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PRINCE OF DARKNESS

This 1987 film from horror maestro John Carpenter is heavy on ideas but light on logical resolution. It is, in a way, a rather heady film, one that tosses around physics like narrative glitter but only to a point. It reminded me a little bit of Dario Argento's work. Not in execution or narrative but in the way Argento seems to find an idea he finds interesting (like anorexia in TRAUMA), incorporates it heavily into the first half of his story and then forgets all about it in the end. Carpenter's film contains a lot of talk of quantum physics and heavy subjects like quantum entanglement and tachyon streams, but it doesn't actually do anything with them. They're just hanging around the periphery of the narrative, not really bringing anything to the story except a feeling of false intellectualism. When PRINCE OF DARKNESS finally takes a turn into a full-blown demonic siege film, physics takes a backseat to standard horror trappings like chases, hiding in closets and broken necks. You have to wonder why he even bothered with all the physics in the first place.

The film opens with the death of a priest. Sitting on his chest is an ornate box. Inside that box is a key. Another priest (played by Donald Pleasence and referred to in many reviews and writings as Father Loomis; the character is never named in the film) takes the key and travels to an old, derelict church. The key unlocks a door that leads into a large basement room. In the center of the basement is a large tube of swirling green goo and an ancient book. The priest contacts a physics professor named Howard Birack and asks for his help in examining the mysterious tube of liquid. Birack quickly assembles a group of his students as well as a few biologists, linguists and metaphysicians. As the old book is slowly translated, the nature of what is in the tube becomes clear to all. It is, in essence, supreme evil, an anti-god in prebiotic form. But that isn't all the book contains. It also contains advanced mathematics, much more advanced than what was capable of being written two thousand years ago. The priest attempts to explain to the confused team just what is going on here. The tube of goo is really the son of Satan, contained and planted on Earth to one day awaken and lead its father into the world of men by connecting our reality with its mirror reality. And now, while an army of bugs and possessed homeless people converge on the church, the tube has begun to leak, slowly unleashing its evil contents into the world. One by one, the research team becomes possessed by the evil force and it's up to the priest and the few remaining students to stop Satan from being brought into the world.

John Carpenter, an atheist, treats the history of Christianity as little more than a piece of the narrative, creating a bizarre alternate version of Christian history that may rub the more sensitive religious viewer the wrong way. As an atheist myself, I couldn't care less about religion or what Carpenter has to say about it, except that the back story he spins makes the film even more ridiculous. In Carpenter's history of Christianity, Jesus was an alien who came to Earth to warn people about Satan's plans. People thought he was simply mad so they crucified him, ignoring his warnings and pleas. A few of his followers managed to find the tube of goo and sealed it away. A sect was formed called the Brotherhood of Sleep and they took on the responsibility of caring for this dangerous item. The sect decided to create the religion we now known as Christianty as a kind of diversion from the truth. As the science of the time was unable to prove the real truth behind the existence of good and evil, they decided to keep all of this a secret until science finally caught up and was able to provide proof. However, religion had become a great way to control the populace so the Church decided to keep all of this under wraps, unwilling to give up the power granted to them by their centuries of lies.

Carpenter's screenplay (credited under the pseudonym Martin Quatermass) seems confused by its own metaphysics. What Carpenter seems to be doing is appropriating quantum physics as a kind of natural mysticism. Within the confines of the film, religion is not some nebulous realm of the spiritual but a natural realm that exists both in and apart from our reality (the canister of evil exists in our reality while the Satan exists in a mirror dimension) and Carpenter uses all kinds of vague physics talk and mathematics to bolster this notion. But it doesn't accomplish that at all as the film doesn't give us a framework in which that makes any sense whatsoever. In the same way New Age authors and pseudo-scientists use phenomenon like quantum uncertainty and quantum entanglement to argue for some kind of solipsistic truth or cosmic intelligence, Carpenter appropriates science in order to create a supernaturalism that could exist in lock step with the rigors of scientific discovery. However, all it accomplishes is a scenario which fails to come together in any kind of believable way which is probably why all notions of science are jettisoned once the film settles into demon possession territory.

Once the film finds its way into traditional horror territory, it fairs much better. Carpenter has always had an uncanny ability to create suspense sequences but here his touch seems to be off a bit. PRINCE OF DARKNESS is probably, pound for pound, one of his least suspenseful films but it does manage to create a few memorable pieces of imagery. For all the stupidity surrounding it, the image of the swirling, luminous goo sitting atop an altar is a great sight and Carpenter's use of sudden, no-fuss violence remains shocking. The film has a setting similar to that of THE THING in its geography. A few rooms, lots of hallways and (thanks to the hoards of hypnotized, murderous homeless people outside) no feasible escape routes, but unfortunately there are no real opportunities for Carpenter to flex his muscle and put together good, solid set pieces. The two nasty scenes the film contains (a great, Argento-esque stabbing and a rather painful to watch impalement) occur outside while the interior scenes all consist of slow-moving possessed scientists walking slower than zombies.

PRINCE OF DARKNESS feels unfinished at a narrative level. You can feel Carpenter reaching for the same kind of dread that infused every frame of Peter Sasdy's THE STONE TAPE, a supernatural film with scientific undertones written by the great Nigel Kneale (the creator of the Quatermass films from which Carpenter nicked his writing pseudonym), but he never quite gets there. There is a germ of a good story here but nothing about it gels or makes sense on a narrative level. Had Carpenter dropped all the science talk (which is not important to the story at all) and just jumped down the rabbit hole of the supernatural, he would have been better off. There are good ideas to be found here. It's just a shame Carpenter couldn't manage to find a story to hang them on.

Not recommended.