Monster Serial: PRINCE OF DARKNESS, 1987

By ANSEL FARAJ

This is not a dream ... not a dream ...

We are using this book as a receiver. We are unable to transmit through conscious neural interference. You are receiving this broadcast as an essay.

We are transmitting from the year 2-0-1-4.

You are receiving this essay in order to alter your plans for the evening and to watch John Carpenter’s most underrated movie, PRINCE OF DARKNESS.

Our technology has increased, our cinematic resources have increased and we are capable of making flashier, crazier films; but we are incapable of making horror films that understand that it is the idea of the unknown which is truly frightening.

John Carpenter has made some fantastic works of cinema — HALLOWEEN, THE FOG, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 and of course THE THING; but I feel PRINCE OF DARKNESS always seems to get short shrifted, and I don’t know why.


There’s a canister containing a swirling green liquid that is hidden in a set of catacombs beneath an run-down church in downtown Los Angeles. This liquid is actually a life-form that can perform telekinetic activity, mind control, body invasion. It’s even affecting the world on a cosmic scale — the sun and moon are aligning, the earth is changing, and this liquid life form is gaining power. It’s the “son” of a banished evil, a force of darkness — the antichrist, the “Prince of Darkness.” The Catholic Church has kept this a secret, forming a society named ‘the Brotherhood of Sleep’ to watch over it. Science must prove its existence and find a way to stop it. And whoever comes in close proximity to it, has the same dream ... a warning sent through time.

I first saw this film on Halloween night 2008, I was 16, and I found myself glued to my television, filled with the strangest sense of uneasiness. So uneasy, in fact, I had to take the DVD out mid way through and switch it for BLADE. I’m not sure if the uneasiness had to do with the fact that I was up really late at night watching PRINCE OF DARKNESS on Halloween night, or if it was because I was up really late at night watching PRINCE OF DARKNESS before I had to get up early the next day to take the SAT. But it must have been the former, because the next day, post-SAT, I resumed PRINCE OF DARKNESS and felt all chilly inside once more.

 Here’s why I love it:

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again — if you can deliver effective atmosphere and a realized “world” in a film, then you have accomplished no small feat. And PRINCE OF DARKNESS has some of the best atmosphere I’ve seen in any movie. The story and mystery slowly get peeled away as the film progresses, fueled by a score by Carpenter and Alan Howarth that is icing on the cake. It’s a slow burn movie, filled with existential and scientific questions about life, our universe, God and the Devil, drenched in a Lovecraftian ooze. And when shit does get crazy, it’s pretty unnerving. There are multiple moments in the film where one can feel a chill down one’s spine. For me, it’s when Donald Pleasance’s unnamed priest loses his faith in the middle of performing the last rites on an unfortunate victim. The equal mixture of horror and “why bother?” that crosses his face stuck with me the first time I saw it.

The group of homeless people — some people have called them zombies, but I disagree — come across more as cult members, being controlled psychically by the Prince of Darkness locked up in his canister. I love how they watch from the sidelines, staring quietly, waiting to carry out his bidding. It always felt very INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS to me, and was something I referenced in my film, DOCTOR MABUSE. They bow to unseen forces, are covered in bugs, and are led by a sneering Alice Cooper. Carpenter uses them to great effect as they trap the unsuspecting group of physicists in the run down downtown L.A. church, a ploy he uses in most of his films, such as THE FOG and THE THING. These are films about people trapped together, fighting a force they have no control over, which something that is frightening in itself. We have no control over anything in our lives — we just tell ourselves we do. Carpenter’s work reminds us of that awful truth.

This column is among those featured in
 BRIDE OF MONSTER SERIAL, a collection of 
horror essays written by contributors to 
THE COLLINSPORT HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 
Buy it today on Amazon!

Worse, how do we react when something beyond our normal perimeters of logic, common sense and human origin begins to control us? What if it always controlled us?

The crucified pigeon — it’s just a moment early in the film, but it’s the perfect prelude to what follows — is a symbol of how darkly surreal the film is about to get. Some moments feel like they’re out of a Dario Argento movie: There are scenes that would be at home in SUSPIRIA or PHENOMENA. And there are even moments where Carpenter seems to be channeling Jean Cocteau, specifically in his usage of mirrors as gateways to a dark dimension where the Devil, or more accurately, the Lovecraftian elder god we perceive as Old Scratch waits to be brought back through. There’s a great shot where a pair of fingers push through a compact mirror and come through on the other side, a dark watery abyss. It’s a moment that would not be out of place in a PHANTASM movie, and here Carpenter uses all of these moments to build up his atmosphere of dread — at what, or who, is waiting for us on the other side. 

