got a message for you, and you're not going to like it.
Brian: Look at his chest!
[Wyndham's suit coat opens to reveal swarms of beetles]
Wyndham: Pray for death!
[Wyndham's head falls off, and his body starts coming apart]
Brian: [in horror] Jesus Christ!
Top: A mass of possessed homeless people, led by the Street Schizo (Alice Cooper), keep the research team from escaping the church:
Above: The liquid escapes its cylindrical prison and possesses one of the research team!
Filmed in Los Angeles over 30-days, Prince of Darkness was shot with wide-angle lenses, and combined with anamorphic footage to create a lot of distortion. For the recurring dream sequence, Carpenter first shot the action of the figure (played by actor Jessie Ferguson) with a video camera and then "re-photographed it on a television set" in order to give the image a peculiar, dislocated feeling that also appeared as if it was being filmed live. Doyle also reminded Carpenter that the director himself provided the disembodied voice that narrates each dream. The church location itself was filmed at the Union Center for the Arts in Los Angeles, with several scenes being shot at the University of Southern California, which John Carpenter attended as a film student.
Carpenter later claimed the most difficult effect was the claw coming out of the mirror. To achieve the effect, the filmmakers drained liquid mercury from a crane to create the pool of silver liquid. Cooper recreated the bike impalement trick from his stage shows for the scene where the Street Schizo kills one of the college students trying to leave the church (the bike Cooper uses was his own personal prop). Cooper later stated he was directed to act emotionless and "brain dead" by Carpenter, as the street people were "soul-less".
Carpenter later claimed the most difficult effect was the claw coming out of the mirror. To achieve the effect, the filmmakers drained liquid mercury from a crane to create the pool of silver liquid. Cooper recreated the bike impalement trick from his stage shows for the scene where the Street Schizo kills one of the college students trying to leave the church (the bike Cooper uses was his own personal prop). Cooper later stated he was directed to act emotionless and "brain dead" by Carpenter, as the street people were "soul-less".
Voice: This is not a dream... not a dream. We are using your brain's electrical system as a receiver. We are unable to transmit through conscious neural interference. You are receiving this broadcast as a dream. We are transmitting from the year one, nine, nine, nine. You are receiving this broadcast in order to alter the events you are seeing. Our technology has not developed a transmitter strong enough to reach your conscious state of awareness, but this is not a dream. You are seeing what is actually occurring for the purpose of causality violation.
Top: The ominous recurring dream the team start to experience, may hold the key to averting the apocalypse - or beginning it!;
Above: Director John Carpenter on set with stars Victor Wong and Donald Pleasence
Prince of Darkness was poorly received critically upon release, with Richard Harrington for the Washington Post writing, "At one point Pleasence vows that 'it's a secret that can no longer be kept.' Here's another: 'The Prince of Darkness stinks.' It too deserves to be shut up in a canister for 7 million years". Liam Lacey, in his review for the Globe and Mail, wrote, “There is no character really worth caring about, no sympathy to any of these characters. The principal romantic couple, Jameson Parker and Lisa Blount, are unpleasant enough to create an unfortunate ambivalence about their eternal destinies”. Carpenter later mentioned in an interview that, "the film died a swift death in theaters but found life, like many of his films, on video". In 2004, Jim Emerson wrote that Prince of Darkness was an undervalued horror film: "What makes me goose-pimply about Prince of Darkness is its goofy-but-ingenious central conceit and its truly Surrealistic imagery, some of which could have sprouted out of Buñuel and Dali's Un Chien Andalou."
ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 58%
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