Prince of Darkness (1987): My Fifth Must See Pick for the Halloween Seasson

Decades before Rob Zombie started making horror films and using a small pool of recurring actors -one of which is his wife- John Carpenter was doing just that with his own small pool of actors -one of which was his wife at one time. So in honor of Donald Pleasence’s birthday (Oct. 5th) my fifth pick for Halloween must sees is John Carpenter’s “The Prince of Darkness.”

All is not well in the world as the a dying priest who has been keeping a sinister secret locked away in the basement of an unused church in one of the shitty parts of LA for a mysterious sect of the church only known as “The Brotherhood of Sleep”, who send another Priest (Donald Pleasence) of the sect the church and opens the basement and discovers a large vat of weird swirling green liquid. The Priest -who has no other name than that- contacts a group physic grads from a local college to help him investigate just what the hell it is that has been locked away.

It turns out that this weird green liquid may hold the essence of Satan himself and that the Priest (Pleasence) is just a pawn for “The Brotherhood of Sleep” that watches over the liquid. But little does the Priest know that a prophesy holds the upcoming apocalypse and the coming of darkness with the re-birth of Satan and now it is up to the Priest and his rag tag team of students to keep it from happening.

“Prince of Darkness” is one of Carpenter’s more psychotically disturbing films with it’s slow moving build up to impending doom along with a great Carpenter score to set the mood. And when things start to go bad they go really fucking bad. Students one by one start to be possessed and turned into fucked up zombie-like versions of themselves and let us not forget about the weird crowd of homeless freaks -one of which played by horror-rocker Alice Cooper- drawn to the scene by the siren song of the devil.

A definite must see for Carpenter fans and fans of the horror genre. Then again you probably already know this.

Until next time…