Prince Of Darkness (1987) Big Ol' Tube Of Evil

Atmosphere. That's what really counts. You can throw buckets of blood and gore at me, but what can really give me that unsettled feeling is the right atmosphere. The way a film looks or feels, how the characters are made to look or how we perceive them as they react to what's happening to them. The environment or setting of a film can be a character all in itself.

There are lots of characters in John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness - some of them actually make it through to the end. But one of the best characters is the atmosphere - it's almost a living thing in itself: heavy, confining even in outdoor shots, a weight on the human characters as they move through the mystery of St. Godard's Church. I'll talk more about what I call a "heavy" atmosphere in a setting a little later, but first let's get into the movie itself:

When a priest dies before a big meeting with the higher-ups, an unnamed Priest (Donald Pleasance - the character is actually known as Father Loomis - Carpenter fans do the math) is called in to retrieve his personal effects, which include a small metal box containing a key. What the Priest discovers shakes him to his bones and leads him to call upon someone he considers a friend and rival, Professor Howard Birack (the great Victor Wong), who teaches doctorate-level physics theory.

That's right. Science and religion are tagging up in a cage match against...a tube of pure evil.

Now, don't get me wrong. It's fun to say "tube of pure evil." Go ahead, try it. See? But everything about that tube is no laughing matter. Even science man Birack is rattled after seeing the swirling goo. The Priest tells him it has been influencing the outside world for about a month, changing everything on a molecular level even as the sun and moon align in the daytime sky.

In the meantime, insects and worms are getting agitated and the homeless around St. Godard's begin acting strangely in unison, watching the visitors to the old church with robotic menace. Also, handsome young student Brian (Jameson Parker of Simon & Simon and his mustache) first innocently creeps on then legitimately courts fellow classmate Catherine (Lisa Blount). He's all googly-eyed over her, but she's mostly guarded.

Birack gathers his best students along with other specialized departments to investigate the entity and translate an ancient text that is in the room with it. They load equipment into the abandoned church despite not a single one of them knowing what the whole she-bang is about. Finally, the restless crew is summoned to the basement to witness the Big Ol' Tube of Evil for themselves. Their mission becomes clear: find out what the hell is in there and prove what it is.

A long night ahead of them, the students get to work. One of them is cleared to leave, but meets a throng of the homeless outside. After "admiring" a blasphemous pigeon-based sculpture, the unlucky guy is stabbed with half a bicycle by the lead homeless dude (Alice Cooper). The games have begun.

The students put the clues together and find out that the tube itself is millions of years old, had once been buried in the Middle East about 2,000 years before it ends up in the USA, and that the text in the old book is a literal warning from Jesus Christ Himself that it is indeed Satan inside the tube...and that the tube was buried by Satan's father, dubbed the Anti-God.

And Junior is waking up in preparation to bring his Daddy into our world. *shudder*

Things start happening, small at first. One student bangs her arm, which seems innocent at first, but that changes later. When she goes to take a nap, that's it for her, as we'll soon see. Another, Susan ("radiologist, glasses" becomes a running line of dialogue about her), falls victim to a stream of water that carries the evil one's essence. She becomes possessed, then breaks the neck of another student before moving on to infect the theologist translating the text. They, in turn, infect the very tall, very deep-voiced student Conor with juicy, devil-juiced-filled kisses. Susan and Lisa, the theologist, bring the canister to the sleeping, Blue Oyster Cult-bruised woman and pretty soon the essence of evil is flowing into her. Seriously, the symbol that the bruise on her arm forms looks exactly like BOC's infamous symbol.

Apparently, the Tube of Evil is a big fan.

Another student tries to leave around this time, citing that the whole thing is ridiculous. He glimpses the possessed Susan just before he's stabbed multiple times by a homeless woman. But don't fret, minor character fans, the guy they call Wyndham comes back with a strange, foreboding message:



Things break down after this, as Conor fights the possession long enough to cut his own throat with a piece of wooden banister. The homeless have barricaded everyone inside and the woman once known as Kelly has completely absorbed the essence and has become the living vessel for Satan. The dreams of a possible future - sent from 1999 via tachyon transmissions - show shaky, grainy, and eerily understated pictures of something emerging from the church. Everyone in the church experiences these dreams, but we only see a couple snippets of them. Just enough to creep us out.

