PRINCE OF DARKNESS: John Carpenter's Apocalypse Trio Pt.2- Destruction of God

PROLOGUE: THE MIDDLE CHILD SYNDROME

Welcome back kids, it's time to dive into the second chapter of John Carpenter's Apocalypse Trilogy, PRINCE OF DARKNESS, starring the Big Jar of Satan!

Today, we're sinking our teeth into one of my many favorite John Carpenter films, because I love them all, but in wildly different ways, kinda like one's children- sure you have a favorite, but don't tell the others, yeah? You still love them all, and besides the others kinda know.

Plus, my usual writing music is even more apropos than usual today, since my favorite brain stimulant when pounding away at these articles is Ghost...

"Someone mentioned there would a big jar of Satan at this party, yeah?"

But this particular thesis is going to be cut through with a little bit of criticism as well, though never outright condemnation. This is one of my favorite John Carpenter movies to throw on and have a good time with friends, give it the ol' MST3K treatment, and have fun with one of John's more gonzo ideas.

But as a feature that is part of a thematic trilogy, this is the one that doesn't especially fit. It's the odd one out, and appropriately enough, the middle child of the 'series'. It was made after Carpenter's wacko love letter to Wu-Xia cinema Big Trouble in Little China burst onto the scene in usual Carpenter studio film fashion: flopping hard, getting critically mauled, then finding a loving and appreciative audience on vhs and tv. And frankly, John was just a little tired of the studio system's shit. So this one ended up being his first independently produced film since Escape from New York, and that's where my mixed opinions on this movie come in.

Before I became a good little film geek and started keeping track more obsessively of production and release dates of films, I had always assumed this film was one of John's earlier pieces, an indy contemporary with Micheal Myers and Snake Plissken, from much closer to 1980 than 1990, and defineitely with a bit of the 70's still hanging around.

I mean what about THIS mustache screams 1987? 

And there are other ways it feels more like early than mid Carpenter, but we'll get there. Let's dive into the pool and find God, shall we?

Or not...

PART I: STOP MAKING SENSE, or God + Quantum Physics = Horror Movie?

Prince of Darkness is one of the films that John Carpenter directed publicly but wrote privately. This was a way to make his films look a little more polished and collaborative from the outside, but also a great way to wear some of his influences on his sleeve and give little Easter-eggs for the audience in the know. So his nom-de-plume in Prince of Darkness? Martin Quatermass. This is a pretty un-subtle nod for those in the know to the Quatermass series of serials and films in Britain, a large portion of which were early influences on a little show called Doctor Who. For this film's purposes, it serves as a callback more specifically to Quatermass and the Pit in which the heroic scientist is called away from the British Rocket Group after the initial Quatermass Experiment to help investigate something strange getting dug up during construction on an underground train line: an alien space-craft with dead ET's inside that link back to our prehistoric origins as experiments of these aliens.

Pretty heavy stuff for the 60's and featuring one of my favorite little themes in dark sci-fi, one I like to call "Where Is Your God Now, Priest?" where the origins of man are pretty clearly divorced from anything laid down in the Book of Genesis, and thus the existence of God can be denied in something as outlandish as an anime about a transforming superhero fighting shape-shifting monsters. and if there's an outlier for this particular genre in American film that really digs deep into that particular well until it hits some glowing green shit, it's Prince of Darkness!

We hit the ground running like we always do in Carpenter films with a priest dying and leaving some weird freaky shit in the hands of another priest, One credited only as Priest, but named as Father Loomis and played by none other than Donald Pleasance of Halloween, The Puma Man and Escape from New York, and always ready to give some class and credibility to even the weirdest John Carpenter projects.

If you don't want that key, keep the box.
You could totally keep your weed in there.

After the creepy old key he's bequeathed leads him to a rundown church with... something in the basement, the old hideout of an esoteric religious order known as the Brotherhood of Sleep, he calls in an old acquaintance of his, a physicist  named Dr. Howard Birack played with a "I used to be a mad scientist, but I'm much better now" air of quiet weirdness and mystery by Victor Wong of Tremors, Big Trouble in Little China, and The Golden Child.

Birack is intrigued by the weird shit his old buddy is spouting, as his job is itself to spout weird shit- giving lectures on the more fun and mind-bending elements on quantum physics at a nearby college. So he gets some of his favorite students and colleagues together to go do some science.

That's where our ostensible leads come in, that mustache I pictured up there and few of the other students. They're all basically the archetypes you'd expect from  a movie full of 30-somethings playing "college students", with my personal standout being Dennis Dun of Big Trouble in Little China putting as much energy in here as he did in that previous film as a very passionate grad student named Walter.

This is all the space I wanna dedicate to these two, there really isn't much here.
It's strange that a film-maker aware of how good a movie can be without
 the obligatory Breeding Pair can be still felt the need to force one in here.

Maybe what this film needed was an Asian lead with a leading man smile and a cocky demeanor.

