Pathetic.
Although the very notion of having a "favorite" something is always problematic, for any self-styled critic or overly committed cultural consumer there is the added pressure of having so-called "respectable" tastes and opinions. Although the very notion of "canon" should be anathema to the truly enlightened critical mind, there is nonetheless an understanding that you are supposed to "appreciate" (or at least have an opinion about), say, Fellini or Warhol or any number of other artists who can be referred to solely by their surname. This is especially the case with directors, despite the relative disrepute of auteur theory these days. I bring all this up because I would love to claim that my favorite director is Billy Wilder or Akira Kurosawa or Sam Fuller. I would be happy to say something mature and noncommittal (and undeniably pretentious) like, "The very notion of having a favorite director is limiting and ridiculous."
But my favorite director is John Carpenter. Specifically, John Carpenter from 1974 (the year Dark Star came out and, coincidentally, the year of my birth) through the 1988 release of They Live. Since the 1992 release of Memoirs of an Invisible Man (which also arguably ended Chevy Chase's "good" years), Carpenter has been on an extended cold streak, the highlight of which is probably the so/so (and completely batshit insane) In the Mouth of Madness.
Perhaps the most poorly regarded film of Carpenter's fertile period is the 1987 oddity Prince of Darkness, which happened to be released right when my dedication to horror movies was at its most fervid. Despite its spotty reputation, it remains one of my all-time faves; a bizarre, genuinely affecting victory of atmosphere over narrative.
Basically, a priest (a completely over-the-top Donald Pleasance) discovers the activities of a secret Catholic sect called The Brotherhood of Sleep, who have been charged over the centuries with guarding a big cylinder filled with swirling green goo; a sinister-looking lava lamp on steroids. Realizing that All Is Not Well, the priest enlists the help of a theoretical physicist and his crack team of graduate students to figure out What In The Hell Is Going On. This team includes the film's ostensible hero, a PhD candidate and amateur prestidigitator played by Jameson Parker (of Simon & Simon fame). The film's real hero, however, is Jameson Parker's Totally Awesome Mustache:
In a nutshell, the team's investigation leads to the following revelations (so to speak): Jesus was an extraterrestrial; the cylinder is an elaborate, rapidly decaying prison for the son of the Devil; Satan himself is a kind of antimatter to God's matter; psychically speaking, the homeless are roughly on par with cockroaches and worms; you can send tachyon transmissions back in time to talk to people in their dreams; and Jameson Parker's Totally Awesome Mustache may not be powerful enough to save us all from oblivion. As you can see, despite the film's tenuous grasp of particle physics, calling Prince of Darkness a thinking man's horror movie is something of an understatement.Like David Lynch's Dune, another unfairly maligned favorite of mine, Prince of Darkness was written off as uneven, dialogue-heavy, and "hard to follow." And, as is the case with Dune, these criticisms are spot-on. However, Prince of Darkness is also unremittingly creepy in a doomed, Lovecraftian way—it's the kind of vibe that few filmmakers aspire to anymore. Carpenter is an unparalleled master of atmospherics, using sparse, haunting music and wide open, almost sterile framing to produce an eerie feeling that borders on a kind of existential dread. Just consider the frozen wastes of The Thing or the abandoned suburban afternoons in Halloween. Isolation is the real enemy in these films (small wonder that Carpenter constantly returns to the "siege scenario" in his films), and in Prince of Darkness that isolation is simultaneously physical (the scientists are all trapped in a run-down urban church), emotional (the main characters are pointedly unable to articulate their romantic feelings for one another), and spiritual (Jesus was an alien and Good and Evil are reduced to subatomic abstraction). And really, what's scarier than facing unstoppable monsters all by your lonesome?
Prince of Darkness is best watched in the dark (otherwise it would be called Prince of Sufficient Lighting), with one or two friends. This is especially important afterwards as a) the film rewards a good post-viewing discussion; and b) you won't be able to go anywhere near a mirror by yourself for the next twelve hours or so. (It's not as bad as Candyman in this respect, but still...)
No comments:
Post a Comment