Prince of Darkness

   

Prince of Darkness

1987

Director- John Carpenter

Cast- Jameson Parker, Donald Pleasence, Victor Wong, Lisa Blount, Dennis Dun

            

   The 1980s were the pinnacle of John Carpenter’s career; The Thing, The Fog, Big Trouble in Little China, Escape from New York and They Live. Most directors would be lucky to make one of these impressive movies in their career, much less all of these in a single decade. With so much greatness around it, Prince of Darkness is over shadowed, but this is one dark little gem that should not be over looked.

            

    There are a lot of recognizable faces, both John Carpenter regulars, and other actors from the 80s, most surprisingly is Jameson Parker, best known as one half of Simon and Simon. The casting is spot on and Carpenter’s score, which tends to be too minimal sometimes, suits the understated nature of the film.

            

    The difference between science fiction and horror is whether it makes you think or feel, but this movie does both as it delivers both scares and head scratching ideas. The film poses a fundamental question; what if evil is real? Not real in the sense that it really exists, but real in the sense that it can be empirically proven, measured, and observed.

Donald Pleasance (Halloween) is a priest in a Catholic sect that has guarded a mysterious cylinder for two thousand years. Inside that cylinder, it is believed, lives an ancient evil, perhaps Satan himself. Victor Wong (Big Trouble in Little China and The Golden Child) is a theoretical physicist who has been recruited to prove the existence of the evil that lives within the cylinder. In the process, the evil within escapes and the horror begins.

            

     One of the film’s ideas is that Satan is not the enemy of God, but rather the opposite of God, an Anti- God, like an anti-matter particle, governing the existence of a mirror universe. Don’t expect the dramatic, memorable, scenes of Carpenter’s other works. This story progresses at the slow, deliberate pace of a scientist testing a hypothesis, and in the end it will probably leave you with more questions than answers. This is fitting. In science, nothing is ever really proven; you can only fail to disprove it.

            

     But don’t think that this movie is a detached philosophical debate.  The film’s apocalyptic warnings, presented as unnatural occurrences and sinister dreams, create a sense of impending doom that builds throughout.

       As intellectually stimulating as the film is, it is still essentially a horror movie as its ultimate effect is emotional. The film is unsettling, and in the worse way possible because you won’t be able to identify why you feel so uneasy. Is it the subtle, dark mood, the sinister warnings, the unanswered questions or the short bursts of violence spread throughout the film? Or perhaps it’s some gestalt, something than can only be perceived when seen as a whole and in the context of some larger message.
    

The Black Hole

 

The Black Hole

1979

Director- Gary Nelson

Cast- Maximilian Schell, Anthony Perkins, Earnest Borgnine, Robert Forester, Yvette Mimieux, Roddy McDowell, Slim Pickins, Tom McLoughlin, Joseph Bottoms

            

   The Disney of today may be concerned with turning out blockbusters that are designed from the ground up to appeal to the masses, but there was a point in time when they turned out some unique, even scary, works that stand apart from most of their catalogue (Something Wicked This Way Comes for example).

           

    A team of space explorers (led by Robert Forester) finds a long lost ship, the Cygnus, apparently adrift, on the event horizon of a black hole. Besides Robert Forester, the space explorers include a scientist (Anthony Perkins), a journalist (Earnest Borgnine) a pilot (Joseph Bottoms) and a psychic (Yvette Mimieux ) that can speak telepathically with their droid, Vincent (voiced by Roddy McDowell).

   

     They are almost pulled in to the black hole themselves and their ship is damaged. They land on the Cygnus to find it populated by robots and a single human, Dr. Hans Reinhardt. He was a brilliant scientist aboard the Cygnus when it disappeared. It was recalled to Earth but never returned and was presumed lost.

