Prince of Darkness

The cosmic clash between metaphysics and spirituality, John Carpenter-style.

This is how to age gracefully. Like Jack Kirby’s FOURTH WORLD comic books, PRINCE OF DARKNESS is John Carpenter’s pet-project masterwork — a sprawling, Lovecraft-ian folk epic about demons, science, and unseen evil. A group of college students and professors camp out in a decrepit church to research the unexplainable charms of Satan. Once there, they’re flung into a netherworld that’s populated by zombies who hijack souls, Donald Pleasance with an axe, and Alice Cooper as a homicidal hobo. Released ten years after HALLOWEEN, PRINCE OF DARKNESS is John Carpenter stopping to smell the roses. It’s heavy on development, but even heavier on violence, dread, and payoff — like Fulci’s THE BEYOND if that movie was rooted in the existential angst of late ’80s America. As a professor says in the movie’s opening minutes, “Say goodbye to classical reality.”

2k DCP courtesy of Universal Pictures.