And as our leads come together, and the mystery is approached, studied, and unraveled, one of the weirdest issues I have with this movie comes up.



PART II: SCHRODINGER'S HORROR FILM, or How Prince of Darkness is Only Scary to It's Audience

See, what they find down in this church basement isn't what remains of a dread bake-sale or an ill-fated potluck dinner, but this-

A GREAT BIG JAR OF SATAN!!!

They aren't sure that's what it is at first, but there's no denying that this is a tall glass of swirling evil, and with the last of the Brotherhood that has kept it secret for eons gone it is gaining strength. The evidence gathers around the church as our scientists dig into their research. The low creatures of the Earth pulse and roil, ants, worms, maggots, and beetles gather in unsettling numbers and organization. And this power reaches out to the dregs of the human race as well, touching the minds of the weak-willed and enslaving them, especially a steadily growing group of the homeless led in cameo by none other than one of my favorite rock artists, the legendary Alice Cooper!

 "Yeah, yeah, Hail Satan- ya got any change?"

I feel like this may have been some sort of commentary on how the political moves of the 80's led to a mass expulsion of patients from closing mental institutions all over the country, resulting not only in massive spike in the homeless population in the major cities (since many didn't have next of kin able to take them in), but for this spike to be largely comprised of the mentally handicapped or the mentally ill. But I suspect it was more of a easy way to present a group of frightening people with a sense of quick and easy "otherness". And that's a whole Jar of Satan that I don't have time to open today; Horror and it's tendency to dehumanize and other those with mental health issues goes all the way to the beginnings of the form and deserves an article all of it's own that I don't have time to deep dive into this afternoon.

But all that aside, I think the real weak spot of the film is the specificity of it's cast. Where this becomes apparent is in the results of translating a Big Scary Book next to the Big Scary Jar and getting to the big reveal: that there isn't any God in particular, that Jesus Christ was an alien sent to Earth by a humanoid race to tell us all to be groovy to one another AND fight a battle against the being we know as Satan, an extra-dimensional alien that is only the son and herald of a much more powerful being, a sort of Spooky Galactus referred to as the "Anti-God" that this creature existed to bring through into our plane of existence from their dimension of utter chaos and evil. The Church has managed to keep the physical form of Satan bound after his defeat, but the being cannot be entirely destroyed, since he is partly energy and energy can only change form. Keeping up?

"You sure that's what it says?"
"Hang on, let me check my script.....Jesus Christ..."
"-is an alien, yeah we got that, skip to the end?"

So, that is- to put it lightly- some PRETTY HEAVY SHIT to lay down largely in one go of an exposition scene around a table not far from the aforementioned Jar de Satan.

If you have any religious convictions of your own, that can be pretty creepy a concept to wrap your head around. It's acknowledged that up at the highest levels the Church is aware that it's selling a false bill of goods, waiting for the day when the human race is ready to deal with the truth, which after 2000 years of being told a dumbed-down fairy tale version of the truth, is going to likely be never. And we see a few of the religious characters dealing with this here and there. Father Loomis is having a tough time of course, and one of our grad students appears to be religious, but it really only comes out when he starts belting out hymns after getting possessed by the Devil.

Hmm? Oh yeah, the Big Jar of Satan starts leaking and spraying into people's mouths, turning them into zombies. So if you wanted to really sit and think a minute with how there's no God and you were raised believing a lie, we don't have time now. Zombies.

"Should we wake him up?"
"I dunno.."
"Should we shake him?"
"Oh, no- he HATES that! Makes him all fizzy."

But the real loss of impact comes with the audience in the story for this bombshell of information: a bunch of grad students and physicists. You already have the clear divide of the Skeptic and the Zealot here with Loomis and Birack, and when the gaggle of scientists discover there's no God and Jesus was from outer space, it's kind of met with an indifferent "Yeah, figures." and doesn't come down with the weight it should. Maybe being raised by parents with a religious background, but not being particularly religious myself, I feel like there should be some more oomph behind this revelation, someone not being able to deal and going crazy before shit starts to go down for real.

What's this? Computers? Vials of different colored liquids?
MY GOD! Are you boys DOING SCIENCE IN HERE?!

Now I'm not saying Prince of Darkness is not a scary movie. It is. And a damn fun one too.

It has style for miles, a sense of dread second to none as it builds towards the classic Carpenter race to survive in cramped quarters against insurmountable odds, and a very unique premise (One of the few of his films I have NO IDEA how to turn into a Western is Prince of Darkness). Plus the recurring dream sequence that paces around in the back-ground of the movie is eerie as all Hell and the only bit that still gives me the chills. It was this dream that served as the nucleus of the production, inspired by a dream that Carpenter's writing partner and former spouse Debra Hill had about a shadowy figure emerging from a church and filling her with dread, leading to John wanting to make a film with that same feeling.

And he 100 percent succeeds. The dream scene (which anyone who sleeps in the church has and purports to be a message sent backwards through time via tachyon transmission as a warning from the year "One-nine-nine-nine...") is not only weird as hell, it's also slightly different each time we see it, showing how the events in the present are subtly reshaping the future and really committing to the whole sci-fi element of our horror/sci-fi tale.