During a huge skirmish, everyone is separated, with the Priest ending up in the boiler room, where a huge mirror sits on a wall. You see, Satan needs the mirror to bring the Anti-God into our dimension. Reaching into the huge mirror, she...er, he...um, it grabs hold of a horrible, grasping hand and begins to pull. No one is there to stop it...no one except Catherine, who tackles Satan into the mirror just as the Priest smashes it with an axe. The image of Catherine on the other side, fading into a flickering blackness, is heartbreaking. Like someone disappearing into cold, dark water under broken ice.

The survivors emerge, and move on sadly with their lives. Brian has one last dream before gazing hopefully/fearfully at the bedroom mirror and reaching his hand out to...

And cut to black and end credits.

If this movie doesn't make you fear mirrors, I don't know what will.

John Carpenter made this film as the second part of what he called the "Apocalypse Trilogy," after 1982's remake of The Thing and before 1995's H. P. Lovecraft/Stephen King tribute In The Mouth Of Madness. In each movie, the world is threatened on a level experienced only by a small group of people. The rest of the world is pretty much clueless for two of the movies - they learn the hard way in the final one, but I'll discuss that one at another time.

The threat in Prince of Darkness begins on a conceptual level, and I find that fascinating. Sure, big, blatant threats can be fun from the masked killers of Friday the 13th and Carpenter's own Halloween to the monstrous threat in Cloverfield. But the hidden dangers, the ones that lurk behind our own perceptions of reality...that's where real terror lies. You don't see it coming. You feel it, but it's one of those "corner of your eye" nudges until it's too late. Things in this movie happen not only on an outwardly physical level, but as Professor Birack states, "on the subatomic level" as well. The Priest has a similar quote when he said Satan hides "between the atoms," which is how he sneaks his slimy little way into peoples' hearts. The world around the characters is changing: ants and worms spaz out and climb windows, the homeless (or possibly only those homeless with mental illness) act in unison to carry out the will of something unseen, moon and sun align in space, the sky and the air appear...heavier.

In one subtle scene...blink and you miss it...main character Brian discusses the weight of thing as they have been occurring. He's messing around with a playing card, as he loves card tricks and it's a neat character quirk that he has to do that to busy his hands (maybe he's an ex-smoker). As he makes his point, he performs a pass to make the card look like it's disappearing. Simple sleight of hand, really. Only...the card actually disappears. No one has time to comment on it as events then spiral towards the conclusion. But I thought it was a well-timed, tiny little aside that shows the world is literally sinking into something unexplainable and not quite so obvious.

Here is the scene of which I speak, with the first few minutes setting it up:



Subtle and spooky.

And yes, because it is my blog, I will compare the heavy feeling to - I know it's getting old, but bear with me - Grant Morrison's Final Crisis from DC Comics. When evil Darkseid finally manifests himself in regular reality, it tears a hole in everything we know. Earth is pulled into a black hole singularity created by Darkseid's fall from The Fourth World's reality. In Prince of Darkness, I think something similar would happen. If the Anti-God forces its way into our reality, it will rip and tear the universe at the point where it happens: our world. Wrap your mind around that concept as you fall asleep. You're welcome.

Carpenter was always a master of atmosphere. I mean, look at Halloween, with its minimal blood spray yet sheer terror. The Thing is a study in claustrophobia and paranoia. Even Big Trouble In Little China provides an air of high adventure and magic that happens just beyond the streets and buildings of Chinatown. Prince of Darkness is mostly lesser-known than those three films. Horror fans and aficionados are very familiar with it, and most do agree that it is underrated and among the most chilling horror films. It is certainly among my favorites from the 80's or any decade, for that matter. This Halloween, do yourself a favor and check it out if you haven't before. It's a great popcorn chiller, nostalgic for those of us who grew up in the 80's and saw it then, and still has weight for those just now discovering it.

