Prince of Darkness

Duncan Gray

Not many twists or turns, just a slow death march towards the End Times with a pulsing Carpenter baseline setting the rhythm. The idea of a team of scientists and priests uniting against oblivion is rich, though Carpenter tends to be better at creating concepts than taking them to an eloquent conclusion. The virtues, as always, are atmosphere and a striking ending that makes genre material feel very non-generic.

Jake Cole

What I once considered the weakest of Carpenter's gold run now seems perhaps his masterpiece, from the opening that uses cross-cuts b/t unlinked shots and credits to generate overwhelming dread from nothing, to its surreal plod of evil working its way through everyone. Every shot is perfectly placed to maximize doom, and its bursts of nastiness are almost a relief from the buildup. Vies w/ In the Mouth for his best

Mark Garrett

Carpenter is so underrated. Where else can you find his super-low angle building shots, looking as if they're coming out of a storm-drain, the laconic, sexist males, and the cold, broken fingers of a zombified woman reaching into the mirror of her makeup kit.

serotoninronin

Let's call this film what is clearly is, namely, Carpenter's second best film. It fits quite perfectly between his best, which is even more clearly The Thing, and the rest, which range from brilliant (this and The Thing are transcendently brilliant) to foolhardy. Jack's comments about the distillation of evil here are on point, though I disagree that the film is a better taste of Carpenter's essence than The Thing.

Mr Centaur

Shamefully underrated. One of my favourite 80s horrors.

Lights in the Dusk

A collision between Carpenter's key influences; the Hawksian siege film (where, like Rio Bravo, characters find themselves trapped in a single location, fighting off an external force), the Quatermass series (with its long-buried evil) & the sense of impending apocalypse suggested by Lovecraft. The pseudo-science babble isn't hugely convincing, but it's the atmosphere & sustained sense of threat that really astonish.

Laurs Kemp

I saw this the first time on my laptop and thought highly of it, but I just saw this again at the Cinemateca in Lisbon and was blown away. What a difference! All Carpenter films should be seen in a theater.

Ghostman

I like it's themes and it's very spooky but its mostly weak. The characters are extraordinarily dumb and the story is at a stand still in the middle of the movie. The pacing is off and the characters often don't have much to do other than get possessed once the green hell goo wakes up. That being said weak Carpenter is still not bad and it ends fairly strong. Maybe i should watch it again.