Buy posters from this movie

The most interesting and noteworthy thing about this movie is that is was made by a talented and competent director, and yet it never once even approaches making sense. Prince of Darkness has a goobledygook to dialogue ratio of about 300: 1. There are lots of priests and scientists who just sit around and say things that are so absolutely non-sensical that I'm surprised there wasn't a lot more muffled giggling. I would wager that what you and I would consider "meaningless and intentionally obtuse psychobabble" makes up easily 75% of the script. To quote one of the background characters, right before he is stabbed by Alice Cooper (!) about 34 times: "You guys are staying? This is all KA-KA!" (I swear he says KA-KA!)

All of that could be forgiven if at least the horror story itself were any good. But except for a few choice scenes, Carpenter is surprisingly flat here. According to this movie, Jesus was a conspirator who helped his followers bottle up Satan's son into this big canister. Then the canister was entrusted to a secret sect of priests. (This is all in the movie and I am not making it up.) The canister is discovered in an abandoned L.A. church, and a small army of really boring people show up to examine it. The body count ensues.

Apparently the canister can spray devil water into the open mouths of its screaming victims, thereby making them devil zombies. Then the devil zombies spit into the mouths of the dull humans and then there's more devil zombies. The dwindling survivors also have to contend with an army of zombie homeless outside and clumps of roaches and worms. (Again, I am not making this up.)

It pains me sincerely to say all this, as I rank John Carpenter as perhaps my favorite movie director. But the honest truth is that this movie pretty much just stinks. It's obvious the studio had a mess on their hands before they hit the editing room, and that process probably didn't help much either. The pacing is all off for this type of 'haunted-house' thriller, and the acting approaches atrocious at nearly every turn.

The script is really to blame here, because it's just plain dumb. For example, there's a scene in this movie where a scientist has somehow tapped in to the satanic spirit (on her computer) and this is what the devil types out on her monitor: "The Holy Ghost will not save you. The God Plutonium will not save you. In fact, nothing will save you." Yawn. That's supposed to be a creepy message from Satan? Please. (Something like "Pauly Shore, Carrot-Top and Harlan Williams to star in The Chippendale's Movie" would have been scarier.) The really funny thing is that this satanic email has no meaning or bearing on the movie at all! It's just weird.

While there are enough components to keep the movie going, they are pretty much few and far between. Scenes that start out creepy and exciting usually just end up silly. Action (or gore) sequences are constantly interrupted by scenes of the incessant script babblings and religious whining. (Especially guilty of this is the eponymous and annoying Donald Pleasance as an overemoting priest. He's easily the funniest thing in this movie, which is not a comedy by the way.)

Although not completely unwatchable, I can recommend Prince of Darkness only to hardcore Carpenter fans, and even then only a little. The movie earns its 2-star rating thanks solely to a creepy subplot involving precognitive dreams being transmitted to our heroes from an unnamed source in the future. (I swear I'm not making this up.)

link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=3003&reviewer=128
originally posted: 04/16/00 18:34:11
 printer-friendly format