Halloween Countdown: October 22 – the flavor of the beast

For several millennia, humankind has labored to grasp what the real nature of evil truly is. Is it an abstract, relative concept? Or a concrete and absolute force? Is it embodied by a big, red guy with cloven hooves and a pitchfork? Or, as I and many others have come to believe, does its physical manifestation come in the form of the vile weed known as cilantro?

While the theologians, philosophers, and gourmands of the world attempt to hash out details of this thorny debate, filmmaker John Carpenter has offered his only theory about the nature of evil. As detailed in 1987's damp squib of a horror movie, Prince of Darkness, Carpenter posits that evil is actually a couple dozen gallons of swirling green goop shakily contained inside the bastard child of a water cooler and a lava lamp.


Last night, I sat in on my wife's annual viewing of Prince of Darkness (as part of her Halloween season movie-watching marathon). It had been a while since I'd seen the film in its entirety, and while I didn't think it has aged well compared to my memories of past viewings, it was still an enjoyable experience. It's not a great (or even a "really good") movie, but it is John Carpenter working his familiar "spooky Alamo" trope with some interesting cosmic horror elements tossed into the mix. Unfortunately, it's those latter elements, used in contrast with more traditional film scare tactics, that ultimately derail Prince of Darkness.

Cosmic horror, dealing with epic concepts and existential terrors, is a difficult genre to translate to film because the visceral, immediate "gotcha" moments that are the trademark of Hollywood spookshows matter less than the the tonal slow burn of mounting dread, fueled by revelatory exposition and a sense of the unspoken, terrible answer looming at the periphery. Even the grandmaster of the cosmic horror genre, H. P. Lovecraft, was not immune to falling back upon less subtle spookwork in his stories. (The shoggoth chase in "At the Mountains of Madness," for example.)

The exposition-heavy set-ups required by the cosmic genre tend to work better on paper, where it's easier to pass off "non-euclidean angles" and "colors outside the earthly spectrum" without having to fall into the Helen of Troy trap (that is, the problem of visually depicting the indescribable). What all this fancy talk means in terms of Prince of Darkness is that the movie plays out as a lumpy stew where the characters attempt (and fail, mostly) to couch Christian theology in terms of quantum physics while fending off hordes of the demonically possessed.

Imagine a version of Resident Evil where the characters stop to recite passages from Richard Feynman's work every ten minutes or so, and you've pretty much got the idea. It's a shame, because the ideas being bandied out in the movie are quite fascinating, despite the confusing and haphazard way in which they're presented.

The film does have a number of unsettling moments sprinkled amidst the confusion, and features appearances by several Carpenter regulars, as well as a scene featuring Alice Cooper impaling a man with a bicycle. For sheer terrifying power, however, nothing in the film tops leading man Jameson (Simon & Simon) Parker's aggressively disturbing blonde mustache. (Between that, his Ken doll hairstyle, and his compeltely hairless chest, I found myself referring to his character simply as "Chad Pornstar" when discussing the film with my wife afterwards.)

Gaze upon the facial fuzz of evil, and despair!
Here we have the theme from Prince of Darkness, along with an excellent gothic-tinged cover -- courtesy of AT fave Blood and Roses -- of the best film theme the multi-talented Mr. Carpenter ever composed:

John Carpenter - Prince of Darkness (from The Essential John Carpenter, 2002)

Blood and Roses - Escape from Precinct 13 (from Enough Is Never Enough, 1985; collected on Same as It Never Was, 2007)

(Finally, if any of my readers happen to know the exact location of the church where the film was shot, please leave a comment or drop me a line. My wife is dying to know The church is now the Union Center for the Arts in Little Tokyo, not too far from City Hall. The interior shots were done at a studio in Valencia.)