Now, here, enjoy the final dream sequence/message from the future:



Oh, and here's what the voice says: "This is not a dream...not a dream. We are using your brain's electrical system as a receiver. We are unable to transmit through conscious neural interference. You are receiving this broadcast as a dream. We are transmitting from the year one, nine, nine, nine. You are receiving this broadcast in order to alter the events you are seeing. Our technology has not developed a transmitter strong enough to reach your conscious state of awareness, but this is not a dream. You are seeing what is actually occurring for the purpose of causality violation."

Brrr.

OK, I'm off to deal with zombies. They're not a threat on the conceptual level. They're just undead and hungry. Until next time, fellow survivors...

1408 (2007) The Overlook Was Scarier

As my friend Rick over at The Paradise of Horror can attest, I am a very big Stephen King fan. I may have mentioned that I read The Shining in two days on summer vacation as an innocent, fresh-faced thirteen-year-old. The Stand changed my entire way of looking at writing and stoked my flames of love for apocalyptic fiction. King is my single biggest influence when it comes to creating stories. Sometimes movies based on his stories work (The Mist, The Green Mile, The Stand miniseries) and sometimes they don't (Maximum Overdrive, The Mangler). 1408 falls somewhere in the middle, with elements that really worked wrapped in a final product that just didn't stand out for me.

So you've got this guy, paranormal travel writer Mike Enslin (John Cusack), who really doesn't believe in ghosts, but wouldn't mind seeing one. He's the classic Stephen King "tortured writer," a character that indeed works because...well, King would know how rough it is to be a successful writer. He gets a line on an apparently very haunted hotel room in New York City's Dolphin Hotel, the titular room 1408. Of course, he has to check it out. This is curiosity I can appreciate.

The hotel manager, Gerald Olin (Samuel L. Jackson), warns Enslin not to do it. Enslin takes advantage of a state statute that forces hotels to rent out any available room and, despite intense pleas and solid information from Olin, settles into the room. Tiny things begin to happen at first, but when the clock radio (constantly blaring The Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun" - shades of Christine) begins a countdown of sixty minutes, Enslin is really in for it.

He starts experiencing little things. Almost polite things. Mints are left on pillows. The toilet paper is folded neatly. The HORROR! Enslin is a little creeped out, but intrigued. Now he's experiencing something that's weird, but he thinks still explainable. When he starts seeing ghosts (that look oddly like weird TV transmissions) reenacting their suicides, that's when he realizes the game is afoot.

In one of my favorite creepy parts, he tries signaling in desperation to a gentleman across the street. The guy stands up in shadow and not only imitates Enslin's every moment, but mirrors them. When light settles on the fellow, we see it's Enslin himself. Hardly a moment to take it in, when a crazy-eyed Clint Howard-esque maniac swings a hammer at the "reflection." Enslin turns to see the maniac in his own room advancing on him before disappearing:


It wasn't Clint Howard, but rather in an odd little role, former super-badass martial artist Benny "The Jet" Urquidez. The Jet does a lot of stunt work and extra work now, but back in the day, he engaged in what was considered one of the greatest fight scenes ever caught on film, battling Jackie Chan in 1984's wonderful Kuai can che otherwise known as Wheels on Meals:



If Cusack and Urquidez had broken out into that kind of fight, this movie would've become my favorite movie of all time.

Enslin's visions get more and more intense, and more personal. He sees "footage" of he and his estranged wife Lily (Mary McCormack) and his daughter Katie (Jasmine Jessica Anthony), who died some time ago of an undisclosed disease. This life incident has caused Enslin to lose faith in everything, yet hold onto the notion of an afterlife. It becomes clear that the room seems to have it in for him, and is not going to let him leave. He tries going out the window onto the ledge, through ventilation shafts...nothing. The room forces him back every time.

Enslin manages to contact Lily via his computer, begging her to send help before his aforementioned escape attempt through the ducts. He manages to get her again after his failed attempt and discovery that Room 1408 is now my old hometown in winter. The room takes over his chat avatar and convinces Lily to join him in 1408, as the real Enslin screams in protest.

At one point, the room even convinces Enslin the whole thing was a dream during his surfing accident at the beginning of the film. But, like all evil rooms, it brought him right back to the madness. It even throws what might be a ghost of his daughter at him, before yanking the rug away on that, too.