            

     Reinhardt has spent the years studying the black hole and is planning a one way trip through the anomaly. He feeds them a story that the rest of the crew has been lost, necessitating his creation of the droids. Some of the droids are military robots that march around the ship like goose steppers. There is an old beat up robot, Bob (voiced by Slim Pickens) who seems to have been abused very badly by the militant robots. The chief droid is Maximillian, an evil red droid with whirling fans for hands. If Satan were a robot, he would be Maximillian (the end of the film basically asserts as much).

            

      There is another class of droid as well, black robed, blank faced drones that carry out the operation of the ship. To everyone’s horror, they find out that the drones are actually the old crew. They didn’t die as Reinhardt said. They were lobotomized to make them into pliable servants. The explorers come into conflict with Reinhardt and the ship is damaged, sending it tumbling into the black hole. The ending of the film is both beautiful and weird and defies easy explanation.

            

     The film is science fiction but it definitely contains elements of horror. The black hole itself is a type of Hell. It is described as such in the beginning of the film and the end of the film shows it as such, with the evil robot Maximillian as its devil. The faceless drones are also creepy and add an element of body horror.

           

    As the film came out in 1979, it would be easy to assume it was one of the many films trying to capitalize on the success of Star Wars, but in fact, the film had been in the pre-production stages since the early 70s. It was originally conceived as a space themed disaster film, capitalizing on the disaster craze of that era. Its disaster flick roots are evident at many points in the film, especially in the last 30 minutes.

            

     The film is not “hard” science fiction. If you are wanting that, best to turn to Alien or maybe Event Horizon. It has enough science fact to make it plausible but otherwise is more concerned with storytelling than realism.

            

     Though the film is not a rip off of Star Wars, the Star Wars influence can be seen in the film’s robots. Vincent looks like R2-D2 but talks like C3P0. In a battle between who is fancier, C3P0 or Vincent, it would be a tough call. Reinhardt’s military robots also seem to take their cue from George Lucas’ Stormtroopers.

     

     As for the rest of the film, visually, its aesthetics contain elements of both old school and modern science fiction. It is more realistic looking than the “atom punk” of the 50s but doesn’t quite have the gritty, dirty look of Alien or Blade Runner. The special effects are very good, below George Lucas’ level to be sure, but still better than most science fiction of its day.

            

      The cast is very impressive. Robert Forester starred in Alligator, Delta Force and was nominated for an Oscar for Jackie Brown. Anthony Perkins is, of course, best known for his role as Norman Bates in Psycho. Oscar winner Earnest Borgnine starred in so many good movies it’s hard to list them all, but just to throw out a few; The Vikings, Ice Station Zebra, The Wild Bunch and The Devil’s Rain. Roddy McDowell is best known from his numerous Planet of the Apes movies, but horror fans know him best as Peter Vincent from Fright Night. Slim Pickens was an American icon who starred in Dr. Strangelove, Blazing Saddles and The Howling. The real feather in the cap though is Oscar winner Maximillian Schnell as the mad scientist Reinhardt. He gives the role the over the top quality that an operatic villain needs. He starred in numerous WW2 themed movies, often as a German officer, but horror fans may know him from John Carpenter’s Vampires. The score was by John Barry, winner of more musical Oscars than anyone besides John Williams.

Fun fact: The robot military captain, Star, was played by Tom McLoughlin. He was one of two actors (along with Kevin Peter Hall)  to wear the mutated bear suit in the movie, Prophecy. He also went on to direct Friday the 13^th VI: Jason Lives.

 

Ghoulies

Ghoulies

1985

Director- Luca Bercovici

Cast- Peter Liapis, Lisa Pelikan, Scott Thomson, Ralph Seymour, Mariska Hargitay, Jack Nance, Michael Des Barres, Bobbie Bresee, Keith Joe Dick

           

     The film opens with a Satanic ritual attended by cult members and the titular imps. The cult leader’s child is to be sacrificed but the ritual goes awry and the child is spared its fate. He is raised by the groundskeeper (David Lynch favorite, Jack Nance), ignorant of his father’s identity or his family legacy.