But for me a big part of horror isn't just how the film might make me feel as a viewer, but also how the characters are effected by the horror of the scenario. If there was more solid dread coming from the characters about their situation- that they have found out their world is a lie, the truth is horrible, and the truth is now consuming their friends and trying desperately to kill them and destroy the world as we know it, it would fit in a bit more comfortably with it's two companions in the trilogy.
The characters are scared sure, who wouldn't be when there are psycho homeless people outside, people are getting turned into zombies, and your friend the cute blonde has been turned into a literal avatar of Satan?

And whatever THIS SHIT is? Yeah, that's happening too!

Which leads me to think of this as Schrodinger's Horror Movie it is both scary/not scary because while yes, it's a tightly directed John Carpenter movie, it lacks a bit of the personal element of horror he managed to capture in  films like Halloween and The Thing. And while it's far from his weakest film, (looking at you, Ghosts of Mars) it is lacking a certain something, which I think is linked to the way it drops the majority (and to me, most frightening elements of) it's premise for a much simpler one after doing all the work to set it up.


PART III: JOHN CARPENTER'S NIGHT OF THE EXISTENTIAL DEAD, or "I prefer to think God is not dead, just drunk..."


For the first half of it's run-time, Prince of Darkness is an atmospheric sci-fi horror film. And it's awesome. For the second? it gradually becomes something we never quite saw John do in a straight-up sense, but get an idea of how good it would be here: a zombie movie.

"Brains?"
"Shut up, Karen this is serious."

While some of his films have that element, and that same stripped-down style and pacing that makes the early George Romero Dead movies so good, he has never made a straight up zombie movie. He made this one because he was getting tired of seeing so many derivative horror films out there and wanted to inject some weird new ideas in.  And he succeeds for the most part, making a film made memorable by it's strangeness and charm. But the second half is really only memorable for me for a few things, and they're all things that stand out in disagreeable ways for me. Like remember the cute blonde I mentioned that gets the pull possession treatment? There's a reason I remember her hair color so well, and if you've seen this flick you know where I'm going with this.

She was played by an actress named Susan Blanchard who as best I can tell retired from acting about two years later. And yeah, I can imagine that someone who isn't entirely committed to their craft and all is someone who might ask that the creature make-up they have applied doesn't mess up their hair.

"Is it really noticeable?"
"Only on the face, sweetie."
"Oh."

I normally don't hit below the belt like this, but this is one of those things that completely took me out of the experience every time I watched this movie. The sheer power and corrupting nature of the films take on Satan is so horrific and so toxic that to fully integrate into Kelly's body is to begin that body's slow goopy dissolution. To accomplis his mission, Satan has to destroy her body and soul, kicking off a slimy, viscous transformation into an animate decayed meat husk with the mind of the most evil being on our planet inside that somehow leaves the nice blonde hair and pretty white top of it's host untouched. I've gotten a little sweaty at work and looked worse off than her clothes do in her scenes.

If the film really wanted to sell me on her being Satan incarnate, squelching clothes run through with blood and pus, a trail like a decaying slug, and wet, stringy hair coming off in clumps would have sold this character as someone who only cares about accomplishing their 2000 year old task and not about keeping their hair from getting mussed up. End of that rant, sorry. But this villain is memorable for all the wrong reasons and really brings down the back half of this movie.

As for the rest of it, like I said- It's an exciting and original take on a zombie movie that feels like it has some real stakes, with Satan trying to bring his father into our reality through a mirror while the surviving human characters try to find ways to stop it while dealing with the reanimated threat of their dead friends. And it's an enjoyably spooky watch, but it doesn't feel like a proper End of the World movie until the literal last scene.

If you told me when I was twelve, in the aftermath
of this film's Apocalypse, that it all started because of
some dumb-ass named Brian? I'd have shrugged and said "Figures."

So while I don't knock this films place in the canon of the Apocalypse Trilogy? I feel like other entries in the Carpenter library could fill it's spot a bit more ably. You telling me the world doesn't descend into an Apocalyptic revolution that would end life as we know it in the aftermath of the final scene in They Live? Or that the overall state of the world and the final "Fuck you" from Snake Plissken to the President doesn't lead to the eventual extinction of the human race in Escape from New York? (Escape from LA not withstanding)

At the end of the day, I always find Prince of Darkness an entertaining flick, but am a little disappointed that a movie with such high concept, high impact ideas tees them up just to slice into the woods of the Zombie movie.

We know from the previous entry and the succeeding one that existential dread is one of the favorite thematic loose teeth John Carpenter likes to wiggle, I just wished he'd spent more time doing that in this one.

John Carpenter: What happens to us when we destroy God?

Also John Carpenter: Zombie shit, apparently.

"Hallelujah, brother..."

NEXT TIME: DO YOU READ SUTTER CANE?