![Prince of Darkness (Collector's Edition) [Blu-ray]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91Up2aq3YTL.jpg)
Product Description Master of horror John Carpenter (HALLOWEEN, THE THING) directs this terrifying battle between mankind and the ultimate evil. A group of graduate students and scientists uncover an ancient canister in an abandoned church, but when they open it, they inadvertently unleash a strange liquid and an evil force on all of humanity. As the liquid turns their co-workers into zombies, the remaining members realize they have released the most unspeakable horror of them all. Terror mounts as the team must fight to save the world from a devilish fury that has been contained for over seven million years. .com Though regarded by many as one of writer-director John Carpenter's lesser efforts, Scream Factory gives Prince of Darkness the deluxe treatment with this Blu-ray presentation. As with previous releases from the Shout! Factory imprint, the supplemental features on Prince of Darkness are a mix of new material recorded specifically for the disc and extras from previous DVD releases. Chief among the latter is a commentary track featuring Carpenter and veteran character actor Peter Jason (Deadwood), who made his first of seven eventual collaborations with the director on this picture. Carpenter is typically phlegmatic if informative, discussing in detail the initial concepts for the film, as well as its locations, special effects, and his score with Alan Howarth. Carpenter is also quite frank in his opinion of Darkness, which he seems to regard (like many viewers) as somewhat incomprehensible (despite the fact that he wrote it as Martin Quatermass). But his rapport with Jason is enjoyable, and Carpenter provides even more detail on the film's inception and execution in the ten-plus-minute interview segment Sympathy for the Devil, which features, among other comments, the scientific and philosophical origins of the project, as well as his interest in retaining greater control over his work. Rocker Alice Cooper, whose involvement with the film came through his manager, executive producer Shep Gordon (whose company, Alive Films, co-funded the picture as well as Carpenter's They Live and Village of the Damned), is front and center in a lively nine-minute interview piece that focuses on his love for horror movies and his brief acting turn in the picture. Co-composer Alan Howarth gets the spotlight in a ten-minute interview that provides some insight into his musical collaborations with Carpenter, while actor/special effects supervisor Robert Grasmere, who played the doubtful member of the investigative team while also wrangling the massive canister, which apparently leaked on a regular basis, earns his own interview. A segment of Horror's Hallowed Grounds has host Sean Clark revisiting many of the film's locations, including the church and control center (now a movie theater). The rest of the extras are an interesting mixed bag of promotional material--numerous advertisements and promotional stills, as well as a radio spot and theatrical trailer--and a pair of rare items: the alternate opening from the TV broadcast version, which intimates (in a very obtuse manner) that the events in the film might be a dream, and an Easter Egg (easily found on the bonus menu) that reveals a Q&A session with Carpenter about the picture at a 2012 screening at Screamfest. --Paul Gaita
E**Y
An Educated fan's review
For the diehard fans out there of John Carpenter and of particularly PRINCE OF DARKNESS, this review is for you. Chances are, this is as good as it is going to get for this film. Germany and Japan have had their own blu-rays, and neither seem to actually stand up to this. Remembering that this was (As they themselves said) Scream!Factory's most requested title, let't take a look.VIDEO:There has been some talk of edge enhancement. It doesn't seem that bad. Definitely not noticible to me anyway, and I've been watching the Universal DVD for the past eight years. What is noticible is that the increased color range and sharpening make a difference. Details are great, even if the anamorphic lenses used on the film blurred the edges of the frame a bit. But it does effect things like Alice Cooper's make up in the film. He's no longer a pasty white anylonger, more natural fleshtones are apparent. No one has heard, nor did Shout - mention that Carpenter or Gary B. Kibbe supervised this transfer so I guess it's really up to the consumer as to what they want. But such details.Audio:It's great. Noticible differences from previous DVD copies - the scene where the Priest is talking to his superiors in the court yard at the beginning has more audiable sprinkler sounds. Just great stuff. The soundtrack pops well.ExtrasThis is what we've all come for, right? I really wish I knew what the making of this disc was like. Before this, if you wanted a really good disc of PRINCE OF DARKNESS, you either got the British DVD or if you really wanted the creme de la creme, the Caheirs du Cinema DVD of the film. Not every special feature in the world is included on this blu-ray. Maybe that's a good thing. The introduction and scene analysis features from the French DVD have been said to be lackluster. What Scream! self produced is great. Interestingly enough, Carpenter looks better than he did in other Scream! produced featurettes. And though some of what he says is repeated in the audio commentary (Taken from the European/Studio Cannal release), the repetition comes with greater details to his anecdotes. The Alice Cooper interview kind of sucks, certain questions didn't seem to have been answered, such as his song PRINCE OF DARKNESS - was it written for the film? We hear it in the film and it wasn't released officially on an album until 1988. The Robert Grasmere interview is full of great stuff. He remembers the film fondly and vividly, even bringing with him some props to show. Alan Howarths' interview plays more like an overview of his time working with Carpenter than about the POD score specifically.To bring this up, the alternate for TV edit of the begining. Yes, it comes with everything that the fabled TV edit is supposed to come with. They don't include things like Donald Pleasance actually reading the diary via ADR over the footage that is already there in the theatrical cut, but it's great stuff. Great stuff.A trailer is there, but it comes with two radio spots as well. Sweet. A TV spot has surfaced on youtube, but eh, make your own second disc for this release!Horror's haunted grounds is fun, though not really substantially. A fun piece.An obvious easter egg is a video from the 25th anniversary screening Q and A. It's okay. Nothing in depth.If you are a fan and want more, either wait for stuff to pop up on the internet to download or buy this release. And I do suggest you buy it. Sure, it doesn't have a booklet with some well written articles on the film (and they're out there), and it doesn't have the video of the premiere at Universal Studios (which could have been bought by Getty Images for $500), but it's great none the less. Buy it now. Don't need to be an alien from THEY LIVE to tell you that.