I’ve got a message for you, and you aren’t going to like it.

PRINCE OF DARKNESS knows what lurks in the unknown.  It is evil. It is real. It awakened back in 1987, and got poor reviews. But the Devil always gets his due, and now’s the perfect time to go back and re-appreciate this film. Grab Scream Factory’s fantastic Blu-ray, turn the lights off, and watch. Seeing is believing.

Ansel Faraj is an award-winning independent American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He recently wrapped production on his latest film, DOCTOR MABUSE: ETIOPOMAR.

Monster Serial: THE THING, 1982

By PATRICK McCRAY

One of the many elements I like about THE THING is its happy ending.  Yeah, they’re going to die, but what were their lives, anyway?  They were up there for a reason.  See, from what I can tell, MacReady and Childs are still human, because The Thing would have manifested itself.  And they both innately trust each other or else they wouldn’t be drinking out of the same bottle.  If they were Things, they’d just make wacky sounds at each other.  So, enjoy that terrible brand of scotch, boys.  Mission accomplished. 

I know there’s an alternate ending on a Navy submarine that’s rescued MacReady, and I really wish that John Carpenter had buckled to studio pressure and released that ending. 

The reason is that a good Carpenter ending lives somewhere between ambiguity and a total certainty that the worst outcome possible is about to happen.  His approach is brilliant that way because it lets the filmgoing process keep happening.  In an age when limp sequels were not yet the rule, this would have set up the most exciting tension possible; The Thing gets loose on the boat.  Unlike the research station, that vehicle would actually have a heading. 

I digress. 

But digressing is the point.  Fewer films in the horror genre mean so many things to so many different people.  Ironic, the creature itself is formless, morphing and surviving as a situation demands.  Similarly, the film containing it is almost kaleidoscopic in the shifting mysteries it presents.  I watch it two or three times a year with different groups, and it never gets old — and I never get the same message or feeling from it twice.  Sometimes, it’s the ultimate lament about Dealing With Women.  Sometimes it’s about the necessity of trust when we’re old enough to know better.

"Diabetus."

The last THING-oriented essay that I just couldn’t finish was all about the the fact that this movie was the last bastion for sensitive, post-feminist men to talk about their fears, anger and anxieties regarding the honeys.  But that only went so far.  When the first MONSTER SERIAL came out and I saw the words “morbid love letters” regarding horror movies, I immediately realized what a wrong turn I’d made at Albuquerque regarding the essay.

If you haven’t seen the film, the members of an Antarctic research station happen upon the ruins of a station from Norway where the staff has been subjected to unspeakably surreal and dysmorphic carnage.  Upon return to their own camp, they realize that an infectious, shape-shifting alien has begun to consume and duplicate their ranks.  The film then becomes a game of chess and poker as the heroes try to suss out good from bad, not knowing whether they, themselves, are duplicates. 
So these are significant elements that I love about THE THING.

For one thing, it was part of that astounding summer of 1982 that has been written about in volume one.  The infuriating part of that summer is that all of the great films that were being released got over shadowed by the obvious, unfunny and saccharine E.T.  THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL.

 (I’m so much happier when people associate Mary Hart’s gams with the initials “E.T.” rather than that misshapen dwarf with the creepy finger.  I wonder where Mary Hart is now.  I don’t mean in her career.  I mean, right now.  I’m writing this in a lonely basement in Louisville after cleaning out family mementos from a storage unit.  It’s been a tough weekend.  Where is Mary Hart?  What of her legs?  Maybe she’s shaving them.  Or waxing them.  Or walking through a swanky restaurant, with her legs making a swish-swish sound as they brush together in nylons woven with a shiny hint of lycra.  As much as I love THE THING, I may love this image even more.  I’m just going to pour a drink and think about that.  I need it.  It’s been a difficult day.  Hang on.)

Okay, I’m back.

Talk about the finger.  THE THING is John Carpenter’s ultimate bird to that love piddling homunculus leering at Henry Thomas and his sister.  It’s a manly film.  It’s the film that Elliot would have preferred watching to E.T. during a “sick day.”  How’s that for irony?
 

