Another 31 Days, Another 31 Screams: Day 23 (Prince Of Darkness)

The holiest of artifacts.

MORE mirror bullshit? AND it's a John Carpenter movie? Oh hell yes, now we're talking. This is a movie I've been aware of for quite some time, as I vividly remember reading an old synopsis with GIFs of it on I-Mockery. Yes, we're going way the fuck back there. So, broadly speaking, I knew the beats and strokes of this movie. The devil's in the details, or in this case, the swirling big can of green Satanic mouthwash. We'll go relatively wild with the mirrors since they're part of the climax and all, but I want to get a little more gonzo with what this movie's playing with as it escalates. So, here that is, then; John Carpenter's Prince Of Darkness is Season 18 of Doctor Who, if it were a horror movie. That will require some explanation, but we've got time. Season 18 of Doctor Who leaned more towards science, but it also was unafraid to use science in such a way as to basically make it magic. As an example off the top of my head, "tricking" a scientific time loop that you're trapped in by mimicking the actions that are looping out of synch with the loop itself. This is a movie that's dripping with science, having its characters as a bunch of scientists studying a fucked-up can of... green Satanic mouthwash. It's also a movie that posits that God and Satan are aliens or some shit, and that if God controls all matter there must be an anti-God of anti-matter, and it lives on the other side of mirrors... and I've lost you, haven't I? Yeah. There is some heady shit going on here, but it's all going on in the background. Science and religion are stuck in a haunted church together as the ultimate evil corrupts both of them. What do we get from this nightmarish display?


A lot of people gagging at getting Satan-brand Scope in their mouths, as it turns out. Prince Of Darkness is a slow burn, but John Carpenter's very good at horror and his brand is on full display here. You've got a handful of real gory moments, but the tension's really what makes this terrifying. The most interesting aspect to me are the tachyon dreams. Premonitions from the future sent back in time by tachyon waves, manifesting as dreams of a live recording of events to come. You could make a whole movie about that shit, and the fact that it's explained away in pure science terms is what gives me the whole Season 18 vibe. Then, of course, there's the mirroring. Before we get into that, it's interesting how Oculus mirrors the structure here a bit. The two movies aren't being deliberate about it, but you have people studying a cursed object with great scrutiny before fucked-up shit starts happening because of it. That's funny, considering how central mirrors are to the climax. Yes, we have the dark mirror of God, the Anti-God which lives on the other side of a mirror and will be brought forth by the proper host body for the green Satan juice. Whatever this thing is, it's beyond both science and religion, and this is made textual, literally textual in fact, by the possessed typist who types out a message before another scientist is got good by the green juice. No salvation for them, be it from the Holy Ghost or "the God Plutonium". The mirror image of God, ready to come through. How do we stop it?


Delaying the inevitable, I suppose. Shoving the host into the mirror world, along with yourself, and being sealed there by Donald fucking Pleasance throwing an axe at the mirror. Of course, the ending suggests that shit is far from over, and ends pretty damn ambiguously... which I like. Yeah, I dug this one a lot. Not just because of mirrors being my brand at this point, but because it's science horror. Indeed, Carpenter hides the writing credit for this as "Martin Quatermass" so that should tell you exactly the vibe which was being aimed for here. Science horror. Ooh, I like that quite a lot. It's far more than that, though, as the whole Season 18 comparison I keep making shows. Granted, I've only covered a sliver of Season 18 here, but it was enough. Science about other universes meets vampires. Tachyons and differential equations meet Satan and mirror monsters. This is quite a neat little one! Thanks, John Carpenter. Now, what next...?