The Prince Of Darkness (1987)

Undeniably a part of his masterworks, John Carpenter's The Prince Of Darkness is one of my favorite films, and one of the best films overall in regards to those which visit the joke of satan, evil and the apocalypse

"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."


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This film is infact the second film of Carpenter's apocalypse trilogy. The first being The Thing, and the last being In The Mouth Of Madness, however, none of the films are related in anyway.





The Prince Of Darkness is about an age old secret that the catholic church has been guarding for years. A vile of green liquid, sealed from the inside is said to contain the essence of evil itself, which existed before time and mankind, and the container is said to have been the vessel in which god sealed his follower's mutinous opposition. Now the liquid is brewing inside the container as people lose


their fate in the church and god.

A local preist seeks the help of a friend, a professor at a local university who teachers advanced physics to grad students. Recruiting his physics grad students, along with several other professors, they form a team to attempt to explain the liquid evil, residing, and gaining momentum in the bowels of the church. With physicists, historians, chemists staying the weekend in the church, the group attempts to make sense of this impossibility. Before long the liquid escapes and possesses some of the bodies. If the evil can reach its true potential, the gate between this world and the next will open and hell will spill across the land like the black plague.



The really attractive aspect of this film is the approach taken to address evil as a scientific anomaly not as religious fact or miracle. The vat is said to have existed before civilization, the book tells the story of the vile and how it's come to be, and according to physicists, the liquid inside denies reality and gravity simultaneously.



If all this isn't enough to grab your attention then perhaps the fact that Alice Cooper plays a homeless man controlled by other worldly forces may Most importantly, the soundtrack is one of the greatest eerie scores put together for a horror film. From the first moments of the film, Carpenter develops his characters early on so that later the film can really focus on their struggles instead of still trying to tell who they are. Host to great special effects, music, cinematography and great angles, and a truly creepy atmosphere, Prince Of Darkness never feels anything short of amazing, no matter how much you watch it.