 For seasoned fans of THE THING, there is not only a sense of triumph in how well it has aged, but in how engaging and complex it remains.  Upon the second viewing —and for the many viewings after that — it’s impossible not to play “Who’s-infected-when?”  I can think of no other film that so rigorously engages the audience in the storytelling process without alienating them and/or making them feel dumb.  This last time I watched it, I was struck by a new, key mystery: do MacReady, Copper, and Norris go into the spaceship?  The Thing clearly came out a big hole — look at the size of the ice block it was in.  So, they could probably go in.  Wouldn’t you go in?  Wouldn’t you go back to the base and yell, “Hey guys, we found these gross bodies, but even cooler is a GIANT SPACESHIP IN THE ICE!  You gotta come see!”

These are men starved for entertainment.  There is no such thing as common sense in such a gathering.  And they’re scientists.  (What are they studying?  It’s never clear.  Their lines, I guess.)  Of course they’d go in.  But do they?  No.  Why?  The more I think about it, the more that becomes the central mystery of the film.  Unless ...

Now, Norris is a Thing pretty early on.  The film sets this up because we see the creepy dog walk into a shadowy someone’s quarters, and the only two men that curvaceous in silhouette are Norris and Wilford Brimley.  But it can’t be Wilford Brimley.  He’s more of an apple in the fat department, and the shadow we see is more of a pear.  That means it’s got to be Norris.  So, what if Norris went into the spaceship and got infected?  Maybe he infects the dog?  Maybe the dog is innocent.  I was raised to assume that any dog being shot at by Ibsen-crazed Norwegians in a helicopter must be infected with alien spores, but what if my parents were wrong?  Were they naive or just lying to me?  It doesn’t matter.  The dog may have been innocent the whole time.  Your honor, my client would like to change his plea.

This column is among those featured in
 BRIDE OF MONSTER SERIAL, a collection of 
horror essays written by contributors to 
THE COLLINSPORT HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 
Buy it today on Amazon!

See, this is what contemplating THE THING will do to you.  CLOVERFIELD can kiss my ass.  That’s not Lovecraftian.  This is Lovecraftian.  Lovecraft fans (and why didn’t we ever have an adult film star named “Linda Lovecraft”?) always talk about how you “go mad just by seeing these creatures.”  Hogwash.  You go mad by trying to figure out what the hell’s going on to whom and when in THE THING.

That’s the beauty of it.  These guys are in totally over their heads, but they never lose theirs.  In fact, like me while succumbing to an attack of nausea, the worse things get, the funnier they get.  The film has two great laugh lines that I won’t share.  But they’re maybe the funniest moments in all of 1982 cinema that are not in a film called VICTOR/VICTORIA.  Or TRON. 

Have I sold you on this film?  Do I care?  If you miss it, you’ll miss out on a film that is dark and bleak, but never depressing.  Humanity just keeps slugging away.  It remains unvanquished by arguably the greatest chess player of a movie monster ever not-entirely-seen.  If you haven’t yet seen it, I envy you.  If you have seen it, go watch it again.  It is an entirely different film than you thought it was.  And it will have that same quality each time you watch it.  That is an artistic response in full accord with the film that inspires it. 

PATRICK McCRAY is a comic book author who resides in Knoxville, Tenn., where he's been a drama coach and general nuisance since 1997. He has a MFA in Directing and worked at Revolutionary Comics and on the early days of BABYLON 5, and is a frequent contributor to The Collinsport Historical Society. You can find him at The Collins Foundation.

Monster Serial: THE FOG, 1980

By BRANDON ENGEL

After the release of his slasher/horror classic HALLOWEEN (1978), director/screenwriter John Carpenter was striking while the iron was hot with his next thriller, THE FOG (1980). At its worst, THE FOG proved that sometimes lighting just doesn’t strike twice ... at least not successively. At its best, THE FOG showed Carpenter had a real future as "master of the horror film."

The film tells the story of Antonio Bay, a remote California fishing community shrouded in the titular fog. The town’s centennial also marks the centennial of a town-government orchestrated conspiracy to rid the area of lepers by sending patients form the local leper colony out to sea in the middle of a violent storm. Their ghosts return in the form of fog to exact their vengeance.

It is important to note that the movie was a moderate commercial success with a wide range of critiques that ranged from "awful," to film critic Roger Ebert's "encouraging." Regardless of what critics thought, Carpenter was less than thrilled with the effort. He was so dissatisfied with the original cut that he went back to the studio for additional funds to do some re-shoots of the killing scenes. For him, there just wasn't enough violence.

