Brilliant and touching

Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

'Prince of Darkness' is not master of horror John Carpenter's best film and it is weakest in his so called "Apocalypse Trilogy", but Carpenter is such director whose more mediocre work surpasses other genre director's film by miles. In 'Prince of Darkness' Carpenter again manages to perfectly create creepy and claustrophobic atmosphere (although might not as good as in 'The Thing') and the horror doesn't need to rely on jump scares and fancy special effects. Only Carpenter can build up such a slow an intense waiting of the doom.After some flops at the box office John Carpenter had fallen into discountenance by the mayor studios 'Prince of Darkness' was again independent film with modest budget. The low budged doesn't take anything away from the movie, on the contrary it doesn't show like a low budget film (I guess it's Carpenter's experiences working on shoestring budgets). The build up is little slow, and the action parts are little corny some times (without right amount of cheese it wouldn't be Carpenter's film), but the dialogue is magnificently written and characters (except some expendables) are rather intelligent and avoiding too much horror movie clichés. Again, Carpenter manages to create an eerie synthesizer soundtrack, that is pleasure to listen, but is not recommended to listen on your ipod while walking on dark streets.'Prince of Darkness' is above average atmospheric and intelligent horror film that uses many interesting ideas and avoids to slump into horror film clichés. It should please hard core horror fans, and is must see for John Carpenter fans.

I was really disappointed by this one, I thought it was dull, predictable, cliché and overall a little messy, however, its still mostly enjoyable, its well made and interesting enough for me to give this a good rating but I wish it was better.I don't know why, but for the longest time I thought this was a vampire movie, I wasn't really sure but the title sounded like a vampire film, but I digress.John Carpenter is usually pretty consistent with the quality of his movies I don't know what happened in this one, not even Donald could elevate this. Its not a horrible movie, like I said, its well made and has lots of interesting elements that I wish were fleshed out more, it has the potential to be a really great movie.I like a few characters and the special effects were really good, it was nice seeing Alice Cooper, I also like the atmosphere.I cant say its bad, but I cant say its great, its good, but I was expecting more from Carpenter, I guess it just needs to grow on me.

So maybe I'm stretching "classic" a bit, but this film never got the good reviews I felt it deserved, an I'm a veteran of many things horror. The subject matter is fairly original. Did you ever hear of Satan as a green fluid held prisoner under a creepy old church? I didn't think so. Watch how Donald Pleasance overacts, but he's engaging, and makes anything he's in that more enjoyable. A few more familiar faces include Jameson Parker, who's sporting a Freddie Mercury mustache, Dennis Dun, Alice Cooper(that's right)and Victor Wong. I found this film very suspenseful with some interesting kills, and cool scenes. It's not a film that ends nicely, like many John Carpenter films, so you may feel empty after watching it, but the ride should be worth it. There are a few negative things, however, that bear mentioning, such as poor character development, as there's really no one to root for, and an awful, forced love scene that's almost as bad as the one from The Fog(1980), as it wasn't needed at all. Getting those out of the way, I still recommend this film, as I don't think Carpenter made many more good ones after this came out.

The atmosphere is incredibly dense, it's an unrelenting thickness suffocating everything else, including plot, character and common sense. But man does it work and brilliantly.The score is typically moody and great, and it's used effectively as a constantly reverberating background beat to the slow unveiling of hell on an uncoupling earth. This film works so well because it's truly unrelenting, and I don't mean in the Evil Dead sense of constant assault, but in its unbearable grip on your audio and visual senses. It's a slow strangling.This film also made me realize how great of a stylist Carpenter is. I always knew that on some level, but watching this again for the second time I realized how casual Carpenter is in his brilliance. His shots have an off-the-cuff elegance, almost as a painter so in control of his work he doesn't have to stop and savor his great images because they all are in a way, each shot into the next, a kind of constantly evolving masterful painting of horror. Shots of crosses through fence links, zombie faces awash in black and shadow, the lighting of an Argento witches movie, the soft surrealism of water dripping upward yet slowly outward towards hell, visions of ants invading the back grating of a TV set, white light from inside calling to them.It's kind of amazing. I really really wish the plot came together a bit more. I like the obtuseness of it to a point (how much could the characters really know about it all) but because of that a lot of the revelations come from people hypothesizing out loud in a way that you know the movie is trying to explain itself without actually having to -- having its cake and eating it too.