            

       Fast forward 20 or so years later and the child is all grown up and inherits his deceased father’s mansion. Pilfering around the mansion he comes upon his father’s occult tomes. Apparently the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree as Jonathan (Lipais)  pretty quickly dives head first into the occult with a lust for power including trying to surreptitiously screw his girlfriend (Pelikan) on top of a summoning circle he had drawn under their bed.

            

      He summons up a bunch of impish servants, the Ghoulies, who instruct him in the details of a ceremony to snatch him even more power. The details are a bit fuzzy but it mainly involves throwing his friends under the occult bus and making a slave of his girlfriend (what a dick, right?). The ultimate result is the return from the grave of his father. Father and son meet and dad intends to finish the ritual he had started two decades before. In a battle between evil sorcerer and creepy wanna be sorcerer, it’s hard to decide who to root for, but in the end, evil is more or less vanquished. I say more or less because the movie had three sequels.

            

      At first glance the movie appears to be a cheap rip off of Gremlins, but it really isn’t. The two films were made at roughly the same time but due to production problems, Gremlins beat it to the punch, and comparisons afterward were inevitable. These types of puppet movies were popular in the mid-80s (Critters and Troll being two similar examples along with the excellent Puppet Master series). The creatures are not really the stars of Ghoulies, but peripheral attractions. The whole thing could have been done without them and it would have been a much scarier movie. However, the film is remembered for those gross little puppets, not to mention its very memorable poster, featuring a suspendered Ghoulie climbing out of a toilet.  Watch the film as a fun distraction and as a lesson on how movies were made before CGI.

Santa Claus (Santa Claus vs. the Devil)

  

  

Santa Claus (Santa Claus vs. the Devil)

1959

Director- René Cardona

Cast- José Elías Moreno, Cesáreo Quezadas, José Luis Aguirre, Armando Arriola, Lupita Quezadas, Antonio Díaz Conde, Ángel Di Stefani

From Mexico

            

     Santa Claus, rather than living in the North Pole, lives is a floating castle in space.  From there, with an international cadre of children from around the world, he makes toys. The children are all dressed in their culturally appropriate (some might stereotypical) attire with the Japanese kids wearing kimonos, the Mexican kids wearing sombreros etc.

            

     Satan, meanwhile, wants to show the world that he is its master and wants to use Christmas time to do it. He orders one of his minions, a lesser devil named Pitch, to ascend to Earth and tempt all of the children into Evil. His punishment for failure is that he has to eat ice cold chocolate ice cream, and this scares Pitch pretty bad as he seems to have some kind of digestive disorder.  Pitch begs for mercy “by the horns of everything Satanic”. With the command “Demons of Hades, transport me to Earth,” he teleports from Hell to begin his mission.

            

     Pitch initially doesn’t have a hard time as the Christmas season naturally brings out avarice. He immediately turns 3 rude brothers against Santa. Through some kind of sympathetic magic, by throwing rocks at a fake Santa they actually hurt the real Santa. Old St. Nick says that he could make short work of the Devil, but he can only descend to Earth one night a year. Santa plans to use the good children as his proxys in the war against Evil and uses his sophisticated intelligence gathering machines to locate good children. One machine has a prehensile eyeball on the end of a wire; another is a large ear on a satellite dish; one has a large red mouth like a sex doll.

         

   

   He locates the virtuous Lupita, who really wants a doll, any doll, for Christmas, but is very poor. Pitch tempts her to steal the doll, but to no avail. Santa uses his “Dreamscope” to peer into the unconscious mind of Billy, a rich boy, who only dreams of having the love of his parents.  Ever the voyeur, Santa decides to peep into Lupita’s dreams as well. Pitch is influencing her by making her dream of creepy life size rag dolls that dance around and tell her to steal. Santa’s voyeurism backfires when he spies on the 3 rude boys as they are talking about how old Santa is. Santa declares that he is much younger than the Devil, only that he has been sick lately.

