Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is
Speaker 1: Rob Lamb. Today we are reairing our episode that originally
Speaker 1: published eleven one, twenty twenty four. It is our episode
Speaker 1: on John Carpenter's nineteen eighty seven film Prince of Darkness.
Speaker 1: This one is a lot of fun. Love this movie.
Speaker 1: Let's jump right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick. And hey, if everything is
Speaker 3: going according to plan, this should have published the moment
Speaker 3: after midnight on the night of Halloween. So so happy Halloween, everybody.
Speaker 3: We are bringing you horror accordingly. Today we're going to
Speaker 3: be talking about the nineteen eighty seven John Carpenter horror
Speaker 3: film Prince of Darkness. And somehow I think this is
Speaker 3: our first John Carpenter movie.
Speaker 1: It is, And we did talk about the Carpenter produced
Speaker 1: and Carpenter scored Halloween three a while back, but this
Speaker 1: is the very first time we're actually going to be
Speaker 1: talking about a John Carpenter directed film. And we managed
Speaker 1: to wait until our one hundred and eightieth Weird House
Speaker 1: cinema selection to do this, so some of you might
Speaker 1: find that a little surprising. I kind of find it
Speaker 1: a little surprising, I guess in retrospect, because obviously you
Speaker 1: and I are both big John Carpenter fans. Some of
Speaker 1: his films are among our favorites, and we keep talking
Speaker 1: about them on the show. Anytime there's a John Carpenter
Speaker 1: connection in a movie or in a core episode of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we'll talk about it. Lord knows,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about it. Why did it take us so long, though,
Speaker 1: you know, I despite the fact that obviously we really
Speaker 1: like John Carpenter films, and we also have listeners writing
Speaker 1: and suggesting John Carpenter films a lot. I'll have to
Speaker 1: get your thoughts on this, Joe. But for my own part,
Speaker 1: I feel like I've always kind of been reluctant to
Speaker 1: tackle one of the all time great favorite John Carpenter films,
Speaker 1: you know, something like The Thing or Big Trouble in
Speaker 1: Little China, because they're just so well known, they're beloved
Speaker 1: and in some respects kind of perfect in their own way.
Speaker 1: And on the other hand, I've been perhaps more tempted
Speaker 1: to cover something like Ghosts of Mars one of his
Speaker 1: late period pictures, but it also felt wrong for our
Speaker 1: first Carpenter selection to be one of his less well
Speaker 1: received movies. So I think nineteen eighty seven's Prince of
Speaker 1: Darkness is perhaps the perfect pick. It's Carpenter during his
Speaker 1: heyday and also Carpenter at peak creative control. It's also
Speaker 1: one of his truly weirdest films, I think, and it
Speaker 1: has a strong cult following.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a Carpenter sleeper the sleeper awakens. In fact,
Speaker 3: even some people who are fans probably haven't seen this one.
Speaker 3: It took me a long time after you know, I
Speaker 3: first started watching Halloween, An Escape from New York and
Speaker 3: all the big ones everybody sees first to get around
Speaker 3: to Prince of Darkness, and when I did, I was
Speaker 3: quite wowed by it. It remains very much in the
Speaker 3: top tier of horror movies for me, especially in you know.
Speaker 3: It's a great example of a concept we've talked about
Speaker 3: on the show that I think maybe applies more to
Speaker 3: John Carpenter films than to anything else, and that is
Speaker 3: a rub the fur movie. Prince of Darkness is a
Speaker 3: rub the fur movie. It is about a textural experience
Speaker 3: an experience of sights and sounds that conjures a mood.
Speaker 3: This movie is absolutely amazing at creating a feeling and
Speaker 3: a mood through its use of music, through its use
Speaker 3: of imagery, through its use of interesting ideas. And I
Speaker 3: really like the way that it throws different themes together.
Speaker 3: So one of the things that I think must have
Speaker 3: been behind John Carpenter's like creative process for Prince of
Speaker 3: Darkness is he must have read like a pop physics
Speaker 3: book or like watched a documentary about quantum mechanics, Because
Speaker 3: this movie is full of ideas about both science and religion.
Speaker 3: He was trying to do some kind of sort of
Speaker 3: sort of Christian infused but also sort of maybe Lovecraftian
Speaker 3: or Eldrich demonic awakening idea, but then also mixing that
Speaker 3: with ideas about quantum weirdness, some stuff about astronomy. He's
Speaker 3: clearly like trying to put a bunch of different kinds
Speaker 3: of themes that are usually kept separate into the blender.
Speaker 3: And that's an impulse I really like. And I think
Speaker 3: if you don't look too close at the way he
Speaker 3: uses the scientific ideas, it really works if you start
Speaker 3: if you actually know what he's talking about and start like,
Speaker 3: you know, reading between the lines too much kind of
Speaker 3: falls apart. But if you just lean back, you kind
Speaker 3: of you kind of tune out just a little bit
Speaker 3: during the scientific parts. I think it is super nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean this this is ultimately a pretty
Speaker 1: ambitious film, right, I mean, it's from a number of standpoints.
Speaker 1: It's like it was a three million dollar picture, it
Speaker 1: was an independent picture coming off of a lot of
Speaker 1: studio work for Carpenter, and it attempts to weave in
Speaker 1: all of these quantum physics and quantum mechanics ideas that
Speaker 1: the Carpenter, you know, says that he'd been reading a
Speaker 1: lot of this kind of thing. He'd read several books
Speaker 1: about quantum mechanics, and that it had kind of like
Speaker 1: a profound impact on him. Like he described it as
Speaker 1: kind of like a shift in worldview based on what
Speaker 1: he was reading. So you have that going on, and
Speaker 1: then at the same time, this is something that really
Speaker 1: came out when I was listening to the the commentary
Speaker 1: track for this film, which I'll discuss more about that
Speaker 1: in a bit. But he's talking with one of the
Speaker 1: actors in the picture, Peter Jason, and it's neat because Jason,
Speaker 1: of course is coming at it with a very actor's
Speaker 1: standpoint when it comes to the questions, he's asking Carpenter
Speaker 1: about the production and the process, and Carpenter of course
Speaker 1: is approaching it from the view of the director and
Speaker 1: the writer, but especially from the standpoint of the director.
Speaker 1: And I think one detail that kind of from the
Speaker 1: commentary track that kind of highlights these different views is
Speaker 1: when they're talking about the scenes where they're first going
Speaker 1: down into the basement. We'll get to the basement and
Speaker 1: all this as you know, this sort of ruinous basement
Speaker 1: that has lit by like hundreds of candles, and you know,
Speaker 1: they're kind of having fun with the picture, riffing almost
Speaker 1: a certain extent, and Jason's like, who who let all
Speaker 1: these candles? And you know, Carpenter's like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: this is just this is just great lighting. You know,
Speaker 1: this just it just looks really cool, you know, And
Speaker 1: I think that gets to the rub the fur aspect
Speaker 1: of the picture. And then rub the fur, you know,
Speaker 1: you can talk about again, you can definitely think about
Speaker 1: it in terms of just sights and sounds, but it's
Speaker 1: also there in the ideas, you know, in the way
Speaker 1: ideas are sprinkled through it. And it's not only about
Speaker 1: like what is given to you, but oh also what's
Speaker 1: not given to you. There are a number of scenes
Speaker 1: in this picture where we get audio free clips of
Speaker 1: characters clearly discussing the implications of whatever is going on.
Speaker 1: So we don't even have all the details. We just
Speaker 1: have various nuggets of quantum physics and theology thrown at us.
Speaker 1: And you know, again, yeah, if you lean back into
Speaker 1: the chair and you let them wash over you, it's
Speaker 1: a pretty great experience.
Speaker 3: I agree. I think that's exactly right, and I would
Speaker 3: phrase it this way. I think the use of both
Speaker 3: science and religion, the scientific and religious themes in the
Speaker 3: movie is primarily esthetic. It is not primarily about how
Speaker 3: either one actually works or what is actually true. It's
Speaker 3: to create an aesthetic effect. And that's not a bad thing.
Speaker 3: I mean, like, I think it is used quite well
Speaker 3: as another type of texture. It's an idea texture, a
Speaker 3: theme texture that fits in with the sights and sounds
Speaker 3: and ultimately the whole it's all adding up to a feeling,
Speaker 3: a mood, and it is a powerful, powerful mood.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you what I have an elevator pitch
Speaker 1: for this movie, and it is the following The Devil's
Speaker 1: in the details and also in a big cylinder of
Speaker 1: green liquid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's an idea that works better in
Speaker 3: practice than it does in theory. If you were to
Speaker 3: actually explain the concept here that, yeah, Satan is physically
Speaker 3: real and he is a volume of green liquid inside
Speaker 3: a jar. I don't know. That just doesn't sound as
Speaker 3: effective as the movie actually is.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think in one of our most recent episodes
Speaker 1: of Weird House, or maybe it was a core episode
Speaker 1: I mentioned in Passing like movies that talk about evil
Speaker 1: as an actual physical presence or substance, and this movie
Speaker 1: kind of gets into that territory, but also ultimately I
Speaker 1: think makes it work within the context of the film
Speaker 1: in ways that it maybe doesn't in others.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we were talking about this in the House of
Speaker 3: Ushare episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, Well, let's go ahead and listen to
Speaker 1: a little bit of trailer audio here, which is we're
Speaker 1: not gonna listen to the whole trailer, but hopefully we'll
Speaker 1: get just a little splash of some of the dialogue
Speaker 1: from it and a little taste of that excellent John
Speaker 1: Carpenter Alan Howarth score that we're gonna be talking about.
Speaker 1: All right, So hey, if you want to go see
Speaker 1: Prince of Darkness before we proceed here. It is widely available.
Speaker 1: You can stream it, you can rent it, you can
Speaker 1: buy it physically. I watched it on the Shout Factory
Speaker 1: Blu ray, which is pretty great, complete with three bonus
Speaker 1: interviews and a full audio commentary track from Carpenter and
Speaker 1: actor Peter Jason, who has a minor part here but
Speaker 1: is a friend and frequent Carpenter cast member. This was
Speaker 1: his first Carpenter film. Carpenter's audio commentaries with folks are
Speaker 1: always entertaining and insightful. This one's no exception. I actually
Speaker 1: I generally say I don't have time for audio commentaries
Speaker 1: on movies anymore, and that's mostly true. And yet somehow
Speaker 1: I ended up watching this movie all the way through,
Speaker 1: and then watching half of it again with the commentary track.
Speaker 3: It's just that good. I remember listening to Way Carpenter
Speaker 3: and Jamie Lee Curtis commentary track somewhere that was adorable.
Speaker 3: It was great.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah I haven't. I haven't done that one. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're generally very well regarded. You know, it's just
Speaker 1: very cool to hear Carpenter, you know, shoot the ball
Speaker 1: with people that clearly he you know, pre picks knowing
Speaker 1: that this is somebody that he has a rapport with
Speaker 1: and can chat with about the film.
Speaker 3: I think Peter Jason does he play the He's like
Speaker 3: a chemistry professor in this movie who spends a significant
Speaker 3: amount of time walking around doing like kazoo noises with
Speaker 3: his mouth. Yes, yeah, that's the one, Peter, I've got
Speaker 3: the perfect part for you. All right, Well, let's let's
Speaker 3: talk about the folks involved here, starting of course with
Speaker 3: John Carpenter. He directed it. He wrote it under a pseudonym,
Speaker 3: but it's pretty obvious that you know, everyone knows this
Speaker 3: is a On Carpenter scripted film. Did he call himself
Speaker 3: Martin quator Mass.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, a reference to the films that he was
Speaker 1: inspired by. That also, you know, have some direct inspiration
Speaker 1: on the plot of this picture, you know, ancient evil
Speaker 1: buried beneath the ground, that sort of thing. Nice And
Speaker 1: of course yes see he did the score as well.
Speaker 1: Born nineteen forty eight, living legend director of some of
Speaker 1: the most iconic horror and sci fi films. Of the
Speaker 1: late seventies and the entire nineteen eighties, who also played
Speaker 1: a very key role in the birth of an entire dark,
Speaker 1: ambient synth wave sound like There's just you know, there
Speaker 1: are other important influences on that kind of sound out
Speaker 1: there from horror and sci fi soundtrack, but John Carpenter
Speaker 1: is a very important part of that equation.
