Personally, I was expecting a little more Prince of Darkness in Prince of Darkness. If you told me "here's a movie about Satan, except instead of Satan it's a big green vial of crap," I would expect the worst. But leave it to John Carpenter to take that concept and make a pretty darn good movie about it. Misleading? Maybe. But it's still a pretty decent watch.
I'm not overly familiar with the horror maestro's work. (Shake your finger at me - "Thats a BAD horror movie blogger.") But he seems to excel at taking a group of people and trapping them in an isolated location - this time, it's at an abandoned church surrounded by crazy homeless people (including Alice Cooper!), where a ancient (and evil!) artifact has recently been unearthed. According to an old text, the green goo will be instrumental in bringing Old Scratch back our plane of existence. The big vial of green stuff made me wonder what kind of film John Carpenter's Secret of the Ooze would have been - probably no Vanilla Ice. And a lot more vomit.
My Synopsis: A bunch of physicists and other sciencey types are brought into a church by an old priest (Donald Pleasence) where an ungodly discovery has been made. They must decipher a bunch of old texts and run some tests on the crazy green goo found in the church's hidden ritual room. (Every Catholic church has one, right?) Unbeknownst to them, it's some nasty shit that will take over their bodies and clear the way for the rebirth of the Prince of Darkness!
Elaborate Genre: Demonic possession pseudo slasher with a little body horror
Overall: Not top shelf, but still pretty good.
The highlights - and one of the lowlights - of the the film are probably the visuals. There is a lot of stuff going on here, and most of it is pretty good. The makeup on the main infected person is really solid, as are a couple of the kills. And even the practical effects that don't look that good are fun to see, and still look better than the computer generated blob that would take their places now. But there's some bad stuff too - I'm specifically thinking of the numerous times a character vomits some weird nasty water into another character's mouth, which is how one gets infected/possessed in this film. It's always shot from the side and clearly just a hose attached to their cheek. Something about that almost *always* looks goofy to me, and there's a lot of it here.
Carpenter is definitely able to create a good atmosphere in the old church. The secret ritual room is covered in candles and has a creepy gothic feel, but it still feels very grounded in present day reality. (Aside from the big vial of Satan in the corner, that is.) It would be easy for a plot like "Satan trying to come back to Earth" to be really corny, but the way it's presented here pretty much works. It helps that the cast is likable and very workman-like. Despite them being (theoretically) the best academia has to offer, they don't come across like a bunch of snobs or anything. The way everyone behaves is pretty straight-forward - you could substitute just about anyone from any profession in this situation and the results would be similar. I guess the old evil book would just have to be pre-translated is all.
The main misfire for me was the comic relief. There's this one guy that's cracking-wise when he just straight up shouldn't be. He's clearly witnessing some crazy supernatural shit, and still has the time to make jokes. It just doesn't make sense and kind of takes you out of the movie.
Donald Pleasence is decent - although it's honestly a pretty insignificant role. It's fun to see him and all, but he just doesn't quite make the impression that you want. And honestly, that's sort of my take on the film as a whole. I liked it - quite a bit - but the expectations were almost too high. Like, the (arguably) greatest horror director of a generation is taking on the most evil thing EVER - you expect some major fireworks. And while Prince of Darkness is definitely cool, it kind of just feels like an Evil Dead / possession movie with a little more gravitas. It feels like it should be Special - instead it's just Pretty Good.
But at the end of the day, you're still left with a pretty good movie. Which is just about all you can ask for.
I would recommend this film.
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