For critics, however, the primary problem had less to do with a lack of violence, and considerably more to do with a lack of relatability. As Ebert pointed out in his review, there were two fundamental problems with the film. The first issue had to do with plausibility. It just seemed a bit ridiculous that fog, or even ghosts hiding in fog, could be a villain. No matter what, the ability of a horror film to terrify the audience banks on the notion that the villain is a viable creature or person. While Freddy Krueger (A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET), Leatherface (THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE) and Michael Myers (HALLOWEEN) were certainly bizarre, they stirred the imagination because they represented real people with tragic stories. On some level, the audience developed some level of sympathy for these murderers, giving them a human quality. There is no human quality you can assign fog.

The second problem came from a mistake in the screenplay. At no time during the film was it ever made clear who the ghosts were angry with. In the beginning of the film, the children are told the story of the crew members on the ship Elizabeth Dane who were murdered under rather dubious circumstances. In response to their untimely deaths, they vowed to return in 100 years and seek revenge. Revenge against whom? Surely even ghosts could figure out that in 100 years, anyone who was responsible for their deaths would be long dead. Without a deserving target, the whole purpose of revenge seems sort of pointless.

In a recent interview with Robert Rodriguez, Carpenter discussed the film, and the degree to which it was influenced by E.C. horror comics. The interview aired on the program “The Director’s Chair,” which is hosted on the Rodriguez’s El Rey Network. What the show made clear is that, even though he’s had his misfires, Carpenter still an important presence in the world of contemporary filmmaking.

It would be nice to absolve Carpenter from these fundamental flaws, but he was the co-writer with Deborah Hill, so he shares at least half the blame. That leaves his direction of the film. In true Carpenter style, the film’s saving graces are his technical skills and trickery. His use of music and camera angles during vicious murder scenes was able to squeeze out as much terror as possible. It's clear that Carpenter himself, is a fan of thrillers. He probably used his own personal reactions to Hitchcock films like PSYCHO and THE BIRDS as a study in human nature. If something scared him, maybe it would scare others. He was obviously more of a student than moviegoer. In this film, he even went so far as to ask his real-life spouse, Adrienne Barbeau (a non-smoker), to smoke during the movie as his tribute to his favorite Howard Hawks films where the leading ladies always smoked.

In retrospect, THE FOG may have failed as a follow-up to HALLOWEEN and a prelude to THE THING (1982), but it solidified Carpenter's place as a relevant director for years to come. Any other director would have made a mess out of a film like this. Carpenter's vision and ability to carry out that vision saved this film from being an absolute disaster.

Brandon Engel is a Chicago-based blogger with a background in journalism and film. Among his all-time favorite directors are: Alfred Hitchcock, Brian De Palma, Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick, and John Carpenter. Follow him on Twitter: @BrandonEngel2

Monster Serial: HALLOWEEN, 1978

Hello, boils and ghouls! October is upon us and that means one thing: HALLOWEEN! While most holidays get a measly day or two of formal recognition, orthodox Monster Kids prefer to celebrate it in the tradition of our people: By watching tons of horror movies. This month at THE COLLINSPORT HISTORICAL SOCIETY, we're going to be discussing some of our favorites every day until Halloween. So, put on your 3-D spex, pop some popcorn and turn out the lights .... because we're going to the movies!

By WALLACE McBRIDE

HALLOWEEN is a movie preoccupied with the idea of folklore, so it shouldn't be surprising that the film doesn't quite live up to its own reputation.

Released in 1978, the John Carpenter film has since been buried under a landslide of sequels, remakes and ripoffs. It's a solid, well-structured, spooky movie that might feel a little flimsy these days, mostly because its carcass has been picked clean by commerce. Carpenter famously declined to helm any of the sequels because it's an almost impossible concept to extrapolate upon. HALLOWEEN is not a movie composed of characters, but of situations, and any attempt to follow the original film could be nothing more than a glorified re-make. I think history has supported Carpenter's concerns.

But, back in 1978, HALLOWEEN had not yet become a "thing." Removed from it's unrealistic notoriety, it's a simple, elegant movie that does exactly what it sets out to do and nothing else.

The story: Fifteen years earlier in the fictional town of Haddonfield, Ill., something terrible happened. We're not told this, we're shown this, forced to watch young Michael Myers stab his older sister to death with a kitchen knife on Halloween night. Worse, the entire sequence is shown from Michael's point of view, making the audience an unwilling participant. It's an interesting creative decision because, after the movie's prologue, Myers is little more than a phantom. There's a lot of nebulous speculation about his goals and intentions, but Carpenter wants us to understand that this part of the legend is true. No matter what we hear later on, this actually happened.