Speaker 3: I had some plans to talk about this later, but
Speaker 3: I might as well mention it now. I think that
Speaker 3: John Carpenter not only creates great scores electronic scores for
Speaker 3: his own movie. I think in many cases the movie
Speaker 3: is only as effective as it is with his score.
Speaker 3: Not to take away from the rest of the movie.
Speaker 3: I mean, like, you know, he's got a great sense
Speaker 3: of where to put the camera. You know, he's got
Speaker 3: a good photographic style, and I like the stories he
Speaker 3: writes and all that. So other filmmaking elements are strong
Speaker 3: as well, But it is the score he creates for
Speaker 3: the film that locks it all into place, that creates
Speaker 3: the feeling that you associate with the movie. Try to
Speaker 3: imagine Halloween without the John Carpenter score just sub in
Speaker 3: what you would imagine for some other generic horror movie score.
Speaker 3: It would still be, I think, a pretty good movie,
Speaker 3: but it would not be anything like what it is.
Speaker 3: And I think the same is true for all of
Speaker 3: the movies that Carpenter scores himself. It's definitely the case here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, So we really don't have to tell most
Speaker 1: of you who John Carpenter is. You know, he's responsible
Speaker 1: for such iconic films as seventy eight, Halloween, eighty on's
Speaker 1: Escape from Me Go, eighty two is The Thing, eighty
Speaker 1: six is, Big Trouble in Little China in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: four is in the Mouth of Madness, just to name
Speaker 1: a few. He came out of the USC School of
Speaker 1: Cinematic Arts in the late sixties and ultimately skyrocketed with
Speaker 1: the success of Halloween. This film, eighty seven's Prince of
Speaker 1: Darkness is notable for being his first independent film after
Speaker 1: a string of big studio commercial movies, coming immediately on
Speaker 1: the heels of the box office disappointment of Big Trouble
Speaker 1: in Little China, which of course has gone on to
Speaker 1: become a much loved cult classic, but at the time
Speaker 1: it did not succeed.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people didn't get it when
Speaker 3: it came out. It was only kind of looking back
Speaker 3: that people started to realize the genius.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he's coming off of that. Carpenter has said
Speaker 1: in interviews that he was worn out by the big
Speaker 1: studio process and really wanted to make a lower budget
Speaker 1: film that was completely on his own terms. And that's
Speaker 1: what Prince of Darkness is. It's a weird, doomy contemplation
Speaker 1: on religion and quantum mechanics, which Carpenter, you know, always
Speaker 1: a science nerd, had been reading about leading up to
Speaker 1: this production. And it's also a film that may comment
Speaker 1: to some degree, maybe even almost subconsciously or subliminally on
Speaker 1: the on his desire to break free from the tyrannical
Speaker 1: order of big studio productions, you know, like you can
Speaker 1: you can maybe pick up on a little sort of
Speaker 1: like post studio angst in the in the way that
Speaker 1: he's formulating things.
Speaker 3: Oh, there is a great part where they're discussing the
Speaker 3: secrets kept by the Brotherhood of Sleep and Donald Pleasant
Speaker 3: starts talking about how, you know, we we fed the
Speaker 3: people what we thought they wanted a lie. It was
Speaker 3: all a lie. I want to tell them the truth now.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so it's it's in a way, this movie's
Speaker 1: kind of. It has a meanness and you know, also
Speaker 1: kind of a graphicness that you don't see in a
Speaker 1: lot of other Carpenter films. I mean not to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can look at the Thing and it's grotesque, but
Speaker 1: this movie is also pretty violent and grotesque in its
Speaker 1: own way. It's often situated with the Thing and in
Speaker 1: the mouth of madness as being part of his Apocalypse trilogy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of the bloodier ones. It also is clearly
Speaker 1: a siege film, which he's quick to point out. And
Speaker 1: it has a Howard Hawksian ensemble cast featuring several actors
Speaker 1: that Carpenter handpicked to work with. Again, you know, mostly
Speaker 1: people he liked working with and was excited to have
Speaker 1: on a production like this. It made a reported fourteen
Speaker 1: point two million off of a budget of three million,
Speaker 1: and so he followed it up with They Live, which
Speaker 1: was nearly identical in terms of creative control, budget and
Speaker 1: box office. Carpenter's last full length director oorial effort was
Speaker 1: twenty tens The Ward, but he's remained active, of course
Speaker 1: as a composer, often working with his son Cody.
Speaker 3: Now, did you say in one of the commentaries you
Speaker 3: were listening to that, Carpenter admitted to his obsession with
Speaker 3: video games because I don't remember where I came across this,
Speaker 3: but I generally had it in my head that is
Speaker 3: like obsessed with playing like I don't know, NBA JAM,
Speaker 3: like like sports, video games for the PlayStation and stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean numerous interviews will bring up video games.
Speaker 1: And even in this commentary track, which was I think,
Speaker 1: you know, over a decade ago that it was recorded,
Speaker 1: you know, he's mostly like, yeah, I'm not as tuned
Speaker 1: into the you know what people, you know, what's going
Speaker 1: on with horror movies these days, and mostly just do
Speaker 1: sports and video games. And I've seen other interviews where
Speaker 1: people ask him with what he's playing, and there's always
Speaker 1: some sort of like shooter sports game I guess that
Speaker 1: he's into. So, you know, you know, more power to him.
Speaker 1: He's a big gamer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fair enough, John. You know, you made a bunch
Speaker 3: of good ones. You don't have to keep up with
Speaker 3: what's what's great this year. Yeah, play video games.
Speaker 1: I should also point out Carpenter points to several influences
Speaker 1: on the plot of this picture, one of them being
Speaker 1: Gregory Benford's novel Timescape from nineteen eighty. That's a I
Speaker 1: haven't read it, but apparent it's a novel that involves
Speaker 1: messages from the future sent via hypothetical faster than lie
Speaker 1: Tachyon particles.
Speaker 3: Oh, this ties into one of my favorite things in
Speaker 3: the movie, The Dreams and from the Future. I guess
Speaker 3: we'll get into that in the plot section. But I
Speaker 3: love that convention here and the way it's realized as
Speaker 3: a kind of staticky like you know, third generation VHS
Speaker 3: copy video message is so good.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, again, this is a fairly expansive ensemble cast,
Speaker 1: and we can't cover everyone here or do go into
Speaker 1: great detail, so I'm probably gonna have to be a
Speaker 1: little briefer than usual. All right, First of all, top billing,
Speaker 1: we have Donald Pleasants playing an unnamed priest. He's just
Speaker 1: credited as priest.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was trying to so some sources I found
Speaker 3: online called him. I think father Loomis. I don't think
Speaker 3: that name is ever said in the movie, and I
Speaker 3: don't see that in anything official. That might just be
Speaker 3: something the Internet made up.
Speaker 1: He's he is very Loomis esque, Like it's impossible not
Speaker 1: to compare this role as a troubled priest fighting against
Speaker 1: evil to the other major role in she played a
Speaker 1: troubled priest fighting against evil as Loomis and Halloween. It's
Speaker 1: also similar to the character he played in The Devil's
Speaker 1: Men that we previously discussed on the show.
Speaker 3: Oh no, the Devil's Man. He's much better in this
Speaker 3: than he was in The Devil's Men. Yeah, but it
Speaker 3: is very similar to his Halloween performance. In both cases,
Speaker 3: he is playing a He is playing a haunted, disturbed
Speaker 3: cleric of sorts who is motivated by a fear of
Speaker 3: what's to come and guilt for what he in some
Speaker 3: small part, played a role in releasing into the world. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Pleasants lived nineteen nineteen through nineteen ninety five, and he,
Speaker 1: of course not only appeared in Carpenter's Halloween. He was
Speaker 1: also an Escape from New York, in which he played
Speaker 1: the President of the United States.
Speaker 3: May God have messy on you all.
Speaker 1: He often played these really like, very dry, serious characters,
Speaker 1: but it's said to be quite humorous behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: and you know, everybody seems to have really nice things
Speaker 1: to say about working with him. All Right. Up next,
Speaker 1: we have the actor and character that are essentially positioned
Speaker 1: as the leading man. But again very strong ensemble sensibilities here.
Speaker 1: But this is the character Brian Marsh played by Jamison
Speaker 1: Parker born nineteen forty seven.
Speaker 3: Is this supposed to be our Tom Atkins for the film?
Speaker 1: I think so, our mustachioed, handsome eighties leading man. Sometimes
Speaker 1: he just hangs out like he's working alone in his
Speaker 1: apartment or house at night. He's just he's got his
Speaker 1: shirt open so he can show off his muscles to nobody.
Speaker 3: He's got some muscles, though he does.
Speaker 1: A man's in good shape. Jamison Parker was mostly known
Speaker 1: for playing the Simon without a mustache on TV Simon
Speaker 1: and Simon, so in this movie he's the one with
Speaker 1: the mustache. And he worked several times with Simon and
Speaker 1: Simon co star Gerald McRaney, the dad from The Never
Speaker 1: Ending Story. So I mean this is mostly what he's
Speaker 1: known for, also, of course remembered for this picture. And
Speaker 1: you know he's perfectly fine in this no complaints. Again,
Speaker 1: He's essentially the leading man that exists mostly within an
Speaker 1: ensemble cast of characters.
Speaker 3: You know, I will say I love love Prince of Darkness,
Speaker 3: but I will say I think deeply developed characters is
Speaker 3: not this movie's strong suit. Instead of having characters that
Speaker 3: we get to know super well and are very well defined,
Speaker 3: we have a lot of characters. I would say the
Speaker 3: most interesting singularly defined character in the movie is the
Speaker 3: physics professor Barak, played by Victor Wong.
Speaker 1: Yes, Victor Wong, who of nineteen twenty seven through two
Speaker 1: thousand and one Chinese American character actor, easily best remembered
Speaker 1: for his role as the wizard egg Shin in Carpenter's
Speaker 1: Big Trouble in Little China, but he also had a
Speaker 1: great role in the cult classic monster film Trimmers, which
Speaker 1: also had a great ensemble cast, and he was also
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty seven's The Last Emperor. Other credits include
Speaker 1: eighty five's Year of the Dragon, eighty six is Shanghai
Speaker 1: Surprise that as it's a Madonna movie, Memory Serves, and
Speaker 1: also The Golden Child with Eddie Murphy nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: is the Joy Luck Club in nineteen ninety seven Seven
Speaker 1: Years in Tibet.
Speaker 3: I always love Victor Wong. Of course I love him
Speaker 3: in Big Trouble in Little China, and I love him
Speaker 3: in this. He has such a strong, like good magic,
Speaker 3: comforting aura. He's almost like the good Witch Glinda when
Speaker 3: he appears, you know, does that make any sense?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, it's like there's he's able to bring a
Speaker 1: certain wisdom to everything that he's saying, you know. And
Speaker 1: we'll get into when we can do examples from his
Speaker 1: various physics lectures. But I think it's interesting because I
Speaker 1: think you could say the same for Donald Pleasants and
Speaker 1: Victor Wong. Both of them are really great at making
Speaker 1: you believe the things that they're saying, no matter what
Speaker 1: kind of dialogue they're given. You're like, Yeah, this guy
Speaker 1: knows what he's talking.
Speaker 3: About absolutely, And I really like the way he plays
Speaker 3: this character too, So not just in delivering, say, these
Speaker 3: strange physics lectures about you know, the other characters say
Speaker 3: about like the student characters say about him that he
Speaker 3: is a physics professor, but he's almost more interested in
Speaker 3: turning his students into philosophers than scientists, because he's really
Speaker 3: captured by the ideas the implications of the quantum mechanics
Speaker 3: that he teaches, and so he does come out he
Speaker 3: does portray that well as like the man wrapped up
Speaker 3: in not just how the science works, but what it
Speaker 3: means for our lives, and he clearly like he gets
Speaker 3: lost in thought about that and wants other people to
Speaker 3: understand to the extent he does, how strange all this
Speaker 3: is and how much it should shake them to their core.
