This is our 666th post!!!!

We( Rhonda,Brandon, and Eric) are proud to announce we have reached 666 posts!What better way to celebrate than with a review of John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness!

By Eric Polk-
It wouldn't be a 666th post without a movie involving the Devil...

NO!!!!!!!! Not that movie!!!!

No, I'm talking about 1987's(ah, how I miss you favorite year of mine!) Prince of Darkness.
A priest (Donald Pleasence) invites Professor Howard Birack (Victor Wong) and a group of academics and students to investigate a mysterious cylinder in the basement of an abandoned Los Angeles church. The cylinder contains a constantly swirling, green liquid. Among these people is a student in metaphysics, Brian Marsh (Jameson Parker).

After researching the text found next to the cylinder, it is discovered that the liquid is actually Satan! The liquid itself appears sentient, producing increasingly complex data that is revealed by computer decoding to include differential equations. Over the period of two days, small jets of liquid escape the cylinder and possess the group one by one, to use them against the remaining survivors.

Their attempts to escape the building are prevented by a mass of possessed street people surrounding it. They barricade the doors from the outside and kill two of the group. Birack and the priest theorize that Satan is actually the son of an even more powerful force of evil, the "Anti-God", who is bound to the realm of anti-matter. The survivors also find themselves sharing a recurring dream, apparently a tachyon transmission sent as a warning from the future year "one-nine-nine-nine", showing a shaky video sequence of a shadowy figure emerging from the front of the church. The transmission and the shadowy figure shown seem to change slightly with each occurrence of the dream. The narration of the transmission each time instructs the 'dreamer' that they are witnessing an actual broadcast from the future and they must alter the course of events to prevent this occurrence.

Eventually, the cylinder opens fully and the entire remaining liquid is absorbed into the body of Kelly (Susan Blanchard), one of the students who becomes the corporeal vessel for Satan: A gruesomely disfigured being, with powers of telekinesis and regeneration, who attempts to bring the Anti-God through a dimensional portal using a mirror (initially failing because the mirror is too small). At the climax of the film, Satan finds a larger wall mirror, and begins to draw the Father's hand through it as most of the group are immobilised in fights with the other possessed members. Catherine Danforth (Lisa Blount), the lover of another of the academics, Marsh, is the only one free to act, and tackles Kelly, both of them falling through the portal.

Tachyons, anti-matter? Is this an episode of Star Trek? To me, the premise of a liquid Satan is a little hokey to me which is why, though it tries hard, this movie fails me. A cameo by Alice Cooper notwithstanding, it just seems to be a big mess. I like horror films with a religious bent to them, but here it gets warped. Also, you have elements of time-travel which while it works in sci-fi, just doesn't seem to have the same pizazz in this movie.

Still, check it out if you're a fan of lesser-known 80's horror.