Prince of Darkness

Dir. John Carpenter. 1987, 102 mins. DCP. With Donald Pleasence, Lisa Blount, Jameson Parker, Victor Wong. John Carpenter’s script for the metaphysical chiller Prince of Darkness (the second film in his Apocalypse Trilogy) was originally credited to Martin Quatermass. The pseudonym conjures fictional tough-guy adventurer Bernard Quatermass, the brain-child of British scifi/horror titan Nigel Kneale, a screenwriter that Carpenter long admired and with whom he even tried to collaborate (Kneale wrote a preliminary script for Halloween III: Season of the Witch, though he asked that his name be taken off of a rewrite). Kneale’s influence does loom large over Prince of Darkness—especially the conceit that Evil is an empirically observable presence—but Carpenter’s characteristic fear of utilitarianism gives rise to some of the most stirring images and sequences in his storied filmography. —Simon Abrams

Introduced by film critic and guest curator Simon Abrams