Speaker 3: But I also like the way that he plays this
Speaker 3: role as as physically feeble but mentally tough. Like he
Speaker 3: sort of plays the character. He's very kind of slow
Speaker 3: moving and almost sort of with a limp or something
Speaker 3: in the way he walks, but he doesn't get as
Speaker 3: easily mentally shaken as a lot of the other characters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, again, it's you know, it's probably that strong
Speaker 1: wisdom rating for his character. All right, let's see next,
Speaker 1: we have the character Catherine Danforth played by Lisa Blount,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen fifty seven through twenty ten. Along with
Speaker 1: most of the characters, she's part of the Professor's assembled
Speaker 1: science team, and as we'll see, she's also the love
Speaker 1: interest of the character Brian Marsh. Best known for her
Speaker 1: Golden Globe nominated performance in nineteen eighty two as an
Speaker 1: officer and a Gentleman. Her other credits include nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: one's Dead and Buried, nineteen eighty four's Radioactive Dreams, and
Speaker 1: What Waits Below, eighty seven's Night Flyers and nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: nine Blind Fury. She also produced three projects, including the
Speaker 1: Academy Award winning short film The Accountant in two thousand
Speaker 1: and one that starred and was directed by her husband
Speaker 1: Ray McKinnon and co starred Walton Goggins, both both fine actors.
Speaker 3: Oh Goggins connection. As I said earlier, a lot the
Speaker 3: student characters, maybe including our supposed leading man Brian, are
Speaker 3: not super well defined. I think Catherine is one of
Speaker 3: the slightly more interesting ones. She has there's something unspoken
Speaker 3: about her backstory, Like there are moments she has with
Speaker 3: Brian where they're talking about like why she seems to
Speaker 3: have a kind of pessimistic outlook about say love, or
Speaker 3: about the future. Why she seems to have a lot
Speaker 3: of doubts about herself, and she often doesn't want to
Speaker 3: explain what the cause of that is, and so we're
Speaker 3: just sort of left to fill that in ourselves. But yeah,
Speaker 3: she's presented as this character who has I don't know,
Speaker 3: who has a kind of darkness, who has doubts, but
Speaker 3: she does essentially save the day in the end, the
Speaker 3: bridging into the dark world where the father of Satan resides.
Speaker 3: More on that later is ultimately that is stopped by
Speaker 3: an act of heroism by Catherine.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, all right. Next we have the character Walter
Speaker 1: played by Dennis Dunne born nineteen fifty two. This is
Speaker 1: another big trouble in Little China alumni. He also appeared
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty five's A Year of the Dragon and
Speaker 1: eighty seven's The Last Emperor American actor of Chinese descent
Speaker 1: with the credits and TV film and stage. His role
Speaker 1: is interesting because he is the funniest character, but he
Speaker 1: is also it's important to distress, not a comic relief character,
Speaker 1: Like he is not there just to make a few
Speaker 1: jokes and then get killed by a monster or anything
Speaker 1: like that. Like, he has a lot of personality and
Speaker 1: he brings a lot of legitimate humor to the role.
Speaker 1: But he's also a character that you're pretty invested in,
Speaker 1: So I don't know, he feels almost like co male
Speaker 1: lead in the film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say it's not that he functions as
Speaker 3: comic relief within the plot. I would say that the
Speaker 3: character the main characteristic of his character is that he
Speaker 3: is a jokester and he in fact deals with fear
Speaker 3: by making jokes, which is the thing a lot of people.
Speaker 3: Do you know that's a common character, You know, you
Speaker 3: can recognize that character trait in others, the people whose
Speaker 3: impulse when things start getting tense or scary is to
Speaker 3: start trying harder and harder to be funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right. Next we have Kelly. Kelly is played
Speaker 1: by Susan Blanchard born nineteen forty four. She's another member
Speaker 1: of the science team. I don't remember what her discipline
Speaker 1: is off the top of my head. She has a
Speaker 1: bit the physics group by physics. Grip Oh, she's physics.
Speaker 1: She's the blonde member of the team. She becomes really
Speaker 1: important in the final act. So more on that in
Speaker 1: a bet. She also appeared in They Live and was
Speaker 1: on tpe's Policewoman. All right. Then we have the character
Speaker 1: Susan Cabot played by Anne Marie Howard born nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: This is the science team member with the piercing eyes.
Speaker 1: Do you remember what her discipline is?
Speaker 3: Also, I don't remember her discipline. But she's the one
Speaker 3: who's working down in the basement with the cylinder of goo.
Speaker 3: She has the glasses. Multiple characters refer to her by
Speaker 3: saying glasses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then of course she becomes the first person
Speaker 1: to be possessed. So minor spoiler there, but hey, and
Speaker 1: she loses the glasses and becomes the creepy possessed woman
Speaker 1: for the rest of the film, which she does a
Speaker 1: great job at.
Speaker 3: She goes around essentially urinating satanic fluid out of her
Speaker 3: mouth into other people's mouths.
Speaker 1: Exactly, which is great. I mean, how many other films
Speaker 1: do you have this sort of like possessed zombie vampire
Speaker 1: that uses like a projectial green liquid to infect others.
Speaker 1: That is pretty great. This is essentially her first film role,
Speaker 1: which she followed up with a stint on Days of
Speaker 1: Our Lives and has had a long career acting in
Speaker 1: mostly television. I think some solid stage credits as well.
Speaker 1: All right, up next, we have the character Lisa played
Speaker 1: by Ann yin one of only a handful of credits
Speaker 1: for her that include According to IMDb, anyway, there's always
Speaker 1: possibility something's crossed here, but they have listed a nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty Chinese film called What Is Love? And then she
Speaker 1: does a few other things. She does this movie and
Speaker 1: then finally has an episode of TVs in a in
Speaker 1: color and then I don't know, well what happened to
Speaker 1: her after that, but I thought she was pretty good. Here.
Speaker 1: She's like a computer person, right.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, she's well, she's using a computer. But no,
Speaker 3: she's brought in as a theology student because they need
Speaker 3: someone to translate the ancient languages in the book that
Speaker 3: is kept by the Brotherhood of Sleep. That's right, So.
Speaker 1: She's doing a lot of translation work on the computers.
Speaker 3: Yes, she's like just looking at the book and apparently
Speaker 3: not needing to use any reference resources or anything. She
Speaker 3: just like looks at the Brotherhood of Sleep book and like, okay,
Speaker 3: that's Coptic, and then just starts typing in English on
Speaker 3: the computer, doing it straight from the head. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's impressive. I think even most professional, you know, language
Speaker 3: scholars probably need to use some reference materials when they're
Speaker 3: translating things. But yeah, so she's the one who's like
Speaker 3: translating the book. So she gives us a lot of
Speaker 3: like creepy statements that are coming from this ancient tone.
Speaker 3: But then also she has one of my favorite scary
Speaker 3: moments in the movie, where after she gets possessed by
Speaker 3: the Satanic fluid, she's sitting at the computer and just
Speaker 3: like staring ahead, not not looking at the screen, but
Speaker 3: like looking off to the side and just typing repeatedly,
Speaker 3: over and over, and then you see the screen and
Speaker 3: it just says I live. I live, like a million times.
Speaker 1: Peter Jason, in the commentary tract did comment that, hey,
Speaker 1: she's like acting and using a computer and it looks believable.
Speaker 1: I can't do that. He's like making a case like
Speaker 1: most actors can't do that. We don't know how to
Speaker 1: use computers. That's why we're acting. So found that amusing.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to skip various members of the science
Speaker 1: team here, but yeah, I'll mention that. Yeah. Peter Jason
Speaker 1: born nineteen forty four appears here in the first of
Speaker 1: seven collaborations with John Carpenter. Alice Cooper the rock Star
Speaker 1: born nineteen forty eight has a small role as a
Speaker 1: possessed man who, as we'll discuss, also essentially brought his
Speaker 1: own special effects with him for one scene, and then
Speaker 1: visual effects supervisor Robert Grasmere is also in it as
Speaker 1: an actor. He has a memorable role in the film
Speaker 1: because he gets to die not once, but twice. This
Speaker 1: was only Grassmere's third movie as a visual effects supervisor,
Speaker 1: but he went on to serve on such films as
Speaker 1: eighty seven is the Running Man, nineteen nineties Predator, two,
Speaker 1: ninety three's Demolition Man, and twenty twenty one's Barb and
Speaker 1: Star go to Vista del mar So in a lot
Speaker 1: of different films.
Speaker 3: Oh, but if we're talking about the scientists, we got
Speaker 3: to talk about one of my favorites, which is Calder
Speaker 3: the Microbiologist.
Speaker 1: I think, yes, he's tremendous. Jesse Lawrence Ferguson, who lived
Speaker 1: nineteen forty one through twenty nineteen. He's kind of forgettable
Speaker 1: early on, you know, he's just one of the scienced crew,
Speaker 1: but he goes on to seemingly just have a blast
Speaker 1: playing a possessed version of his character, engaging in all
Speaker 1: manner of like strange facial expressions, and I think he's
Speaker 1: the only one that laughs. And he has this just
Speaker 1: completely unhinged laugh that he does that really adds to
Speaker 1: the creepiness deering, Like like the final part of the picture.
Speaker 3: It's it's so good, hats off to him. It's like
Speaker 3: I am the devil now and it's hilarious and he's
Speaker 3: it's only but it's a laugh that he's not just
Speaker 3: laughing maniacally like outright laughter. It's like he is trying
Speaker 3: to keep from laughing, but he can't stop himself. And
Speaker 3: that's what makes it so good.
Speaker 1: Demonic laughter like bubbling out of him. It's so good.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now he was a He was an actors stage and
Speaker 1: screen who appeared in a fair number of things, including
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four's Buckaru Bonzai eighty six is Neon Maniacs.
Speaker 1: I do not remember him from theon MANIAX, but I
Speaker 1: have seen that film, nineteen nineties dark Man, and nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one's Boys in the Hood. Great voice, great voice, talent,
Speaker 1: let's see of note. Gary B. Kibbi is cinematographer on
Speaker 1: this with nineteen forty one through twenty twenty. He'd previously
Speaker 1: worked as a camera operator on some films, and this
Speaker 1: was his first film as director of photoghography. Followed by
Speaker 1: They Live, he went unto work on several different John
Speaker 1: Carpenter films and then finally Yes the score we already
Speaker 1: credited Carpenter and again this is one of several collaborations
Speaker 1: with musician Alan Howarth. You can find the score wherever
Speaker 1: you get your music streaming or otherwise. But if you
Speaker 1: want something physical, Sacred Bones Records, who have worked extensively
Speaker 1: with John Carpenter, have a really beautiful box set that
Speaker 1: includes a blu ray of the film. Real quick, now
Speaker 1: that I'm looking at the picture of the blu ray,
Speaker 1: I'm again reminded of the box art for this film.
Speaker 1: The poster art for this film with like the screaming
Speaker 1: face and the green lightning stemming from some sort of
Speaker 1: a church. Long before I ever actually watched this picture,
Speaker 1: I do distinctly remember seeing that VHS box art on
Speaker 1: the shelf at VHS rentals stores, and it always kind
Speaker 1: of like scared me and captivated me from a very
Speaker 1: young age. So solid, solid poster.
Speaker 3: Who's face is this? Is this anybody from the movie?
Speaker 3: Not that I recall.
Speaker 1: I don't know for certain that it may Yeah, it
Speaker 1: may just be nobody. It's just an evocative poster, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes the case.
Speaker 3: Can I say something about the marketing for the movie.
Speaker 3: I am impressed that they managed to resist just putting
Speaker 3: Alice Cooper on the cover.
Speaker 1: Yes. I also think it is very admirable that despite
Speaker 1: the fact that Alice Cooper has a song title Prints
Speaker 1: of Darkness that is like technically on the soundtrack, and
Speaker 1: yet is not the closing credits song, or at least
Speaker 1: I don't. It's not the initial closing credit song. Maybe
Speaker 1: they play it later on after I stop watching the credits.
Speaker 1: But this is a film that has a tremendous music obviously,
Speaker 1: and a tremendous endpoint, like the final shot in the
Speaker 1: film is perfect, and the music matches with it perfectly
Speaker 1: and feeds into the end credit song that is Carpenter
Speaker 1: and Howarth. I wouldn't change that for the world. I'm
Speaker 1: so glad we don't switch over into a rock number
Speaker 1: at that point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. I mean, as I said earlier, the
Speaker 3: use of music in this movie is perfect and it
Speaker 3: is what makes the film work as well as it does.