What little we know about Myers comes from Dr. Sam Loomis, a rather superstitious physician played by Donald Pleasance. It's easy to see Loomis as the hero of the film, but it's questionable that he ever had his patient's best interest at heart. When a grown Michael Myers escapes from a mental institution at the start of the film, Loomis is more than a little dismayed. He refuses to even acknowledge that his patient is a human being, referring to Myers more often than not as "The Evil." Their therapy sessions must have been interesting.

While Haddonfield hadn't entirely forgotten what Myers did as a child, none of the characters seem to be familiar with the facts of the case. To the neighborhood children, the Myers house is a place to be feared, mostly because it's fallen into ruin in the years after the murder and just looks spooky. It's the only clue we're given about the fates of Micheal's parents, and it's more than a little sad. Judith wasn't the only victim that night; he appears to have murdered his entire family, at least on a spiritual level. Their home has become a scar on the community.

Upon Michael's escape from the mental institution (which might be the creepiest scene in the film, made up of blurry images of people in white gowns wandering in the darkness) he makes a beeline for his former home. "The Shape," as he's known in the movie's credits, spends the better part of the movie following three teenage girls around town, and this is where HALLOWEEN might stumble for modern audiences. Not a lot happens for most of the film; Carpenter spends much of the story's middle act following the activities of these girls with voyeuristic intensity. While we're never again given the "first-person shooter" perspective used in the film's opening, the photography doesn't let us forget that Michael is lurking nearby. Without this visual posture (the work of the great Dean Cundey) we'd be left with a movie about three really dumb teens.

And holy shit, they're dumb. Not so much the character played by Jamie Lee Curtis, who makes fairly reasonable decisions. But her friends appear to be scripted by an alien who only has the vaguest idea of what teenage girls might sound like. Here's a sample:

"So who cares? I always forget my chemistry book and my math book, and my English book, and my, let's see, my French book, and... well who needs books anyway, I don't need books, I always forget all my books, I mean, it doesn't really matter if you have your books or not ... hey isn't that Devon Graham?"

And so on.

The kids in the film never feel real, not the least of which is because they're all a little old to be playing high school students. At 19, Curtis was the only actual teen in the film (the actresses playing her friends weren't far from their 30th birthdays,) but that's to be forgiven. This is not a character-driven piece, and it wouldn't have changed the story had actual 16-year-olds been cast. As with any fairy tale, only two things matter: That the characters get separated from authority figures, and that most of them get dead. You might even argue that liking these kids would detract from its entertainment value, a problem with horror films touched on in last year's CABIN IN THE WOODS. There's a fine line between horror and straight-up tragedy.

Things really begin to move in HALLOWEEN after the sun sets, though. The camera fully shifts away from Myers' perspective during the final act, sometimes revealing two stories simultaneously. There's the movie the characters think they're in, and there's the unsettling reality of the situation preparing to pounce upon them with murderous abandon from outside of their peripheral vision. This happens several times during the final act and it never fails to work. The most meta of these compositions involves a young boy watching Myers carry one of his victims across a neighbor's lawn as the electronic sound effects from FORBIDDEN PLANET blares from the television set. It's as though a horror movie is ripping its way through the screen and into our reality. Creatures from the Id, indeed.

HALLOWEEN is a film heavy with folklore. Everyone in the film has a story to tell, from the creepy cemetery caretaker's gruesome story that's interrupted by the discovery of a stolen grave marker, to the quaint superstitions about "The Boogeyman" and the Myers house shared by Haddonfield's children. The movie even gives us glimpses of its own DNA in clips from FORBIDDEN PLANET, a film about monsters of the imagination made real, as well as THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, which features a mute killer clad in a familiar-looking boiler suit.

Even the role of Dr. Loomis is as much Greek chorus as protagonist, providing us with constant reminders of the villain's "otherness." We should be afraid of Michael Myers, he warns. He's evil. And yet, nobody pays him much attention.  Loomis failed to convince the authorities of his patient's danger because he failed to scare them. Carpenter knows that it takes more to rile up an audience than insisting on an emotional response. If HALLOWEEN has a message, it's that there's nothing more important to a story than the telling of it.


WALLACE McBRIDE is editor of The Collinsport Historical Society