Monday, June 29, 2009

The Devil, The Future, The Zombies, And The Anti-Matter

Prince Of Darkness(1987)
Directed By John Carpenter


Way, better than I thought going in. It's certainly a B-Movie first and foremost, but it's overambitious in the best ways possible, a group of theoretical physicists and assorted scientiests investigate an abandoned church in Los Angeles.
Inside the church is a strange containeer filled of mysterious green liquid, for the Vatican.
Guess whose inside.What could have been a completely run of the mill anti-christ movie, is injected with quantum physics, a mysterious Gnostic bible, projectile spitting zombies, Alice Cooper as the schizophrenic leader of a pack of leering homeless, dreams transmitted from the future, random Argento like death seuqences with beetles, ants, etc.
To my great pleasure the cast is full of actors from other John Carpenter productions like "Hallowen", "Big Trouble In Little China", and "The Thing".
What was creepy about this, just a little, was how accurate the discussions of the physics (Shrodingers Cat, anti-matter, faster than light travel) and theology (though Gnosticism is never mentioned, the mysteious book they translate is on the money), that is completely uncessary for a movie with zombies and demonic possesions.

But there it is.
John Carpenter is and was one of the most imaginative directors in horror, where others see fog he sees the ghosts of dead sailers, halloween masks become the face of unfathomable evil, a trip through modern china town holds anicent demons, New York becomes a post-apacolyptic prison, sunglasses can reveal the hidden face of the world, aliens can be both freinds and shapeshifting devourers.

I grew up these movies, and the more ghost movies that get re-made the more I appreciate his gusto, he scored almost every movie he made himself.Don't know why I avoided this for so long.
There are plenty of laugh out loud moments too, thanks to Dennis Dunn, especially his trapped in the closet sequence.

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