Speaker 3: Not that there aren't a lot of other great things
Speaker 3: about the movie, but the music is the glue that
Speaker 3: holds everything together and does the most work of anything
Speaker 3: to establish the intended feeling of the movie. So yeah,
Speaker 3: you couldn't mess with that, I think. Yeah, I totally agree.
Speaker 3: If as soon as you cut to the credits you
Speaker 3: went to a rock song, I think that would be
Speaker 3: a real bummer. That would really spoil it.
Speaker 1: All, right, Well, let's dive into the plot proper here.
Speaker 3: So the action opens with that ominous theme music. It
Speaker 3: consists of a deep electronic pulse that bounces kind of
Speaker 3: like a hammer on a harpsichord string. But then it
Speaker 3: also has these high synthesized tones that sound kind of
Speaker 3: like choirs, but not so much singing but sighing. I
Speaker 3: love that sighing voice they've created there. I don't know
Speaker 3: exactly what that is, but this music keeps playing as
Speaker 3: we go through the opening shots of the movie, and
Speaker 3: the first I would say the first ten minutes or
Speaker 3: so of the movie function kind of like a montage
Speaker 3: where we don't follow any individual character character all that long. Instead,
Speaker 3: it's more like a montage where we cut back and
Speaker 3: forth between credits and then different characters, settings, and important props.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of like a survey of the game
Speaker 3: pieces being laid out on the board, except it is
Speaker 3: charged with this incredibly strong combination of dread, anticipation, and
Speaker 3: unstoppable forward momentum, all created by the music. And I
Speaker 3: think somewhat famously, this opening credits montage goes on for
Speaker 3: like nine or ten minutes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's a good one though. It really brings
Speaker 1: the intrigue following these characters around, establishing who they are
Speaker 1: and what's happening in this world.
Speaker 3: So the first thing we see is the full moon
Speaker 3: in a black sky with reflected moonlight almost a shade
Speaker 3: of pink.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is one of many great mate paintings in
Speaker 1: the film by Jan Dan Janfirth Here. Anytime you see
Speaker 1: characters looking up at the sky and there's something weird
Speaker 1: going on with the sky, it's a great mat painting.
Speaker 3: And by the way, I'm going to describe this opening
Speaker 3: montage in a good bit of detail to kind of
Speaker 3: help create the feeling. But then, so after we see
Speaker 3: the moon, we see inside a room and the moonlight
Speaker 3: falls through a circular window that's criss crossed with bars.
Speaker 3: Underneath the window, an old an old man lies alone
Speaker 3: in a small bed. Across from him, there's a heavy
Speaker 3: black wooden door on the far wall, a crucifix, a candlestick,
Speaker 3: and a framed image of a saint, so we think
Speaker 3: this guy's probably a priest. Then we close on his face.
Speaker 3: He seems to be struggling, drawing his last breath, and
Speaker 3: then his hand falls away. From something that he has
Speaker 3: been clutching. It is a tiny silver box. Then we
Speaker 3: get the title John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness. Next, we
Speaker 3: open on daylight on a university campus and there are
Speaker 3: students gathered under shady green trees. They're walking along paved
Speaker 3: pathways between the buildings and we fall in with one
Speaker 3: of our main characters. This is Brian Marsh played by
Speaker 3: Jamison Parker. He's fit, blonde with a mustache, wearing a
Speaker 3: neatly tucked red polo shirt, carrying a leather satchel, and
Speaker 3: he walks to the foreground of the shot and pauses
Speaker 3: while the music kind of pulls you along, and this
Speaker 3: is the camera getting to know him. Across the courtyard,
Speaker 3: he sees another major character, Catherine Danforth played by Lisa Blount,
Speaker 3: talking to another woman before class. Catherine is red haired,
Speaker 3: dressed casually in a denim jacket, holding a stack of
Speaker 3: books and binders in the crook of her arm. She
Speaker 3: looks she's like a good natured nerd. Then back to
Speaker 3: the room of the priest in the morning, a nun
Speaker 3: knocks on the door, comes inside and finds him dead
Speaker 3: with the silver box resting on his midsection. Later, we
Speaker 3: see the nun talking to Donald Pleasants also a priest
Speaker 3: dressed as a priest. Don't know if that needs to
Speaker 3: be said, but yeah, we established he's a priest. She's
Speaker 3: talking to him about the fact that she found this
Speaker 3: other priest unconscious. His name was Father Carlton, and he
Speaker 3: was taken to the hospital, but he never woke up again.
Speaker 3: Donald Pleasant asks why Father Carlton was here in the
Speaker 3: first place. Where are they? Well, they appear to be
Speaker 3: in some kind of headquarters of the Catholic hierarchy, because
Speaker 3: the nun says he had an appointment with his Imminence
Speaker 3: this afternoon. Oh, his Eminence, so important business going on
Speaker 3: within the church. Donald Pleasance sits down and begins investigating
Speaker 3: what happened here by reading doctor Carlton's handwritten journals, and
Speaker 3: the header on this handwritten journal entry is the Brotherhood
Speaker 3: of Sleep. Now it cuts away before you can read
Speaker 3: everything on the page. I actually did stop to see
Speaker 3: what it actually says and take down everything. It's actually
Speaker 3: not as interesting as they didn't intend for you to
Speaker 3: read this whole part. It starts with like I can
Speaker 3: no longer keep silent as to this dreadful secret. We'll
Speaker 3: get more intriguing Brotherhood of Sleep stuff as we go along.
Speaker 3: It does eventually zoom in on one particular part that
Speaker 3: says says the sleeper awakens, I have witnessed his stirrings,
Speaker 3: felt the cold, hellish blast. Now next, we're going to
Speaker 3: meet the character of the physics professor Howard Barrack played
Speaker 3: by Victor Wong. He is walking class with the heavy briefcase,
Speaker 3: dressed in a wool blazer with at least five pins
Speaker 3: in his shirt pocket, so he is a professor, but
Speaker 3: he's also dressed very classically professorially, and he comes off
Speaker 3: as preoccupied with his obscure curiosities and research questions. And
Speaker 3: as he heads to class, something gets his attention in
Speaker 3: the sky, so he puts things down and he crosses
Speaker 3: his fingers over his eyes to block the light, and
Speaker 3: then looks up toward the sun. We see the sun
Speaker 3: shining through the clouds, and then right next to the
Speaker 3: sun in the middle of the day is a crescent moon.
Speaker 3: And then the camera shows us he doesn't see this,
Speaker 3: but the camera shows us nearby on the ground, red
Speaker 3: ants swarming ferociously over a mound in the grass, and
Speaker 3: this will establish a theme that happens a lot in
Speaker 3: the movie where characters stop and they kind of look
Speaker 3: up in the sky or look toward the sun as
Speaker 3: if they feel like something is wrong. And then we
Speaker 3: see the sun and it's just sort of hidden by
Speaker 3: the clouds sometimes or partially hidden. It's like shining through
Speaker 3: some thin clouds and music lets It's like the music
Speaker 3: lets us know that there is something wrong with the sky,
Speaker 3: something wrong with the sun, but nobody is ever able
Speaker 3: to say what it is. People don't really talk about it.
Speaker 3: It's just this feeling of unease about the atmosphere. And
Speaker 3: I love this.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Quick note on the bugs. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of bugs in this picture. And there was just one
Speaker 1: really brief moment in the audio commentary where Peter Jason
Speaker 1: asked Carpenter says, like a lot of bugs here, where
Speaker 1: did they come from? And Carpenter's like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: we had a bug wrangler, And Jason says that sounds expensive,
Speaker 1: and Carpenter says, it's not that bad. I don't know
Speaker 1: why I love that exchange so.
Speaker 3: Much compared to getting Alice Cooper come.
Speaker 1: On Alice Cooper, by the way, that it was kind
Speaker 1: of funny. He was cast in the film because his
Speaker 1: agent was one of the producers of the picture. So
Speaker 1: like that was kind of like the meet up, like
Speaker 1: how they kind of like I think they also met
Speaker 1: at WrestleMania or something Wrestleman. Heir three, I want to say,
Speaker 1: And so he was like, I'd love to be in
Speaker 1: a horror movie a big horror movie fan, and they're like,
Speaker 1: you know, it came together. And then also, as we'll discuss,
Speaker 1: Alice Cooper had a particular impalement gag that he would
Speaker 1: do on stage and they were like, Oh, that's great,
Speaker 1: let's do a version of that in this picture.
Speaker 3: And they do, Oh, is this where he stabs the
Speaker 3: stabs the nerdy guy with a bicycle?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, I think the stage version is a microphone
Speaker 1: stand and they adapted it for to be a bicycle
Speaker 1: in this Yeah. It's pretty great. Though, more on that
Speaker 1: when it occurs.
Speaker 3: I can't promise more on that because I don't know
Speaker 3: what else to say. He just gets stabbed with the bicycle.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, I'll go ahead and say. What happens is
Speaker 1: Alice Cooper's character, who's zombified, stabs a guy through with
Speaker 1: the bicycle's got half a bicycle with like a you know,
Speaker 1: like a part of the frame sticking out that you
Speaker 1: can pail somebody with. And then that leaves the guy
Speaker 1: to like slump over, impaled over like the bicycle wheel
Speaker 1: and so forth. However, nobody then you kind of expect
Speaker 1: a zombie to then come behind the victim, pick up
Speaker 1: his legs wheelbarrel style, and then turn him into a
Speaker 1: wheelbarrow and wheelbarrow him off. That does not happen. It's
Speaker 1: still a great scene though, all.
Speaker 3: Right, So the montage continues. Oh, we get one I
Speaker 3: thought funny shot of Donald Pleasant standing in the courtyard
Speaker 3: of this church office building dramatically opening the silver box
Speaker 3: and pulling out a comically oversized key. And then we
Speaker 3: get one of these classroom scenes with dialogue. So some
Speaker 3: of these scenes are silent, some talking in them. In
Speaker 3: this one, we hear Professor Barak delivering a lecture on
Speaker 3: quantum physics to a classroom of graduate students, including Brian
Speaker 3: and Catherine, the characters we saw earlier, and a bunch
Speaker 3: of the other characters that we'll see get possessed by
Speaker 3: the devil or killed later. And I'm just going to
Speaker 3: read the quote what Professor Barack says. He says, let's
Speaker 3: talk about our beliefs and what we can learn about them.
Speaker 3: We believe nature is solid and time a constant. Matter
Speaker 3: has substance and time a direction. There is truth in
Speaker 3: flesh and the solid ground. The wind may be invisible,
Speaker 3: but it's real. Smoke, fire, water, light. They're different, not
Speaker 3: as to stone or steal, but they're tangible. And we
Speaker 3: assume time has an because it is as a clock.
Speaker 3: One second is one second for everyone. Cause precedes effect,
Speaker 3: fruit rots, water flows downstream. We're born, we age, we die.
Speaker 3: The reverse never happens. None of this is true. Say
Speaker 3: goodbye to classical reality because our logic collapses at the
Speaker 3: sub atomic level into ghosts and shadows.
Speaker 1: That's pretty great, especially the way it's punctuated there, and
Speaker 1: it ties into one of the basic themes of the
Speaker 1: film that everything you thought you knew about science, religion,
Speaker 1: and the universe is wrong. So you know, some strong
Speaker 1: cosmic horror elements there, like the safety net that you
Speaker 1: thought was there is not there at all, and the
Speaker 1: yawning cosmos is more terrifying than previously assumed.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's cosmic in that sense. In that the threatening,
Speaker 3: the threatening malevolence in this movie is not just like
Speaker 3: a single embodied entity that's coming in to attack us,
Speaker 3: but it is threaded through the very physics and fabric
Speaker 3: of the universe. There's something in the laws of physics,
Speaker 3: in all of the atoms and particles and bits of
Speaker 3: energy in the universe that contains bits of this malevolence
Speaker 3: and evil. It's just waiting for us in the universe itself. Now,
Speaker 3: after this, we get our first establishing shot of the
Speaker 3: church where most of the movie will take place. This
Speaker 3: is a church called Saint Goddard's in the film. It's
Speaker 3: a stately old brick chapel topped with an ornamental cross,
Speaker 3: with columns on the front and a fire escape leading
Speaker 3: down the side. It's situated on a kind of run
Speaker 3: down looking city block. Actually, when you get some other angles,
Speaker 3: you see more activity going on sort of across the
Speaker 3: street or further down the street. But I think just
Speaker 3: by showing a tighter shot they create the feeling that
Speaker 3: maybe not much is going on here. We see a
Speaker 3: building with some shuttered windows, there's trash piled up on
Speaker 3: the sidewalk, So I think the idea is that this
Speaker 3: is in. It's on a disused city block. Maybe nobody
Speaker 3: goes to this church anymore. And the church is surrounded
Speaker 3: by a white iron fence with an extremely creepy bronze
Speaker 3: statue of a cloaked figure out front. Is that supposed
Speaker 3: to be the Virgin Mary? I can't quite tell.
