My horror movie podcast I mentioned watched a gory Satan movie, which meant in this case a John Carpenter movie I don’t think I ever knew had existed, Prince of Darkness. See, Father Loomis finds a dead priest from the previously secret Brotherhood of Sleep, about whom even the Vatican knows nothing, and who has had a secret basement under a church (in LA? They probably never say it’s LA, but it looks very LAish, despite the incongruity of the remainder of my sentence) for the last 2000 years or so, containing a book full of dozens of ancient languages with prophecies and anachronistic mathematical equations, and also an enormous glass cylinder full of swirling green light[1].

So naturally he calls upon a theoretical physicist to gather an elite crew of scientists and grad students to hang out for the weekend to figure out what’s going on, only there’s an implausible relationship between A.J. Simon[2] and a redhead with a truly terrible haircut, an unlikely all-day astronomical phenomenon, and a gathering swarm of homeless people led by Alice Cooper, all getting in the way.

I have to say, this movie starts weird. The credits went on forever, while Father Loomis investigated the dead priest’s possessions, Victor Wong (the uncle from Big Trouble in Little China) ominously explained to what should not have been a freshman survey course that the physical world is not what they think it is (because of how subatomic particles behave, I think?), and A.J. stalked or (if I’m being generous) pined for the redhead. But even after the credits finally ended, the “we’re not done with the opening credits yet” synth music soundtrack kept on throbbing for fully 30 minutes before Carpenter finally decided that we were finished with the setup phase and ready to find out what was going on, or at least he was tired of listening to all of the grad students and scientists and theologians and ancient language experts ask each other what was going on.

Then a lot of things happened for the rest of the movie that I will not spoil, except to say that if you told me this movie inspired the guy with the crazy hair on Ancient Aliens, I would not be the least bit surprised.

Maybe Carpenter’s weakest film, and yet it had a certain charm.[3] Recommended mainly if you want to see him give work to people you’ve seen in his films before, or if you want to hear probably the greatest Christianity origin story you will ever hear.

[1] The basement, not the book.
[2] Will anyone understand this antediluvian reference? Doubtful!
[3] No pun, even though I understand that the only reason the movie exists is he’d just read a bunch of books on theoretical physics and wanted to make a movie about them.