            

      Of course even with the War on Evil underway, Santa still has a job to do and is inundated with letters from kids (which come via an airway that blows them up from Earth). One kid is after my own heart and asks for “a toy automobile, a submarine, a football, a bat, roller skates, a scooter, a cannon, a bicycle, an atomic laboratory, a machine gun.” The kid’s got some wild holiday plans!

           

     Santa is aided in his work by Merlin the Magician who has a lab in Santa’s palace. He concocts the magic potions that allow Santa to disappear and make children sleep. I guess today they would just use Ambien. Merlin seems a bit absent minded and it’s a wonder that he can concoct anything. He is also aided by the Roman god Vulcan, who constructs a key for Santa that will open any door. You know, when you think about it, the ability to get into any house and make children sleep is the kind of thing that would get you placed on a watch list today, one of those lists where you have a sign in your front yard and you can’t be within 100 yards of a school.

           

    Well, Christmas Eve arrives and Santa’s international coalition of children loads up his interstellar sleigh. Despite the fact that his mechanical reindeer can traverse the vacuum of space, they have to return by dawn because sunlight turns them into dust, because, sure, why not.

           

     Back on Earth, the three hooligans are still plotting against Santa. They plan to ambush him, take the toys, and make Santa their slave! These are some bad kids. Lupita is starting to think that Santa doesn’t like her as she always asks for the doll but never gets it.

       

      Pitch tries to prevent Santa from entering a house by moving the chimney (???) but it doesn’t faze Santa as he has a magic parasol to help him drop safely off the roof where he can enter the house in a more conventional way. Foiled, Pitch shifts fire to the next house where he tries different tactics but Santa outsmarts him again and humiliates Pitch by shooting him in the butt with a toy cannon.

            

       Santa stops at little Billy’s house. Billy is all alone because his parents are out at a fancy restaurant. But no worries, Santa shows up dressed as a waiter and gives his parents special drinks that make them remember that their child is at home (which is kind of depressing).

           

     Pitch and the 3 hooligans are still hoping to thwart Santa and they camp out on a roof top. They are having no luck with Santa so Pitch makes the children turn on each other and fight, much to his delight. He keeps a look out, and while Santa is in a home, Pitch tries to steal Santa’s sleigh! The robot reindeer won’t answer to his command so Pitch satisfies himself by sabotaging Santa’s magical gear.

            

      Pitch sics a vicious dog on Santa, and without his magical gear, Santa has no choice but to escape up a tree. Pitch then visits the locals in their sleep, telling them that Santa is a murderer and that they should arm themselves and kill him! Stuck up a tree with armed villagers, the police and fire department all converging on his location.  Surely Santa is doomed.

     

     Thankfully, Merlin pulls his fat out of the fire by advising Santa to use a toy cat from his bag to distract the dog. Santa escapes just before the cops arrive, but with the dawn quickly approaching, he still has one more stop.  Lupita has just about given up hope, but she gets her doll and Santa returns to his space castle!

           

     This movie is just as bizarre as it sounds. To its credit, despite all of the disparate elements crammed together into 94 minutes, it doesn’t come across like some disjointed hallucinatory William Burroughs novel. Christmas is a rather strange holiday. Christian mythology, pagan imagery, folk lore and greedy commercialism combine with messages of morality and spiritualism to create this bizarre annual amalgamation of traditions and religion. This movie does the same thing in a very fun, unself-conscious way. The plot is less like a movie script and more like a story being told by a child that is making it up as they go.

            

     Despite the bright lights and shiny wrapping paper, Christmas always has a dark side, at least for children. Guilt and shame over being naughty, combined the with the fear of being caught lend a somber morality to the holiday that only children can understand. What better way to portray that than with an actual devil walking among the children, tempting them toward their doom.

             

     This was directed by the same man that gave us Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy so that should tell you something. Highly recommended for anyone wanting a unique experience.

BONUS- If you are looking for more sinister stories of children being tempted by Evil, check out these two Disney films, Something Wicked this Way Comes and The Devil and Max Devlin.