Speaker 1: This is a real church in LA, by the way.
Speaker 1: At the time it was the abandoned former Japanese Union
Speaker 1: Church of Los Angeles, and today it's the Union Center
Speaker 1: for the Arts. You can visit it in LA's Little
Speaker 1: Tokyo district. And I was reading a little bit about it,
Speaker 1: like it also has an important role in Japanese American history.
Speaker 1: I believe this is a place during Japanese Internment that
Speaker 1: a lot of people's affected people's possessions were stored. And
Speaker 1: of course, you know, the people affected by this often
Speaker 1: lost a great deal of what they previously owned, you know,
Speaker 1: real estate or otherwise. But yeah, it's currently the Union
Speaker 1: Center for the Arts, and you can visit it, get
Speaker 1: your picture taken in front of it. Just you know,
Speaker 1: be respectful, obviously, spit any green stuff out of your
Speaker 1: mouth at it, and so forth.
Speaker 3: So we zoom in here in front of the church
Speaker 3: and see Donald Pleasant standing out front on the sidewalk,
Speaker 3: and he looks filled with worry and doubt. He goes inside,
Speaker 3: walks down a long hall and finds that the silver
Speaker 3: key from the box he opened it unlocks a heavy
Speaker 3: iron door marked with a sign of the Cross. He
Speaker 3: pushes open the door and goes inside. Later we see
Speaker 3: him typing out a letter to Professor Barak, saying he
Speaker 3: has discovered a most unusual phenomenon that should be of
Speaker 3: interest to him, and it's urgent that they meet it once.
Speaker 3: And then we pop in on another one of Barak's lectures.
Speaker 3: This time he's saying from Job's friends, insisting that the
Speaker 3: good are rewarded and the wicked punished, to the scientists
Speaker 3: of the nineteen thirties, proving to their horror the theorem
Speaker 3: that not everything can be proved. We've sought to impose
Speaker 3: order on the universe, but we've discovered something very surprising.
Speaker 3: While order does exist in the universe, it is not
Speaker 3: at all what we had in mind. And then after
Speaker 3: class we see a conversation between Brian and another student.
Speaker 3: This is Walter played by Dennis Dunn. They see a
Speaker 3: nun delivering Donald Pleasance's letter to their professor, and they're like, oh, none,
Speaker 3: that's interesting, and then they remember, well, apparently Professor Barack
Speaker 3: participated in a series of televised debates on the BBC.
Speaker 3: I think with Donald Pleasance. I wonder what they were debating.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, evolution, free will. I'm guessing
Speaker 1: it's something a little headier like free will. That's gonna
Speaker 1: be my inclination here.
Speaker 3: But apparently were they were good natured debates because they
Speaker 3: have something of a friendship now, and you know that
Speaker 3: Donald Pleasance can call upon Barack for help. So they
Speaker 3: meet up in this ornately decorated room and Donald Pleasance
Speaker 3: gives the diary to him to read, imploring him for help.
Speaker 3: Now we get one of these scenes where just like
Speaker 3: the ominous tension is mounting because we see Brian alone
Speaker 3: in his apartment, playing solitaire and watching a TV news
Speaker 3: report about a recently detected super nova five hundred million
Speaker 3: light years away, the light from which is just now
Speaker 3: reaching us. And then also on Brian can't see this,
Speaker 3: but we see that red ants are massing inside the
Speaker 3: back panel of his television seto. This is funny because
Speaker 3: We've done episodes in the past about ants getting inside
Speaker 3: of electronics devices. Did we talk about Prince of Darkness
Speaker 3: in that.
Speaker 1: I don't think we did. I'd kind of forgotten about
Speaker 1: this element of the picture. Ants going into the television set. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it is. It is not just something you've seen
Speaker 1: in horror movies. I forget the details. I think the
Speaker 1: crazy ant was one of the main ones that has
Speaker 1: been recognized as a TV crawler. But in general, you
Speaker 1: want you want your insects to stay out of your
Speaker 1: television sets.
Speaker 3: Raspberry crazy Ants was that.
Speaker 1: It sounds delicious.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, but what's this all working up to? Our
Speaker 3: cleric and our wizard. Donald Pleasance and Victor Wong have
Speaker 3: to visit the dungeon together. So they arrived by limousine
Speaker 3: and they head into Saint Godard's I like this idea
Speaker 3: that like professors and priests travel by limousine, do they?
Speaker 3: But they arrive at the church and they go in.
Speaker 3: Of course, we learned that the priests who died earlier,
Speaker 3: he was the guardian of this church. This is where
Speaker 3: he lived, and he was tasked with keeping watch over
Speaker 3: something in the basement below. Pleasance unlocks the heavy iron
Speaker 3: door and leads the professor down into the underground chambers,
Speaker 3: which we learn were built in the fifteen hundreds by
Speaker 3: the Spanish. And as they move along we get some
Speaker 3: exposition on the Brotherhood of Sleep. They have existed for
Speaker 3: going back a couple thousand years in secret, not even
Speaker 3: known to the Vatican, though through hidden mechanisms they wielded
Speaker 3: an orm power within the church. And finally the two
Speaker 3: men arrive at their destination, a subterranean stone cathedral lit
Speaker 3: by hundreds of candles, and at the far end the
Speaker 3: goo oh boy, this is this is what it's all about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this is a great set piece, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's it is just about like all the feelings
Speaker 1: that it invokes. Because you have like tons of crucifixes
Speaker 1: on the wall, so it's like holiness established religion, Catholicism.
Speaker 1: You have all the candles as well as part of
Speaker 1: this like sacred scene that you're greeted with. But then
Speaker 1: in the center this unholy cylinder, a swirling with green
Speaker 1: liquid slime or energy that's dripping in corrosion. And next
Speaker 1: to it you have computer equipment with that wonderful like
Speaker 1: black and green screen that you know, sinks nicely with
Speaker 1: the green glow of the cylinder, and so you have
Speaker 1: all the key elements of the picture kind of merged together,
Speaker 1: you know, science, religion, unholy terror from beyond realms that
Speaker 1: can be touched by our sanity, and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the green screen matching the green of the ouze
Speaker 3: almost implies that the essence of the devil is already
Speaker 3: in what makes the computer work.
Speaker 1: You know, it's probably too late for this year, but
Speaker 1: if you need a head start on next year's Halloween costume,
Speaker 1: somebody please dresses the cylinder of green liquid from Prince
Speaker 1: of Darkness. You can just be straight up the cylinder
Speaker 1: from Prince of Darkness, or you could be the sexy
Speaker 1: cylinder from Prince of Darkness. You could be this is
Speaker 1: a great toddler outfit as well, So please somebody make
Speaker 1: this happen and send us photographs.
Speaker 3: All my favorite Halloween costume ideas are things that nobody
Speaker 3: would get.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this one would pre one of those where I
Speaker 1: would get really excited about it and then nobody would
Speaker 1: guess it. Like maybe it would be like, are you
Speaker 1: the ooze from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? And I'd be
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, fine, that's what.
Speaker 3: I There's a line about this later in the movie
Speaker 3: that Victor Wong says that made me laugh, where he's
Speaker 3: talking about the devil and he's like, there could be
Speaker 3: a limit as to what he can do as a
Speaker 3: volume of liquid.
Speaker 1: That's true. He's got to he's got to get out
Speaker 1: of there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Another bit of imagery here that I would like to
Speaker 3: point to rob is on the walls in this room
Speaker 3: with all the candles. There's also this swarm of crucifixes,
Speaker 3: multiplicity of apotropaic crucifixes, which kind of reminds me of
Speaker 3: in the Mouth of Madness.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, in the padded cell that the John Trent
Speaker 1: occupies in that picture. Yeah, he's he's put he's drawn
Speaker 1: crucifixes over everything and also all over his his clothing
Speaker 1: and over himself. I'm speaking of Halloween costumes. I did
Speaker 1: dresses him for Halloween one year, and virtually nobody got it.
Speaker 1: I got it, You got it, Yes, a few people
Speaker 1: got it. But when I just walk around on the street,
Speaker 1: people are like, huh, I guess he likes Jesus and
Speaker 1: was No.
Speaker 3: We ran into you guys at the Halloween for and
Speaker 3: I got I think that was Was that the year
Speaker 3: that Rachel and I were dressed up as Jack and
Speaker 3: Wendy Torrence?
Speaker 1: Yes, I believe. So yeah, yeah, some people got the
Speaker 1: people who got it loved it.
Speaker 3: Only some people got that one as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it is a great part of the scene.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like this idea that this is how
Speaker 1: much just insistent faith has We've had to muster to
Speaker 1: keep this thing in check for so long, and it
Speaker 1: no longer is working. The fail safes are failing, and
Speaker 1: stuff is beginning to corrode and leak out.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So right next to this volume of liquid there
Speaker 3: is a huge ancient book on a lectern, So, like,
Speaker 3: what is this book? Is it the Diary of the
Speaker 3: Keepers of the Ooze? I think the answer is yes, Yes,
Speaker 3: that is what it is. It's it's this extremely old
Speaker 3: tome written in many different languages. They say it's full
Speaker 3: of over writing and emendation, attempts to erase certain parts.
Speaker 3: And so the professor is asking what is it, and
Speaker 3: Donald Pleasant says, it's a secret that can no longer
Speaker 3: be kept. Do you feel it? It was never here
Speaker 3: before it started a month ago, a change in the
Speaker 3: Earth and the sky his power. Okay, so that's the religion.
Speaker 3: But we got to check back in with the science again.
Speaker 3: So we go back and there's a funny scene between
Speaker 3: Lisa Blount and Dennis Dunn where they are walking across
Speaker 3: campus and they're talking. They're wrestling with the weird implications
Speaker 3: of the quantum mechanics they're studying. Specifically, they're talking about
Speaker 3: Shredinger's cat. Now, note that this is one of the
Speaker 3: mini pop invocations of quantum physics that just takes the
Speaker 3: Copenhagen interpretation as a given. It is not the only interpretation,
Speaker 3: so you don't have to go with that. But they're
Speaker 3: talking about, like, wait, why am I even studying this?
Speaker 3: And one of them makes the joke says, particle beam
Speaker 3: weapons research grants being a millionaire by the time I'm forty. Ah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's what it is. And again I was like, is
Speaker 3: that a normal outlook for physics grad students?
Speaker 1: I don't know. That's how Walter sees it.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's right. I mean he's at least a maybe
Speaker 3: he's a he's joking, he's a jokester. But so they
Speaker 3: find that a group of they go to class to
Speaker 3: find like a posted note that indicates a number of
Speaker 3: physics grad students have been recruited by Professor Barack for
Speaker 3: a special project that's going to take their take up
Speaker 3: their weekend, So all their weekend plans are canceled now.
Speaker 3: And this leads to scenes where Catherine and Brian are
Speaker 3: getting to know one another better as well. So remember
Speaker 3: Brian is sort of the tom Atkins guy, he's the
Speaker 3: blonde mustache, and they're talking about the counterintuitiveness of quantum
Speaker 3: mechanics and Catherine says, I want the clockwork back, and
Speaker 3: then Brian goes on to make a sexist comment about
Speaker 3: how women as beautiful as her don't usually work in
Speaker 3: physics departments, and she reacts bluntly. She's like, that is
Speaker 3: a stupid and sexist thing to say, and then he
Speaker 3: goes for the classic Oh, I was just joking, don't
Speaker 3: get offended, and then she's the one who apologizes to him.
Speaker 3: I can't believe he got away with that one. Also,
Speaker 3: if it's the joke, what's the funny part. It didn't
Speaker 3: seem like a joke anyway.
