Prince of Darkness (film)

Infobox_Film
name = Prince of Darkness

|200px
caption = Theatrical Poster
director = John Carpenter
producer = Larry J. Franco
writer = John Carpenter (as "Martin Quatermass")
starring = Donald Pleasence
Jameson Parker
Victor Wong
music = John Carpenter
Alan Howarth
cinematography = Gary B. Kibbe
distributor = Universal "(United States and Canada)"
Carolco "(all other territories)"
released = 1987
runtime = 102 min.
country = USA
language = English
budget = $3,000,000 (approximate)
amg_id = 1:39198
imdb_id = 0093777|

"Prince of Darkness" (also known as "John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness") is a 1987 American horror film directed, written and scored by John Carpenter. The film is the second installment in what Carpenter refers to as his "Apocalypse Trilogy", which began with "The Thing" and concludes with "In the Mouth of Madness".

Plot

A priest (Donald Pleasence) invites Professor Howard Birack (Victor Wong) and his students to investigate a mysterious cylinder in the basement of an abandoned Los Angeles church. The cylinder contains a constantly swirling, green liquid. Throughout the night, it begins to possess the students one by one and uses them against the remaining survivors. After researching the text found next to the cylinder, it is discovered that the liquid is actually Satan himself.

The text also reveals that Satan is the son of an even more powerful force of evil, an Anti-God, who is trapped in another dimension. Satan possesses one of the students and attempts to bring his father through a dimensional portal, using a mirror. At the climax of the film, Catherine Danforth (Lisa Blount), one of the students, stops this from happening by tackling the possessed student, and both of them fall through the portal. Before she or the Anti-God can escape, the priest shatters the portal, trapping Satan, the Anti-God, and Danforth in the other realm. Danforth is seen on the other side of the mirror with her right arm extended reaching out to the edge of the mirror/portal as if trying to escape.

Following the climax, the students return home. An eerie and fragmented foreshadowing dream sequence occurs repeatedly during the film, apparently a transmission from the future year of 1999, each time showing a little more and also providing a final twist.

Marsh appears to awaken, and rolls over to find Satan, in the form of the possessed student, lying in bed with him. Marsh then awakens screaming, recovers, and approaches his bedroom mirror, hand outstretched. The film cuts to black just before his fingers touch the mirror.

Production

The idea for the film came about as Carpenter had been researching theoretical physics and atomic theory. He recalled, simply, that "I thought it would be interesting to create some sort of ultimate evil and combine it with the notion of matter and anti-matter". [Gilles Boulenger, "John Carpenter Prince of Darkness", (Los Angeles, Silman-James Press, 2003), pp.201, ISBN 1-879505-67-3] This idea, which would eventually develop into the screenplay for "Prince of Darkness", was to be the first of a multi-picture deal with Alive Pictures, where Carpenter was allocated $3 million per picture and complete creative control. [Boulenger, pp. 201]

Executive producer Shep Gordon was also manager to singer Alice Cooper and suggested Cooper record a song for the picture. Carpenter also cast Cooper in the picture as one of the homeless zombies. Cooper also allowed the use of his 'impaling device' from his stage show to be used in the film in a scene where Cooper's character kills Etchinson. [Boulenger, pp. 204] The song Cooper wrote for the film, also titled "Prince of Darkness", can be heard briefly in the same scene playing through Etchinson's headphones, although the song itself would not be released until a year later.

This film was shot in 48 days.Fact|date=February 2007 Carpenter brought back to the film people that he had worked with previously, including Victor Wong and Donald Pleasance. Peter Jason, soon to become a Carpenter regular, was also in the film.

Reception

Critically, the film was poorly received at the time of its initial release, accused of having an over-complicated plot and uneven pacing. It is generally thought to have done poorly at the box office, but as the movie's budget was under $3 million and the eventual gross was $14 million, it managed a profit for the studio. Over the years, the film's critical reputation has improved considerably and it has obtained a cult following.

The film is very popular in Japan and Spain. In Japan, the film was re-named "John Carpenter's Paradigm" and Spain released the film under the title "El Principe de las tinieblas". Both countries created their own artwork for the film. The Spanish DVD has an extra not on the UK disc, a two minute feature with John Carpenter talking about the film. Fact|date=July 2008

Carpenter's inventive skills in editing and mood-setting music are in evidence throughout the film. The film was shot through a slightly anamorphic lens, giving a subtle distortion to every scene.

Although Carpenter wrote the screenplay, in the film's credits the writer is listed as Martin Quatermass, a homage repeated in the film with Kneale University. These were in reference to the British film and television writer Nigel Kneale and the famous fictional scientist he created, Professor Bernard Quatermass. The storyline features elements associated with Kneale (the ancient evil aspect of both "Quatermass and the Pit" and "The Quatermass Conclusion", the idea of messages from the future from "The Road", and the scientific investigation of the supernatural from "The Stone Tape"). Carpenter would return to the idea of clerical secrecy in "Vampires".

Kneale, however, was irritated with this use of the character's name in the film's credits, as he feared that the impression may be given that he had something to do with the film. Previously, he had written the original screenplay for the 1982 film "" for Carpenter, but had been so incensed with all of the changes director Tommy Lee Wallace had made to it that he had his name removed from the credits. [cite book | last=Murray| first=Andy | title=Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale |format=paperback|year=2006 | location=London|publisher=Headpress | id=ISBN 1-900486-50-4 | pages=p. 158]

References

External links

*imdb title|id=0093777|title=Prince of Darkness
* [http://www.theofficialjohncarpenter.com/pages/themovies/pd/pd.html Prince of Darkness at theofficialjohncarpenter.com]