C**D
"I have a message for you, and you're not going to like it"
Maybe it's the amazingly original concept driving the apocalyptic religious horror element that makes Prince of Darkness so unsettling; with hardly any blood and gore or jumpnscares, Carpenter weaves a near-flawless horror/mystery hybrid with a solid cinematic lore comprised of cherry picked scientic theories(primarily quantum mechanics) and mathematics (differential equations).Or it could be the intensely minimalist synthwave soundtrack that employs the trademark Carpenter ominous prescience full-time. There's very few scenes in POD where there is no BGM. Most people would find a near-infinite aural loop for a score wildly annoying, but those rules go out of the window here. Carpenter's musical composition is without a doubt the emotional Crux of the entire film. If you pay close attention, the never-ending score evolves constantly with a precisely foreboding subtlety, and it is in this evolution that the viewers nerves are subsequently unrattled with that same deftful subtlety, until you reach a later point in the film and realize just what the script's philosophical implications about the duality of human morality are and how our free will is weaponized against us to bring about our own ultimate destruction. It's almost as if Carpenter is some sort of synthesizer-sorcerer or audio-alchemist with the way he embodies that good vs evil battle so perfectly in POD's soundtrack.part from all that praise, the truth of the matter is that I absolutely love Carpenter's script and premise with Prince of Darkness. It's a refreshingly original stroke of genius to delineate the battle of good and evil in subatomic terms and theory. The idea that, if God truly exists, than so too must an Anti-God exist--in the same way that antimatter exists solely to annihilate matter to keep the universe balanced.The StudioCanal 4k region free release is as sweet as it gets. I've already watched the movie three times since buying it very recently and I can't speak highly enough about how effective the HDR10 is in bringing the aging church structure to life, or how the vial of green Anti-God particulates looks so real that you could reach in and grab it right off the screen if you so dared. The colors are intense with a moderate HDR PEAK value and a color restoration that was painstaking in its immensely vibrant detail. It's one of the best available 4K transfers for any Carpenter film.Every true horror buff should watch Prince of Darkness. Carpenter in his cinematic prime was unbeatable, and POD helps cement that veracity in stone
R**R
Great classic Carpenter
I'm a big fan of horror movies and have a special place for John Carpenter. He has directed some of my favorite movies including Big Trouble in Little China and Escape from New York. While Big Trouble in Little China (known as BTiLC after this) has a more action comic feel, Escape from New York (EfNY) has a very dark world where action comes and goes between a very simple sound track. It was much later that I found BTiLC was actually out of the norm for Carpenter while EfNY was more of his trademark style. Years later a close friend suggested I check out Prince of Darkness, only telling me the story is done really really well.After watching this the first time, I kinda of briefly remember the movie but as with most movies you seen as a child, don't recall the impact it really had. Sitting over the full movie, I was really surprised on the story, the great casting (if many characters returned for BTiLC) and just the slow burn of the movie. I don't want to give away the movie, but the core story line is a liquid which is found in an old church that has some relations to a dark spiritual force.As the movie progresses, you start to get a sense on how bad things start to get and soon, the movie switches into a sort of zombie invasion fortress defense. While I have seen many horror movies, this movie is one that truly scares me and just the flash backs are enough to keep this off my night time watch list. Granted the movie is from the 80's so the effects appear dated, it's still fun to watch. The use of a water tank is very creative to simulate a another dimension.
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