Speaker 1: He's not the funny one. Walter's the funny one, though
Speaker 1: he makes some bad jokes too, but at least there's
Speaker 1: charm in the delivery.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but then he sort of at least euphemistically apologizes
Speaker 3: by saying something like, you know, this wasn't the way
Speaker 3: I'm in for our conversation to go, and all eventually
Speaker 3: gets smoothed over because it does seem that they like
Speaker 3: one another and they end up agreeing to go on
Speaker 3: a date later. But I think there is something kind
Speaker 3: of revealed about Catherine's character here in that, like, they
Speaker 3: have this little tense moment, and it seems to me
Speaker 3: she's in the right, like what he said was dumb,
Speaker 3: and then she's the one who ends up apologizing. So
Speaker 3: it seems like it's something about her character here that,
Speaker 3: at least at the beginning of the story, she's capitulating
Speaker 3: when she doesn't need to.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it is interesting to think about this scene
Speaker 1: in terms of the ultimate trajectory for both of these characters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we do get a scene of like a briefing
Speaker 3: from Professor Barack in front of the grad students where
Speaker 3: we learn that okay, you've all been drafted to become
Speaker 3: live in researchers for a special project at this abandoned church.
Speaker 3: They're all going to go to Saint Goddard's and live
Speaker 3: there at least for the weekend to do research. They
Speaker 3: will receive class credit, and he can't tell them what
Speaker 3: they're going to be researching. So we go on to
Speaker 3: see Professor Barack arriving at the church to begin the project.
Speaker 3: And when he gets there, he he looks down the
Speaker 3: sidewalk and he sees a woman standing in the distance
Speaker 3: as if in a trance, looking up at the sun,
Speaker 3: and she has ants crawling on her face. And this
Speaker 3: will become the beginning of a theme where we see
Speaker 3: a lot of visions like this. I'll explain more as
Speaker 3: we go along. But we also get a conversation between
Speaker 3: Barack and the priest played by Donald Pleasants where they're
Speaker 3: talking about like what all of this means, and Donald
Speaker 3: Pleasant says that they must translate the book of the
Speaker 3: Brotherhood of Sleep and Barack must quote prove it scientifically,
Speaker 3: prove what they don't say yet. But as the weekend approaches,
Speaker 3: we get a few storylines further developing. So Brian and
Speaker 3: Catherine's romance deepens, they go on a date, they get
Speaker 3: to know each other better, and they appear to be
Speaker 3: falling in love. But at the same time as that
Speaker 3: sort of positive storyline is developing, there's a negative one too.
Speaker 3: We get more ominous signs from the atmosphere, something about
Speaker 3: the sunshine feels wrong and hostile. And then around Saint
Speaker 3: Goddard's people begin to gather. There is like a conclave
Speaker 3: of silent entrance to drifters, led by a disheveled Alice Cooper,
Speaker 3: and they wander slowly around the streets and the alleys
Speaker 3: around the church, sometimes staring up at the sun, sometimes
Speaker 3: staring down at the ground, maybe looking at insects, and
Speaker 3: one of them at one point approaches Donald Plum and
Speaker 3: says he's entering the building, and she says, it's so
Speaker 3: wonderful what you're doing, father, opening the church again. And
Speaker 3: then Donald Pleasance looks down and sees that she is
Speaker 3: holding like a coffee cup full of maggots.
Speaker 1: The bug wrangler really just did have. They had a
Speaker 1: lot to do on this picture. Maggots, beatles, earthworms, you
Speaker 1: name it, ants.
Speaker 3: Yes, So the students and professors arrive and begin their
Speaker 3: weekend of work. They unload their equipment and introduce themselves.
Speaker 3: So it's not only people from the physics department, but
Speaker 3: also biochemists to microbiologists, theologians, and classicists. To translate the book,
Speaker 3: there are a lot of characters. As we said earlier,
Speaker 3: we can't really spend time talking about all of them,
Speaker 3: but we'll mention a few individuals as we go along
Speaker 3: for certain scenes. One thing that often bugs me in
Speaker 3: storytelling does happen here. Doesn't bug me as much here
Speaker 3: as it often does, but it's that situation where, like,
Speaker 3: many specialists are assembled for a project or mission, but
Speaker 3: they are not told what it's about or what they're
Speaker 3: going to be doing until after they get there. So like,
Speaker 3: in this situation, it's like, why did they agree to
Speaker 3: do it in the first place. It often feels implausible.
Speaker 3: So we get those kind of scenes where the characters
Speaker 3: arrive here and they're like, what are we going to
Speaker 3: be studying? What are we doing? And they're like, I
Speaker 3: don't know, you know, I'll tell you when I know.
Speaker 3: I could be wrong, But I seem to recall a
Speaker 3: particularly egregious example of this in the movie Prometheus, because
Speaker 3: they do this, but they also they don't get the
Speaker 3: briefing until they're like literally light years away from Earth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess I'd cut Promethea some slack personally, because
Speaker 1: the experts in that film were recruited to board a
Speaker 1: state of the art exploration space vessel funded by the
Speaker 1: world's pre eminent innovator and visionary. In Prince of Darkness,
Speaker 1: a local physics professor has just invited students to sleep
Speaker 1: in the basement of a condemned church. But I mean,
Speaker 1: all in all, you know, I guess you have to
Speaker 1: sort of think of it again from a story telling
Speaker 1: choice standpoint, and you know, I venture to guess. I
Speaker 1: don't know for certain on this, but I've ad ventured
Speaker 1: to guess that this is perhaps a storytelling trope with
Speaker 1: roots and military movies where the characters are gonna have
Speaker 1: more limited choice about showing up for that secret mission
Speaker 1: with that last minute debriefing. Carpenter has always been pretty
Speaker 1: open about his use of like classic Western structure his
Speaker 1: inspiration for his film, so I would not be surprised
Speaker 1: if he and other filmmakers are drawing on stuff like that.
Speaker 3: That's a good insight. That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3: This works in a military situation because the characters are
Speaker 3: just supposed to follow orders. They don't have to know
Speaker 3: what they're gonna do. You know, they're told when they're told.
Speaker 3: It makes less sense for like movies about scientists or
Speaker 3: something where normally you would like you would know what
Speaker 3: you're gonna do before you start doing it. But yeah,
Speaker 3: that makes a lot of sense to me. So it's
Speaker 3: just like the same kind of storytelling structure is pourted
Speaker 3: onto different types of characters and situations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then all that aside from the standpoint of
Speaker 1: giving the audience more about you know, providing some exposition,
Speaker 1: but also some little character moments. A debriefing scene like
Speaker 1: that can be very useful. You know. Obviously it can
Speaker 1: work well with characters being like, well, now, why are
Speaker 1: we here because I'm a doctor and you're a lawyer.
Speaker 1: What do we possibly have in common?
Speaker 3: One?
Speaker 1: Why are we in this church basement? That sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, totally. I mean it's absolutely clear, like why
Speaker 3: it happens from a storytelling and efficiency point of view,
Speaker 3: because it's like you can explain it to the audience
Speaker 3: at the same time that the characters find out. You
Speaker 3: can see them react all at once. You can string
Speaker 3: the mystery or the tension along before that moment of
Speaker 3: the reveal. What everybody's doing. Yeah, I mean it's clear
Speaker 3: why it works from from the storyteller's point of view.
Speaker 3: It's just one of those where like that clashes with
Speaker 3: the plausibility.
Speaker 1: All right, so we got the team is assembled, right,
Speaker 1: and now they're being told what's up.
Speaker 3: Right, So we're going to start making some discoveries. First
Speaker 3: of all, there's the character Lisa I mentioned earlier. This
Speaker 3: is the theology ste udent who studies ancient languages. She
Speaker 3: just like looks at the Brotherhood of Sleep book. She's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna start typing out the translation. So she's typing
Speaker 3: on the computer, and we keep cutting back to her
Speaker 3: at different times, like seeing the sentences as she types them.
Speaker 3: They're things like, I Jesus have sent mine angel to
Speaker 3: testify unto you this thing which shall be unleashed, and
Speaker 3: the Prince of Darkness was himself sealed that old life
Speaker 3: called the Devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.
Speaker 3: So kind of biblical type stuff, except it's interesting. This
Speaker 3: text seems to have a quality that none of the
Speaker 3: canonical texts of the Bible have, which is it claims
Speaker 3: to be written by Jesus. You know in the Bible,
Speaker 3: we don't have that. We only hear about Jesus from others.
Speaker 3: That's kind of interesting, So this would be all read text. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I guess so. So the team all they gather in
Speaker 3: the basement and they're finally shown the cylinder of green goo.
Speaker 3: So it's like swirling around really good in the cylinder.
Speaker 3: They're watching it churn and Donald Pleasant says, I can
Speaker 3: feel it getting stronger. And some of the scientists are
Speaker 3: not amused. They're like, wait a minute, we're here for what,
Speaker 3: and they think it's a waste of their time. Others
Speaker 3: are more interested. But as the research begins, we get
Speaker 3: different scenes where like findings emerge. So I'm going to
Speaker 3: list off some of the things they discover. First of all,
Speaker 3: they discovered the ancient book describes a long series of
Speaker 3: differential equations mathematical instruments that had not been invented at
Speaker 3: the time the book was written, So huh, how is
Speaker 3: that possible. They also find that the lid on the
Speaker 3: cylinder is sealed shut with a strange locking mechanism so
Speaker 3: that it can only be opened from the inside, and
Speaker 3: the corrosion on the lid is carbon dated to seven
Speaker 3: million years ago. By the way, just pedantic note. Carbon
Speaker 3: dating is not useful for things that old. You would
Speaker 3: need to use a different radiometric method for that. Is
Speaker 3: inside the cylinder, what is it? What is the green goo? Well,
Speaker 3: they do some tests and Brian reports to Barak. He says, quote,
Speaker 3: a life form is growing out of prebiotic fluids. It's
Speaker 3: not winding down into disorder. It's self organizing. It's becoming something.
Speaker 3: What that This is one of those where I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I don't know how what did they detect? What tests
Speaker 3: did they do to determine that?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, yeah, it's it's it's it's technobabble. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the important thing is we know there's something growing inside
Speaker 1: this cylinder that can only be open from the inside.
Speaker 3: But if they can't they can't get inside the cylinder.
Speaker 3: How did they test it? Hm, well, okay, I'm not complaining.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying, like.
Speaker 1: There are some containment issues going on as well. See.
Speaker 3: I think this is a great example of what I
Speaker 3: was saying earlier that I think the science stuff in
Speaker 3: this movie it works. I think it works great if
Speaker 3: you don't pay too close attention, If you just take
Speaker 3: it esthetically and you don't try to like analyze it substantively.
Speaker 3: If you just like let it happen as an aesthetic experience,
Speaker 3: it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also, trust scientists, Joe, trust them, they're professionals.
Speaker 3: Somewhere in here we get the scene where one dude
Speaker 3: tries to leave the church at night. Oh, this is
Speaker 3: the guy who's going to get stabbed with a bicycle
Speaker 3: by Alice Cooper. And he finds a crucified pigeon in
Speaker 3: the alley when he's going out, So that's not a
Speaker 3: good sign. That's never good. And then he like runs
Speaker 3: into Alice Cooper in the alley and and all of
Speaker 3: his and all of his band you know, they're they're
Speaker 3: hanging out down there, and he gets he gets impaled
Speaker 3: with the bicycle. Uh, and nobody seems to notice this.
Speaker 3: This just like happens off to the side while nobody's looking.
Speaker 3: And then finally we get a scene where Lisa reveals
Speaker 3: the translation of the book and sort of summarizes its
Speaker 3: main teachings.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we got we got a real doozy come
Speaker 1: in here.