Enslin discovers that 1408 won't outright kill him, but offers him the choice of reliving the hour of insanity over and over, or taking the "express checkout": suicide. Enslin, in a moment of clarity, fights back, lobbing a Molotov cocktail into the wall and setting fire to the room. At the last moment, he's rescued and reunited with Lily. Maybe the whole thing was a way for him to remember the good in his life and for unicorns to prance lovingly through the meadow in slow-motion. Maybe it was all in his head. Well, the last scene would probably dispel that.

1408 is clever in its own way. When the clock radio starts counting down from 60 minutes, it really is 60 minutes to the end of the movie. Lots of Easter eggs concerning the number 13. According to IMDB, the standard version's runtime is 104 minutes and eight seconds. But I found it relatively uncreepy. It wasn't a waste of time, but I didn't instantly add it to my Amazon wish list. It seemed to me to be a whole lot of bluster, but weak on the follow-through. Still, Cusack's acting is a real bright spot. He's given a chance to be in - for most of the movie - a one-man play, and he delivers. There could be a movie of Samuel L. Jackson standing there waving for 90 minutes, and I'd probably see it. He has a small role, but it meshes well with Cusack's. I wouldn't turn anyone away from it - it's not a bad one, just not as scary as I'd hoped.

Well, fellow zombie apocalypse survivors, if you find yourself at a hotel, make sure you stay off the ground floor to avoid the biters and out of room 1408, especially if you have a guilty complex.

"Stay scared." ~ Mike Enslin, 1408 (and also George A. Romero)

The House Of The Devil (2009) Never Trust Francis Dollarhyde

I remember being a young boy in the wilds of Michigan, well before the dead started rising, and hanging out at my friend Bill's house. Back then, HBO was relatively new and they would show just about anything. One of the movies I remember seeing was the cheesy horror flick The House Where Evil Dwells. It was distinctly early-80's in everything from plot to cinematography to the general look. It was rated R, and we were like nerdy rebels, staying up late to watch the gore and the sex and the ghosts. It was an easy time in my life. I like being made to remember easier times in my life, and 2009's throwback The House Of The Devil, while not mind-blowing, pleasantly brought me back to those times.

The House Of The Devil is written and directed by Ti West, and it's safe to say it's a love letter to the low-budget horror offerings of the late 70's-early 80's that didn't pander to the major studios. Back then, it was "here's a plot, let's do a movie" and there was a certain risky charm to that method. The horror films always seemed to be filmed during a perpetual autumn - at least it seemed that way to me. That seemed to give it a shadowy feel, but with the feeling that the air in that fictional town or wherever it took place had a crispness to it. The House Of The Devil scored big with me for that feel.



The movie opens with some foreboding text about unexplained disappearances and Satanic rituals, and we're pretty much told things might not be all that sunny for those involved. A pretty young girl, Samantha (Jocelin Donahue), falls in love with a house but still needs money for the rent, despite being given a break on the price by the landlord (a nice cameo by Dee Wallace). As she walks off with the hope of a new place, there's a title card of the movie in a freeze frame, and we all know I'm a fan of those. And she's wearing a Walkman. Not the slim, barely-there kinds we have now. I'm talking the enormous boxes like the first one I ever had, blasting Asia and Scorpions in my young ears.

Samantha goes ahead with a phone call to a babysitting job for the Ullman Family. Mr. Ullman (Tom Noonan) tells her they'll meet on the university campus, but he never shows. Later, as we're given more clues that an eclipse will soon occur - always a must when a movie deals with dark forces - Samantha talks about her money problems with her friend Megan (Greta Gerwin), who offers to call her father for money. Samantha's just at the end of her rope as she cries in the dorm bathroom.



Later, Mr. Ullman leaves a message for Samantha, and she returns the call. He apologizes profusely and arranges for the babysitting assignment to start immediately that night. Samantha agrees and Megan drives her out to the Ullman's house, a big, old place in the middle of nowhere. Mr. Ullman greets them at the door, and imagine my happiness to see reliable portrayer of soft-spoken creeps, Tom Noonan, playing the part. I can never forget him as Francis Dollarhyde a.k.a. The Tooth Fairy in Manhunter.