 

End of Days

End of Days

1999

Director- Peter Hyams

Cast- Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robin Tunney, Gabriel Byrne, Kevin Pollak, C. C. H. Pounder, Udo Kier, Victor Varnado, Miriam Margolyes, Derrick O'Connor, Rod Steiger

    

    Remember the end of the 20^th century, when everyone was afraid of Y2K and there were all sorts off doomsday prophecies that people were claiming and then in the end the worst thing that happened was that it took us all 3 months to get used to writing 20 instead of 19 when dating something? This movie, which swooped in right at the end of 1999, capitalized on that trend.

      

     As the end of 2^nd millennium approaches, Satan (Gabrielle Byrne) arrives on earth seeking a woman (The Craft’s Robin Tunney) who has been prophesized to be his mate. Apparently, having sex with her will trigger the events foretold in Revelations. A cynical ex-cop (Schwarzenegger) stumbles onto this and is determined to protect the girl. Standing in his way (along with the Prince of Darkness) is a legion of devil worshipers (including Udo Kier) and a secret branch of the Catholic Church determined to kill the girl rather than let her fall into Satan’s hands.

            

     Action and horror is a difficult mix to sell. The essence of horror is peril, where as a good action film is about overcoming such peril, often numerous times. Arnold isn’t bad in the film.  He turns in about as a good a performance as the script allows. The problem is that Arnold is, well, so Arnold! He is so charismatic and physically impressive, you never doubt that he will overcome the odds.

            

     Despite the odd combination, the film does have some selling points. Gabriel Byrne makes a humorous devil and Kevin Pollak makes for a funny straight man. There’s also supporting performances by C.C.H. Pounder (Demon Knight) and Rod Steiger. Not a great movie, but an entertaining attempt at blending genres.

 

Day of the Beast (El día de la Bestia)

  

Day of the Beast (El día de la Bestia)

1995

Director-Álex de la Iglesia

Cast- Álex Angulo, Armando De Razza, Santiago Segura, Terele Pávez, Nathalie Seseña

From Spain

            

     This ranks as one of my favorite films partly because of its creativity but also because how well it walks the line between horror and comedy. Many films try and they end up being neither funny nor scary. But Day of the Beast succeeds.

            

    Father Angel is a priest who has discovered numerological clues that predict the birth of the Anti-Christ. He plans to stop the birth, but though he knows the time (Christmas), he doesn’t know the place. He plans to sell his soul to the Devil to find out, but first he has to convince Satan that he’s one of the boys. Father Angel sets about on a spree of sin which brings him in contact with Josia Maria, a fan of heavy metal, particularly the Satanic variety. They decide that they need expert advice so they kidnap “Professor” Cavan, a television psychic and self-proffered occult expert.

           

   

   Cavan, who tries to convince the duo that he is really a fraud, begrudgingly helps Father Angel set up a ceremony to sell his soul. To the surprise of everyone the Devil shows up in a particularly scary scene. The trio then set about trying to find the birthplace while being chased by the police for a murder that Father Angel committed while trying to get his hands on some virgin’s blood. The movie culminates with another meeting with the Devil which is scarier than the first.

            

    As previously stated, Day of the Beast has quite a bit of humor. It begins early in the film where we see a priest squashed by a giant cross. Much of the humor is obvious slapstick but there is also a fair amount of social satire. A gang of murderous vandals are spraying graffiti and murdering people but the trio keep looking for supernatural hints, perhaps implying that we look for invented evil when real evil is right in front of us. The setting of Christmas Eve night results in some interesting juxtapositions of music and imagery.

       

   It was directed by Álex de la Iglesia wh oas directed several occult films including Dance with the Devil and Witching and Bitching and produced the excellent Erementari.   Day of the Beast’s greatest strength is its compact cast.  The characters are interesting and the actors sell their performances, especially Alex Angulo who seems so earnest in his desire to do bad things. Josia Maria approaches the madness of their quest with glee. Professor Cavan, a charlatan by profession, becomes an obsessive believer. These three “wise men” will keep you engaged as the story unfolds. A well done film.