Speaker 3: Are you ready? Obviously we've had lots of spoilers so far,
Speaker 3: but like if you know, if you don't want to
Speaker 3: have everything spoiled, you could stop now and watch the
Speaker 3: movie yourself. But here we go. This is like the
Speaker 3: big reveal, she says, And this is a quote with
Speaker 3: some abridgments. The container was buried somewhere in the Middle
Speaker 3: East eons ago by the father of Satan, a god
Speaker 3: who once walked the earth before man, but was somehow
Speaker 3: banished to the dark side. Apparently the father buried his
Speaker 3: son inside the container. Now later on here Christ comes
Speaker 3: to warn us he was of extraterrestrial ancestry, but a
Speaker 3: human like race. Finally, they determine Christ as crazy, but
Speaker 3: he's gaining power, converting a lot of people to his beliefs,
Speaker 3: so they kill him. But his disciples keep the secret
Speaker 3: and hide it from civilization until man could develop a
Speaker 3: science sophisticated enough to prove what Christ was saying. And
Speaker 3: then Donald Pleasance goes on to surmise from that that
Speaker 3: the Church kept this a secret for the last two millennia,
Speaker 3: thinking it better to characterize evil as an abstract spiritual
Speaker 3: force rather than as a volume of liquid buried in
Speaker 3: a jar. But I, oh, my God, I love this reveal.
Speaker 3: So the idea is that all of Christian history is
Speaker 3: sort of a facade to cover up the reality, which
Speaker 3: is that Jesus was an alien who came to warn
Speaker 3: us that the father of the Devil buried his son
Speaker 3: the Devil, which is a jar of liquid in the
Speaker 3: desert somewhere and it's been hiding there and we have
Speaker 3: to watch out for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's essentially Christianity, if not organized, religion as
Speaker 1: a whole is just a placeholder. It's a band aid
Speaker 1: until science can reach the point where we can actually
Speaker 1: tackle the problem. And you know, now that I say
Speaker 1: it out loud, there are a lot of interesting ways
Speaker 1: to take that apart and look at it. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I like the way it hits in this picture though.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, oh another funny like report on findings scene.
Speaker 3: This is one of those like how did they figure
Speaker 3: that out? Moments Brian discovers that the green goo is
Speaker 3: one conscious and two capable of telekinesis a little fuzzy
Speaker 3: on how they detected that with the machines, but they
Speaker 3: put it together. So at some point we start getting
Speaker 3: the leaky cylinder and this is where everything really goes haywire.
Speaker 3: The volume of green goo starts leaking out of the container,
Speaker 3: and it drips upwards so against gravity and forms a
Speaker 3: pool on the ceiling of the room. And then Susan Cabot,
Speaker 3: one of the researchers, notices this. She's like down in
Speaker 3: the room with it. She sees the pool on the
Speaker 3: ceiling and then it sprays into her mouth, turning her
Speaker 3: into a servant of Satan. And this starts a chain
Speaker 3: reaction where from here Susan goes on to start killing
Speaker 3: and converting other people in the church. Sometimes she'll snap
Speaker 3: their necks. Sometimes she will infect them and turn them
Speaker 3: into new thralls of the Satan fluid, often by like
Speaker 3: vomiting a jet of fluid out of her mouth into
Speaker 3: somebody else's mouth and face orifices.
Speaker 1: And even if she does kill you, you'll still come back
Speaker 1: and be a servant. Later we see that with next
Speaker 1: Snap Dude.
Speaker 3: Yes. And then another type of threat begins, which is
Speaker 3: the same thing we saw earlier that people who try
Speaker 3: to leave the church get attacked by the Alice Cooper crew.
Speaker 3: So a lot of the middle of the movie is
Speaker 3: like scary scenes like this, people getting attacked by the
Speaker 3: Satan thralls or by the Alice Cooper crew outside in
Speaker 3: any particular scary scenes you want to talk about rob.
Speaker 1: Ooh, any particular scenes. Oh, I mean there's a lot
Speaker 1: going on here with characters just sort of like you
Speaker 1: wandering off maybe you know, going outside, even which is
Speaker 1: extra dangerous, and or taking little naps in which we
Speaker 1: get the you know, the reveal about the dreams, which
Speaker 1: we'll get to here. But I'm trying to remember if
Speaker 1: there was I pretty much any scene in which a
Speaker 1: character spits a stream of green liquid out of their
Speaker 1: mouth into another character a character's mouth, I'm generally on
Speaker 1: board for. Also, any of the sequences with the cylinder
Speaker 1: are all great, so you know everything's going according to plan.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, one scene does come to mind. This is
Speaker 1: not really a scary scene, but there's a scene where
Speaker 1: Peter Jason's character is moving through like the snack room,
Speaker 1: the break room, the kitchen or whatever. And I just
Speaker 1: both times I watched it, I was very captivated by
Speaker 1: all the things he was grabbing, because I think he
Speaker 1: had a coffee cup, who's smoking a cigarette, also grabbed
Speaker 1: two apples and an entire package of oreos, and I
Speaker 1: was like, this man is going to get down for
Speaker 1: what is his discipline. I guess he's the microbiologist, a
Speaker 1: chemist chemist. I think, yeah, this guy's about to do
Speaker 1: some serious.
Speaker 3: Chemistry, chemistry with all the package of doughnut, several apples
Speaker 3: that he's doing tricks with. He's like popping them up
Speaker 3: in the air and kind of juggling apples while he's
Speaker 3: smoking and doing kazoo songs with his mouth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I had noted that. Both times I watch it,
Speaker 1: I remember that over any actual scares that were happening
Speaker 1: during this portion of the picture.
Speaker 3: Oh, there's another great technobabble scene in here where Barak
Speaker 3: and the priest are talking and the thing, and Barack
Speaker 3: starts to hypothesize that, Okay, maybe if there is a
Speaker 3: universal mind, like a god, controlling every single thing in
Speaker 3: the universe, every the movement of every single subatomic particle.
Speaker 3: He says, well, every particle has an anti particle. It's
Speaker 3: mirror image, it's negative side. Maybe this universal mind resides
Speaker 3: in the mirror image instead of in our universe as
Speaker 3: we wanted to believe. Maybe he's anti god, bringing darkness
Speaker 3: instead of light. Once again, I don't know how well
Speaker 3: that works if you engage too closely with the idea
Speaker 3: of an anti particle, but as pure aesthetics, it's great.
Speaker 1: I love this and so that's ultimately the threat here,
Speaker 1: the threat of the coming of the anti God.
Speaker 3: Yes, so you mentioned the idea of the dream, and
Speaker 3: this is one of my favorite things in the whole movie.
Speaker 3: So what the characters start to discover is that every
Speaker 3: time someone goes to sleep in this church, they have
Speaker 3: the same dream. Not just the same dream they had
Speaker 3: last time. All of the different people have the same dream.
Speaker 3: They start comparing notes and realizing they're all dreaming the
Speaker 3: same thing. It's an image of the church seen from
Speaker 3: outside from outfront, with a figure in shadow emerging from
Speaker 3: the front doors of the chapel into the daylight, and
Speaker 3: what sounds like a looping recorded message that begins, this
Speaker 3: is not a dream, not a dream. We are using
Speaker 3: your brain's electrical system as a receiver. And ooh, I
Speaker 3: think of everything in the movie, this was the thing
Speaker 3: the first time I saw it that got me the hardest.
Speaker 3: I love this dream.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is pretty great. I'm a sucker for any
Speaker 1: kind of like at this point, you know, vintage creepy
Speaker 1: technological transmission stuff like you know, be at the video
Speaker 1: drone transmission in the original video drone film or be
Speaker 1: at the Ring video. I'm on board for all of that,
Speaker 1: and I put this up there with any of those examples.
Speaker 3: Oh it's so good. So we get different snippets of
Speaker 3: the recorded message because characters are often woken up in
Speaker 3: the middle of the dream and they only remember part
Speaker 3: of the message. But like the beginning is what it says,
Speaker 3: this is not a dream. Not a dream. We're using
Speaker 3: your brain's electrical system. And then it says we are
Speaker 3: unable to transmit through conscious neural interference. You are receiving
Speaker 3: this broadcast as a dream. We are transmitting from the
Speaker 3: year one nine nine nine. And then like suddenly, you know,
Speaker 3: the character will snap awake. And so it turns out
Speaker 3: what we learn is that the Brotherhood of Sleep has
Speaker 3: recorded testimony that anyone in close proximity to the church
Speaker 3: has always had this dream, always has the same dream.
Speaker 3: And Brian suggests a theory, what if someone is trying
Speaker 3: to communicate with them, This could be a message beamed
Speaker 3: into their brains from the future by the emission of tachions,
Speaker 3: which are hypothetical particles we've never detected directly, but they
Speaker 3: are proposed to exist that sort of fit with existing
Speaker 3: models of physics hypothetical particles that always move faster than
Speaker 3: the speed of light and thus possibly backwards in time.
Speaker 3: And so the idea is is this is a warning
Speaker 3: scent from the future to our brains as receiver antennas
Speaker 3: in the past, and it's an invitation to change the
Speaker 3: course of history to avert some kind of catastrophic future event.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I love pretty much all the descriptions of
Speaker 1: this in the film that I think it's later where
Speaker 1: someone talks about how it's like it's like each time
Speaker 1: it's more intense in your mind, as if it's growing
Speaker 1: and pushing other things out of your sleeping mind to
Speaker 1: make room for itself.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I love that. And so while this is
Speaker 3: going on, the characters are like learning about the dream
Speaker 3: and comparing notes about that. We also get Susan running
Speaker 3: around recruiting minions. So she infects Lisa, who's the one
Speaker 3: doing the translation of the book of the Brotherhood of Sleep.
Speaker 3: She vomits satanic juice into her mouth, and then she
Speaker 3: also recruits Calder, the microbiologist, and so we get that
Speaker 3: really creepy scene that I love where Lisa is after
Speaker 3: she's infected. She's sitting at the computer typing, not looking
Speaker 3: at the screen, and like one of the professors tries to,
Speaker 3: you know, pop into the door and be like, hey, Lisa,
Speaker 3: what's going on, But she's just typing over and over.
Speaker 3: I Live, I Live, I Live. And then later you
Speaker 3: see her type on the screen. You will not be
Speaker 3: saved by the Holy Ghost. You will not be saved
Speaker 3: by the God Plutonium. In fact, you will not be saved.
Speaker 1: It is interesting that the the Devil, the son of
Speaker 1: the anti God here as it's communicating with people, its
Speaker 1: main communications increasingly are kind of taunting. They're kind of like,
Speaker 1: you got no chance. It's not like you need to
Speaker 1: fall in line or I can do great things for humanity.
Speaker 1: It's like it's just saying, hey, I'm bringing doom and
Speaker 1: there's nothing you can do about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. One of the guys who went outside earlier and
Speaker 3: got killed, he starts calling everybody to the window and
Speaker 3: he's like standing there in zombie form in the parking
Speaker 3: lot below, and they're like, hey, what's going on and
Speaker 3: he just yells at them like pray for death.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then collapses into Beetles. Great great scene.
Speaker 3: So the remaining researchers are increasingly overtly threatened by the
Speaker 3: servants of Satan, and they start finding themselves like they
Speaker 3: first they discovered they're barricaded inside the church. The Alice
Speaker 3: Cooper band has piled up trash and furniture on the
Speaker 3: doors outside. Calder, who has been possessed by the devil.
Speaker 3: He like stabs himself with a steak of wood in
Speaker 3: the throat in front of everyone in a horrifying scene.
Speaker 3: Susan and Lisa end up bringing the cylinder of goop
Speaker 3: up from the basement and they take it to a
Speaker 3: sleeping Kelly where it pools on the ceiling and then
Speaker 3: it drains down from the ceiling into Kelly's mouth and eyes.
Speaker 3: So oops. I think Kelly might be the chosen one.
Speaker 3: And we later learned about like she had a mark
Speaker 3: on her arm that was growing. She didn't know what
Speaker 3: it was, but it takes the form of I think
Speaker 3: they say they call it the magician staff. It's like
Speaker 3: a symbol that is not good news.
Speaker 1: I think that Carpenter said they got the symbol from
Speaker 1: a blue oyster cult alb I mean, and you know
Speaker 1: it likely has I'm sure it has a history pre
Speaker 1: dating Blue Oyster Cult, but there you have it.
Speaker 3: So in the final act we get less reveals about
Speaker 3: the mythos. You know, it's starting to all kind of
Speaker 3: come together, but instead it turns into more action and
Speaker 3: desperate horror. So the final act involves various demon sieges.
Speaker 3: You mentioned there are elements of the Siege movie to this,
Speaker 3: as there certainly are, Like the remaining humans get sort
Speaker 3: of herded into different rooms of the church or defensive positions,
Speaker 3: like there's one part where the character waltered and it's done.
