#Johnuary continues with John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness.
Like many of the films I’ve been watching for Johnuary I knew absolutely nothing about Prince of Darkness before watching it. Here are my initial thoughts as I watched it.
- Once again I love the score. I think this one was John Carpenter jointly with Alan Howarth. It really does help to set the tone in terms of the slow build up of tension as the story develops
- Carpenter goes to actors he knows again. Donald Pleasance, plus two people from Big Trouble in Little China, only a year after Big Trouble in Little China was released
- I do like long slow title sequences like that where it dips in and out of the title names throughout the first several minutes of the film. Carpenter has done that before, particularly in The Fog
- That is quite an impressive moustache I have to say that the lead male has. And it’s an impressive ‘cup of coffee’ that he and the lead female went for. Two seconds later and the camera cuts to them in bed together
- The first half an hour does actually drag quite a bit I have to say
- The alleyway at one point looks very like the alleyway where they do the fight in They Live. May well be the same place. But then again it’s just an alleyway and I’m sure they all look alike
- I thought the main homeless guy looked like Alice Cooper and then I looked on IMDB and found that it was Alice Cooper!
- The homeless people are very like the people from Assault on Precinct 13 or even how Michael Myers moved and watched. Stationary or faceless. Just constantly watching. Pretty unnerving
- I loved the bit with the woman typing those weird possessed messages. Very ‘The Shining’
- I also loved the bit about tachyons coming back in time. Very Star Trek TNG. I really liked the idea of the communal dream and people sending a message through time. That was a pretty cool concept. I found it a bit strange that the dream was of a VHS recording though
- Things really do start to ramp up with about 40mins left, and the synth score really starts to kick in big time. Nicely done
- Chopsticks and a can of sprite. Awesome weapons. Very akin to Jamie Lee Curtis using knitting needles in Halloween
- It was quite reminiscent of The Thing in some ways when they’re not sure which members of their team have been possessed yet
- It’s pretty awesome how the woman regenerates her arm when Donald Pleasance gets her with the axe
- It’s a pretty powerful moment when the woman sacrifices herself and jumps into the mirror
- I kind of wanted the Prince of Darkness to come out of the mirror. I loved the clawed hands coming out. Reminded me a bit of Tim Curry in Legend
- It’s a John Carpenter movie so of course it can’t have a happy ending. Nice little development at the end to keep you guessing.
All in all I felt that this film had a great premise but the script and pacing let it down. It was too slow at the beginning and I just felt it missed a trick here or there. Great concept though and I do like ones like this with quite apocalyptic potential endings which just barely end up getting quashed (or do they?).
Images from Blu-Ray.com