The slow murmur and drum beat on the soundtrack of "Prince of Darkness" gets to you and can be pulsating. It is not all that different from the soundtrack of John Carpenter's "The Thing" or his "They Live." A solid opening for John Carpenter's Satan film, dealing with subatomic matter and green ooze in a canister and some light philosophical and religious discussions, should have yielded sparks. All I got were numbingly mild shocks.
A group of scientists, computer experts and graduate students from a local university gather together at a run-down church in Los Angeles. This particular church houses the green ooze in a canister, which can only be opened from the inside. Yeah, who is going to get close to a canister where that green liquid ooze is in constant motion! Some do try, and then get that green liquid shot into their mouths causing them to be possessed. Donald Pleasance is a very perturbed priest who is summoned to this church while homeless people (including one played by Alice Cooper) stand around looking at the sun - at night, they look at the open windows of the church. Standing, and standing, and standing. If anyone leaves the church, they come after you and kill you, or you get possessed with creepy crawlies like bugs consuming your body.
The most stunning image is one presumably from the future where the church entrance shows someone, maybe Satan, in shadow with its arms outstretched. Other than that, we do get a romantic subplot with the late Lisa Blount and Jameson Parker that draws some sparks of interest. I like the deep conversations between Victor Wong as a physics professor and Pleasance. The rest of the film is turgid, monotonous nonsense with the liquid Satan consuming everyone in its path and possessing everyone to kill each other. A reflective mirror leads to another dimension where Satan's hand is not far behind. Coming from the one of the masters of horror, John Carpenter's "Prince of Darkness" contains a few jump scares (which Carpenter is terrific at, minus any "shock" sound effect) but most of the film is just silly humdrum fare where you are left standing, or sitting, waiting for the inevitable.
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