Speaker 3: He gets stuck in a closet where he can like
Speaker 3: look through a sort of a confessional screen out at
Speaker 3: Kelly as she's being transformed into the host of Satan,
Speaker 3: and he's like freaked out and his friends are trying
Speaker 3: to like dig him out through a wall. We also
Speaker 3: get resurrected versions of the dead scientists. Calder especially is
Speaker 3: awesome in this form. He's the one who can't stop
Speaker 3: laughing and he's very creepy. And eventually Kelly gets turned
Speaker 3: into this absolutely horrifying anti god vessel who is like
Speaker 3: she's awake and she's got these wide wild eyes like
Speaker 3: she's thrilled to be in physical form again and just
Speaker 3: like testing her limits, except she's in Kelly's body. She
Speaker 3: has Kelly's original body, but with mangled, burned, bloody flesh.
Speaker 3: Is disgusting to look at.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've always kind of thought about that. This is
Speaker 1: one of the things I've always noticed about this particular
Speaker 1: character is that she does the effects here are great,
Speaker 1: and she looks disgusting, and I feel like it does
Speaker 1: feel like an intentional choice, like they didn't try to
Speaker 1: make her like horror cool or horror sexy, you know,
Speaker 1: like she's supposed to be just this gross, zombified slab
Speaker 1: of rotting meat. Like the possession is just decaying or
Speaker 1: flash or something. So it's an interesting look, and especially
Speaker 1: with the hair remaining pristine. Likes the blonde hair has
Speaker 1: been untouched by the corruption, but the flesh is all decayed.
Speaker 1: And yeah, the big eyes steering out of.
Speaker 3: It, it's tremendously revolting. Yeah. Now, there are actually some
Speaker 3: more conversations that go on with the remaining human characters.
Speaker 3: There's one thing where they talk about how they believe.
Speaker 3: For some reason, I think there was something about this
Speaker 3: in the Brotherhood of Sleep book that the goal of
Speaker 3: Satan here is to bring back his father from the
Speaker 3: dark side. Somehow, his father, the anti god, was banished
Speaker 3: to the sort of inverse universe, and Satan wants to
Speaker 3: bring his father back. There's an interesting thing where at
Speaker 3: multiple times we notice Donald Pleasance reverts to prayers and
Speaker 3: the Bible, like he's reading from the Bible or saying
Speaker 3: Christian prayers, like he does this at a short funeral
Speaker 3: they hold for Calder and he's also praying and reading
Speaker 3: from some kind of book when he's in danger. And
Speaker 3: I thought this was interesting in that he's doing this
Speaker 3: even though he seems to have been convinced earlier that
Speaker 3: the official doctrine in mythology of the Church is purely
Speaker 3: a fiction to cover up the truth about Christ as
Speaker 3: an alien. But it's like he can't give it up.
Speaker 3: He still needs it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, when during a stressful situation, you know,
Speaker 1: what are you going to do? You're gonna fall back
Speaker 1: on your faith. There previous models of your faith and
Speaker 1: so forth.
Speaker 3: It's like he's fully convinced that the metaphysics of his
Speaker 3: religion are are untrue, but he still needs the act
Speaker 3: of his religion. He still needs to be able to pray,
Speaker 3: so there are Again there's the Siege movie aspects that
Speaker 3: are like fighting off demon attacks on the rooms. There's
Speaker 3: one part that's funny where the scientists are defending a
Speaker 3: room against a zombie attack and Professor barak U's is
Speaker 3: a shaken up soda can as a weapon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's an astrophysics man. You can't mess with him.
Speaker 3: I love that. And they're all like they're dodging streams
Speaker 3: of satan juice vomit while the Satan hosting Kelly oh Man.
Speaker 3: There's a creepy scene where she starts looking into me,
Speaker 3: like she finds a little makeup compact and looks into
Speaker 3: the mirror in it and says, father, it's so creepy.
Speaker 3: And I like that the mirror she's looking into appears
Speaker 3: to be showing static like an old TV.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I love the use of mirrors here. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, it's very Alice in Wonderland.
Speaker 3: Very bores as well.
Speaker 1: The idea that the mirror is a gateway to the
Speaker 1: unseen world, to the realm where this ancient being is imprisoned.
Speaker 1: And it's also kind of interesting to think about this
Speaker 1: in terms of Okay, you're you're the son of the
Speaker 1: anti God waking up during the mid nineteen eighties, and
Speaker 1: you have not been privy to any of human history
Speaker 1: really at this point, is that correct?
Speaker 3: So it was buried before, like eons ago?
Speaker 1: They say, yeah, so you've never seen a mirror, not
Speaker 1: like this, I mean, the best.
Speaker 3: You could ever see a human, I guess.
Speaker 1: Never seen a human. Yeah, never never seen a mirror.
Speaker 1: I guess the best you could hope for would have
Speaker 1: been reflection in water. That sort of thing. So very
Speaker 1: very exciting here for ancient evil entities of venturing into
Speaker 1: our reality. And you don't even know how big mirrors
Speaker 1: get become important.
Speaker 3: That's right. So the first attempt to contact the anti
Speaker 3: God through the mirror fails, but then Kelly goes to
Speaker 3: another room, goes to another room with a bigger mirror,
Speaker 3: and this is the room where Donald Pleasance is like
Speaker 3: hiding behind a piece of furniture. So she goes up
Speaker 3: to the mirror and then it starts saying like father,
Speaker 3: and the mirror fills with light and like, oh we
Speaker 3: are tuned in now, baby, It's something is happening. She
Speaker 3: starts reaching in through the mirror. And we see her
Speaker 3: hand emerging on the other side, and it's an underwater shot,
Speaker 3: like a hand reaching under the surface of a liquid.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, some great effects here with the surface of
Speaker 1: the mirror that I believe they said the use mercury
Speaker 1: here to create this effect. So a bit dangerous but
Speaker 1: worth it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Donald pleas since tries to intervene, Like he
Speaker 3: chops off the demon Kelly's arm with an axe, but
Speaker 3: then she immediately grows a new one. Then he chops
Speaker 3: off her head, but she picks it up and puts
Speaker 3: it back on. It seems like there's nothing stopping her.
Speaker 3: But finally, just as she is about to pull her father,
Speaker 3: the anti god, through the mirror from the other side,
Speaker 3: Catherine intervenes. So Kelly is like reaching in grasping a
Speaker 3: shadowy hand on the other side. Catherine sees what's happening.
Speaker 3: In a moment of clarity, she realizes what's about to
Speaker 3: take place, and she runs and tackles the satan possessed
Speaker 3: Kelly tackles her into the mirror, so Catherine also disappears
Speaker 3: into the mirror, and then Donald pleasant smashes the mirror
Speaker 3: with his axe.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Incredible sequence.
Speaker 3: So this causes sort of it cuts the connection to
Speaker 3: the demonic power. The zombies all collapse, They fall down dead.
Speaker 3: Alice Cooper's crew are no longer possessed. They sort of
Speaker 3: go off mission and then just wander off on their
Speaker 3: own business. Kelly and Catherine have vanished, Brian, Walter, Barack,
Speaker 3: and Donald Pleasance have survived. And the next morning we
Speaker 3: see characters sort of being taken to the hospital or
Speaker 3: trying to figure out what this all means, and Donald
Speaker 3: Pleasant says, we stopped it. The future conjured up by
Speaker 3: that vile serpent. It will not happen now, and Barack says,
Speaker 3: we're safe, but he's waiting on the other side. She
Speaker 3: died for us, and so you think it's all over.
Speaker 3: But then somebody starts having the dream again. We go
Speaker 3: back to the dream and it turns out it's Brian
Speaker 3: having the dream, and the recorded message plays and the
Speaker 3: dark figure begins to come out of the church, and
Speaker 3: this time we see a part of the message we've
Speaker 3: never made it to before. We get later and later,
Speaker 3: and it's revealed that the dark figure coming out of
Speaker 3: the doors of the church is Catherine, and Brian suddenly
Speaker 3: wakes up. He wakes from a horrible nightmare. He like
Speaker 3: imagines that she's lying there, bloodied and mangled in the
Speaker 3: same way that that ke he was as the host
Speaker 3: of Satan. But he wakes up and he's alone in
Speaker 3: his room, in his bed, and then the pulsing music
Speaker 3: starts again. Something is wrong with the world still, and
Speaker 3: he looks in the mirror on his wall and slowly
Speaker 3: he reaches out to touch it, and then cut to credits.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, as the music is building too, Like it's
Speaker 1: so perfect, perfect ending.
Speaker 3: Love the ending, powerful, so good. So yeah, I love
Speaker 3: Prince of Darkness. I think it is such a powerfully moody,
Speaker 3: ominous horror film, just a tremendous menace, and it establishes
Speaker 3: a tone almost like no other film I can think of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again, so ambitious too, not only in terms of,
Speaker 1: you know, these themes of quantum mechanics and theology, but
Speaker 1: also just you know, other choices that Carpenter made in
Speaker 1: attempting to make a film that stood out from what
Speaker 1: he perceived as some of the sameness that was present
Speaker 1: in the horror genre at the time, and honestly, as
Speaker 1: there's almost always some like swell of sameness in the
Speaker 1: horror genre at any given point. So kudos to anybody
Speaker 1: who tries to break through that, to push through that,
Speaker 1: almost as if like pushing through that mirror right and
Speaker 1: reaching something on the other side.
Speaker 3: Here's something I wonder about. I wonder what you think.
Speaker 3: This movie has strong themes of science and technology. Most
Speaker 3: of the major characters are scientists. They're doing scientific tests
Speaker 3: for most of the film. And yet I am not
Speaker 3: at all tempted to think of this as a science
Speaker 3: fiction movie. It is definitely horror. Why does my brain
Speaker 3: subconsciously just classify it that way without a second thought?
Speaker 1: Hmmm, Yeah, that's a good question. Is is it ultimately
Speaker 1: any less science fiction than the thing? And yet you know,
Speaker 1: I'm far far more likely to classify the thing, John Carpenter?
Speaker 1: Is the thing as sci fi horror? Yeah? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what it is. Maybe the degree
Speaker 1: to which like direct technology is employed. Like nobody like
Speaker 1: builds a technology technology based trap. Nobody uses a ray
Speaker 1: gun or a symbol some sort of electroshock device. I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 3: You know, there are movies where there are mysterious or
Speaker 3: unexplainable phenomena that are first thought of to be supernatural,
Speaker 3: but then it is discovered that they are like physical
Speaker 3: in nature, they have a scientific explanation. And then there
Speaker 3: are movies where there are mysterious phenomena that are first
Speaker 3: thought of to be physical, but they're discovered to have
Speaker 3: a supernatural explanation. In this movie, I can't quite tell
Speaker 3: what they have discovered, Like we sort of get an explanation,
Speaker 3: but I don't know how to classify it is the
Speaker 3: ultimate explanation supernatural or physical? Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean I guess some of it kind of
Speaker 1: comes down to the idea that everything kind of collapses
Speaker 1: into and into what like missed and shadow smoking shadows.
Speaker 3: You know that it is you can't tell the difference
Speaker 3: between between the sufficiently powerful and understandable alien presence and
Speaker 3: like a ghost story spirit from beyond.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, this is a film where science has failed
Speaker 1: us to a certain extent, and so has religion, and
Speaker 1: these are the consequences of those failures.
Speaker 3: It's beyond science or religion. You can't even understand whether
Speaker 3: what you're dealing with is natural or supernatural. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that does seem more like horror, I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I think it is far easier to say
Speaker 1: Friends of Darkness, solid horror film with science elements to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, well, there you have it. Happy Halloween, just
Speaker 1: reminded that stuff to blow your mind is primarily a
Speaker 1: science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 1: but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
Speaker 1: just talk about a weird film on weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: You can find a full list of all the movies
Speaker 1: we've covered over the years at letterbox dot com. This
Speaker 1: L E T T E R bo x D dot com.
Speaker 1: Our user name there is weird House and that's where
Speaker 1: you'll find the list. Hey, go to our tea public
Speaker 1: store if you like. We have a couple of Halloween
Speaker 1: shirts up as well as they rub the fur shirt
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Speaker 1: those are just for fun, but if you know, if
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Speaker 1: It's well, I guess it's a way to sort of
Speaker 1: spread the word about the show.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
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