hrkepler 'Prince of Darkness' is not master of horror John Carpenter's best film and it is weakest in his so called "Apocalypse Trilogy", but Carpenter is such director whose more mediocre work surpasses other genre director's film by miles. In 'Prince of Darkness' Carpenter again manages to perfectly create creepy and claustrophobic atmosphere (although might not as good as in 'The Thing') and the horror doesn't need to rely on jump scares and fancy special effects. Only Carpenter can build up such a slow an intense waiting of the doom.After some flops at the box office John Carpenter had fallen into discountenance by the mayor studios 'Prince of Darkness' was again independent film with modest budget. The low budged doesn't take anything away from the movie, on the contrary it doesn't show like a low budget film (I guess it's Carpenter's experiences working on shoestring budgets). The build up is little slow, and the action parts are little corny some times (without right amount of cheese it wouldn't be Carpenter's film), but the dialogue is magnificently written and characters (except some expendables) are rather intelligent and avoiding too much horror movie clichés. Again, Carpenter manages to create an eerie synthesizer soundtrack, that is pleasure to listen, but is not recommended to listen on your ipod while walking on dark streets.'Prince of Darkness' is above average atmospheric and intelligent horror film that uses many interesting ideas and avoids to slump into horror film clichés. It should please hard core horror fans, and is must see for John Carpenter fans.

jonnnk Why are people rating this 10/10? Ha..really ? Carpenter fans who will rate anything he does as masterpieces.. I didn't see this back in the 80's..Maybe I did , It's just that forgettable. An hour into it, still waiting for something to happen..Right now they could switch the entire main cast and I would barely notice..At first I was excited seeing some Big trouble actors..That quickly faded with such boring nothing characters the whole movie It has the vibe that it should be a good movie..Just isn't..

spencergrande6 The atmosphere is incredibly dense, it's an unrelenting thickness suffocating everything else, including plot, character and common sense. But man does it work and brilliantly.The score is typically moody and great, and it's used effectively as a constantly reverberating background beat to the slow unveiling of hell on an uncoupling earth. This film works so well because it's truly unrelenting, and I don't mean in the Evil Dead sense of constant assault, but in its unbearable grip on your audio and visual senses. It's a slow strangling.This film also made me realize how great of a stylist Carpenter is. I always knew that on some level, but watching this again for the second time I realized how casual Carpenter is in his brilliance. His shots have an off-the-cuff elegance, almost as a painter so in control of his work he doesn't have to stop and savor his great images because they all are in a way, each shot into the next, a kind of constantly evolving masterful painting of horror. Shots of crosses through fence links, zombie faces awash in black and shadow, the lighting of an Argento witches movie, the soft surrealism of water dripping upward yet slowly outward towards hell, visions of ants invading the back grating of a TV set, white light from inside calling to them.It's kind of amazing. I really really wish the plot came together a bit more. I like the obtuseness of it to a point (how much could the characters really know about it all) but because of that a lot of the revelations come from people hypothesizing out loud in a way that you know the movie is trying to explain itself without actually having to -- having its cake and eating it too.

sol- Asked to investigate a giant canister of bright green fluid found in the basement of an abandoned church, a group of quantum physics students begins to suspect that the liquid may have diabolical origins in this John Carpenter horror movie. 'Prince of Darkness' is a fairly ambitious project as Carpenter attempts to mesh scientific reasoning (the Devil is referred to as some sort of anti-matter) and theology, however, the two realms of knowledge do not exactly go well hand-in-hand and much of the dialogue comes off as babble. The film has some great moments though when the characters stop talking and simply react to the bizarre things that begin to happen around them as they research and prod further into matters. In particular, the homeless folk outside begin behaving very strangely (could they be possessed?), led by Alice Cooper in a creepy performance. There is also something very Cronenberg-like to the way the liquid infects its first victim, who then transmits it to others in highly sexual ways; one of the infection sequences almost looks like it is about to turn into a lesbian love scene! The makeup special effects are quite creepy too and the film boasts a characteristically sinister, throbbing score cowritten by Carpenter himself. The film is very lacking in the character department, a humorous Dennis Dun aside, and as mentioned, the whole religion/science fusion does not really gel, but there is enough of interest here in between the chitchat. The film ends on a delightful note of uncertainty too.