Recensioni de* critic*

Despite the film's intensely confined physical scope, the plot is ludicrously maximalist and patently nonsensical without attaching itself to the kind of strong central protagonist that Carpenter traditionally excels at... And yet that drawback should still be considered relatively minor: by any standard measure, Prince of Darkness is a hell of a film, and pitch-perfect Halloween-eve viewing. It remains, in both modern horror and Carpenter's filmography, essential viewing.

The movie's melancholic romantic connection in the film's early scenes seem to be emblematic of humanity's failure to face the reality of our mortality. If love symbolizes our ability to connect with each other and our environment, it also reflects our need to accept its limits. The true horror of Prince of Darkness, as it is in many of Carpenter's films, is the inevitably of humanity's end. Just as the universe existed for eons before our existence, it will survive for eons after we're gone.

Above all, it's Carpenter's direction that dazzles and propels, clarifying through blocking and movement what the script leaves bewildering. Carpenter's formal mastery has long elevated the material he chooses, but Prince of Darkness is the purest distillation of that formalism...

Refracting the traditional conflict of Good and Evil through quantum mechanics and sub-atomic physics, the sometimes talky script remains engrossing thanks to Carpenter's chilling atmospherics.

With its well-paced build-up, its ominous soundtrack, and Carpenter's trademark handling of tension, Prince Of Darkness certainly earns its place on the margins of the horror canon... It remains devilishly ambiguous, ensuring that the film's interwoven strands of plotting keep coming back to haunt you

It should be a terrible mess, and there are patches of utter incoherence, but the movie's gleeful weirdness and its adventurous blending of the two genres conspires to work.

While the dense significations of the script (credited to one "Martin Quatermass") may get a bit thick in spots, Carpenter's handsome ‘Scope images generally make the most of them, and some haunting poetic notions — such as video images from the future that appear as recurring dreams dreamt by the church's inhabitants — figure effectively in the plot.

The set-up for “Prince of Darkness” is pretty good... I was looking for a cross between “The Exorcist” and “The Entity,” but then the movie suddenly turned simplistic, and the evil Sleeper turned into a dud... “Prince of Darkness” contains the ingredients for a much better movie.

[Prince of Darkness] is a surprisingly cheesy horror film to come from Mr. Carpenter, a director whose work is usually far more efficient and inventive. Martin Quartermass, whose first screenplay this is, overloads the dialogue with scientific references and is stingy with the surprises.