Being a horror fan in the 80's was a great time indeed. It was a decade where you'd anticipate the latest film from people like Wes Craven and John Carpenter. As the two best known auteurs of the time, their careers since have been up-and-down, but I always found myself enjoying Carpenter's work more as he effortlessly jumped from genre flicks like Halloween, to the over-the-top martial arts homage action of Big Trouble in Little China, to sci-fi romantic drama Starman. But what was most exciting to me, in 1987, was the impending release of his religion-themed flick Prince of Darkness as it marked a horror reunion of sorts between Carpenter and his Halloween star Donald Pleasence. I remember rushing to the video store the week it came out on VHS, popping it into my player, and proceeding to be super disappointed in the results. Now, all these years later, I've given it a second go and, while it does have some obvious flaws (mostly from the muddled scripting), I found myself entertained and taken in by some fairly effective scare moments - this definitely isn't as bad as my first impression, or its reputation, might lead you to believe.

Pleasence plays a priest who comes into possession of a strange box that contains a key and a book that talks of a being called the "Sleeper". This leads him on a journey to an old, unassuming church and he recruits University professor Birack (Victor Wong) to help investigate. They soon find a canister in the basement that contains a churning green liquid, leading to Birack gathering together some students, which includes our sort-of-heroes Catherine (Lisa Blount) and Brian (Jameson Parker), to help figure out what exactly it is.

Eventually, their prodding around goes awry as the church seems to be drawing all the homeless from the area to it (this includes rocker Alice Cooper in a small role), insects begin to appear in the area in mass quantities, and people start getting possessed causing them to kill the others as well as passing the fluid onto victims and making them mindless zombie as well. This is all wedged between plenty of religious and science babble, but Carpenter shows some solid imagery during the scare scenes with moments where someone is stabbed by a bike frame, a neck is snapped, and one person falls apart in a flood of roaches. These scenes are also helped by Carpenter's synthesizer tinged score he co-created with Alan Howarth. It's too bad things end on a bit of a weak note during a finale involving a mirror.

In amongst all this evil goings on, the return of Pleasence offers up some over-the-top lunacy as he just seems to be playing a slight variation of the Sam Loomis character he played in Halloween. Veteran Wong does his thing, as usual, and is solid while Dennis Dun offers up some comic relief as Walter. And, I must admit, it was cool seeing Cooper here and he does get a good send off - having not seen Monster Dog, I can't say what how that attempt at him starring in a horror flick went.

As I said earlier, Prince of Darkness is actually pretty good. I've always looked upon it as one of Carpenter's lesser regarded films but I found myself quite enjoying its mixture of decent effects work, mild suspense, and death scenes - even if a lot of Carpenter's script (which he wrote under the pseudonym Martin Quartermass, a tribute to the old Hammer films of the 50's) stumbles whenever trying to give the film a scientific angle. It's certainly held up a lot better than some of cohort Craven's 80's work (Deadly Friend, for example) and doesn't fill me with disappointment like his later efforts Escape from L.A., Vampires, and the terrible Ghosts of Mars. (Chris Hartley, 1/18/12)

Directed By: John Carpenter.
Written By: Martin Quartermass (John Carpenter).

Starring: Donald Pleasence, Lisa Blount, Victor Wong, Dennis Dun.