Collector’s Corner: Prince of Darkness
John Carpenter. When you absolutely, positively have to scare every last bubble-gum chewer in the room, accept no substitute. Some people live with no regrets; regretting stuff is pretty much all I do. With regards to my video library, one of my current regrets is the lack of John Carpenter films, which I’ve started to remedy with my recent acquisition of Prince of Darkness, an integral entry in his self-described “Apocalypse Trilogy” alongside The Thing and In The Mouth of Madness. In this company, Prince of Darkness is the weakest entry, but it’s also a great entry. Any time you can get Donald Pleasence, Victor Wong, Dennis Dun, and Alice Cooper in the same film about an ultimate evil force trying to bring about the end of days, you can’t go wrong. Carpenter’s pantheon is the perfect complement to the films of David Cronenberg. Both filmmakers came out of the same school, focusing a great deal on horror and sci-fi, and both have a very economic form of storytelling. Some days I want to watch an epic Scorsese drama; other days I want to be kicked…