Tom Noonan as Mr. Ullman (above) and as Francis Dollarhyde aka The Tooth Fairy in 1986's Manhunter (right)

Mr. Ullman appears urgent and somewhat exacting, along with having an almost regretful air about him. While Megan entertains herself in the other room, Mr. Ullman explains that the babysitting job isn't for a child, but for his wife's mother, who's bedridden in an upstairs bedroom. Samantha is apprehensive, so Mr. Ullman ups the pay and Samantha accepts. Megan is pissed - this is all too weird for her. Samantha defends her decision since she needs the money. Still angry and worried, Megan leaves Samantha to her task.

Megan travels down the driveway, trying to light a cigarette. A strange man, who we come to know as Victor Ullman (A. J. Bowen), offers to light it for her, scaring her. When he asks if she's the babysitter, and she replies that she's not, he shoots her face off - literally - before taking her car.



Back inside, Samantha meets Mrs. Ullman (Mary Woronov), whose every line oozes with uncomfortable relish. The Ullmans finally leave, and give Samantha some cash and a number for a nearby pizza place. Alone, except for the shut-in figure upstairs, Samantha explores the house, giving us some quite exquisite shots of a lonely girl with no idea of the looming danger that we, the viewers, barely recognize at this point.

After dancing around to The Fixx, Samantha breaks a vase and cleans it up, finding photos of a family that is decidedly not the Ullmans standing by the car the Ullmans just drove off in, and in front of the house itself. Victor arrives as a pizza delivery guy shortly thereafter with the pizza that Samantha ordered. At this point, you may want to scream to Samantha not to eat the pizza. She won't hear you.

Getting spooked and hearing strange sounds, Samantha tries to explore further into the house, barely missing the room where the family in the picture is sprawled out, brutally murdered. The pizza turns out to be drugged, and Samantha starts losing grip on her consciousness, but not before seeing a strange hand emerge from the attic.

When she wakes up, it's not in a comfy bed in her new apartment. She's tied to a slab, satanic symbols everywhere. The Ullmans enter, dressed in robes. They're followed by a wizened, ugly little thing that I can only describe as a demonic...uh, demon. Said demon paints symbols on Samantha's belly with blood, then tries to get her to drink from the skull of some strange animal. Let your imagination run wild with what kind of animal, because it may not be from the mortal plane.




Samantha breaks loose and escapes upstairs after giving Victor slight vision problems. Lucio Fulci would have been honored. She makes it into the kitchen, tripping over Megan's faceless body. Armed with a knife, she manages to cut Victor's throat before Mrs. Ullman catches up with her in a bedroom. Samantha gets away from the crazy woman by stabbing her in the back while she admires the lunar eclipse. Among flashes of a severe tummy ache and leering demonic faces, she runs out of the house, with Mr. Ullman not far behind. He pursues her to a cemetery, telling her that Satan will arrive when the eclipse ends. With no choice in her mind as she figures it out, Samantha fires a bullet into her own head.

But it ain't over, folks. Samantha wakes up in a hospital to a nurse's "comforting" words that she and the baby will make a full recovery.

That right there provides enough creep factor for your evening. The movie ends, but we know the story doesn't. In fact, if this is a parallel world, I don't want to go there, thank you very much. Has that kind of Prince of Darkness-ish sense of "something's coming and you can't do anything about it."

Like I said, I wasn't blown out of the water by House of the Devil, but that's not to say I didn't like it. The atmosphere, the slow burn sense of danger, and the cinematography were stellar. It truly was a throwback to the old low-budget who-cares-how-wild-this-plot-is movies made in the early 80's. We don't see a lot of the carnage that has happened (the Ullmans disposing of and replacing the family who really lived in the house) and that is about to happen (hello, the girl has a Satan in her belly). Like many great forms of entertainment, our minds fill in the blanks. Performances that stick out to me are Jocelin Donahue playing a cute, truly innocent Samantha and the awesome Tom Noonan as Mr. Ullman.

And what our minds are capable of is quite terrifying.

So, see it, judge for yourself. Me, I'll be that chopper flying overhead. Leave a sign outside your house if you need rescuing...unless you're the Ullmans.