Prince of Darkness (1987)

Prince of Darkness (1987): written and directed by John Carpenter (writer's credit to 'Martin Quatermass'); starring Donald Pleasence (Priest), Jameson Parker (Brian Marsh), Victor Wong (Professor Birack), Lisa Blount (Catherine Danforth), and Dennis Dun (Walter): 

John Carpenter's ode to cosmic horror also nods to Nigel Kneale's quintessential 1950's BBC Quatermass serials that became movies in the 1950's and 1960's, most specifically Quatermass and the Pit, aka Five Million Years to Earth. It's not just the subject matter of Prince of Darkness that cues us to the Quatermass connection. Carpenter adopts the pseudonym 'Martin Quatermass' for the screenplay.

The quantum physics is completely ludicrous if you've done any reading in the subject at all. Especially as we're shown what is supposed to be a graduate class in theoretical physics. But Carpenter is pitching his cosmic horror to a general audience, so we'll give him a pass. I'm not sure I can give him a pass on Jameson Parker's mustache, though, or his character's early, stalkery behaviour. Oh well. We don't always get Kurt Russell as the protagonist of a John Carpenter film. But we should!

Basically, there's a jar of liquid Satan in the basement of an old church in Los Angeles. The last keeper-priest of the church has died. Even the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy has forgotten about the church, the secret order named The Brotherhood of Sleep, and, you know, JAR OF SATAN. 

JAR OF SATAN

The great Donald Pleasence, named only 'Priest' in the credits, travels to meet with quantum physicist Victor Wong. The RCC wants scientific proof that the Jar of Satan is actually a Jar of Satan before they proceed with trying to avert the rapidly approaching apocalypse.

Why is the apocalypse coming? Well, the Satan Jar seems to be awake and trying to either escape the jar or reincarnate itself somehow.

Shenanigans ensue over the course of one bad weekend with the Jar of Satan. Certain things are underwhelming, but the underlying pseudo-scientific explanation for evil -- that it was an invading force for another universe -- is suitably cosmic and disturbing. 

Kudos also to Carpenter for being here and in other films far ahead of the Hollywood curve in hiring Asian-Americans in non-traditional roles. It's an underlooked trait of his oeuvre. Also, Victor Wong is always hilarious, even when he's explaining Quantum Physics for Dummies. Highly recommended.

The Quatermass XPeriment: The Creeping Unknown (1955)

The giant teddy bear is not in the movie.

The Quatermass XPeriment: The Creeping Unknown (1955): adapted by Richard Landau and Val Guest from the BBC miniseries by Nigel Kneale; directed by Val Guest; starring Brian Donlevy (professor Bernard Quatermass), Jack Warner (DCI Lomax), Margia Dean (Mrs. Carroon), David King-Wood (Dr. Briscoe), and Richard Wordsworth (Astronaut Victor Carroon): 

Moody, atmospheric Hammer Studios science-fiction/horror adapted from the hugely popular Nigel Kneale BBC miniseries. The studio wanted an American to play Professor Quatermass, so the brusque Brian Donlevy plays the Professor as a brusque, semi-sociopathic scientist. He's pretty good, though I prefer Scottish Andrew Keir's more thoughtful Quatermass of Five Million Years to Earth, a dozen years later from Hammer.

Quatermass and his British Rocket Team (The Ministry of Space?) send three British astronauts into space, apparently without securing any government approval. The ship comes back. But only one astronaut is on board, and he's almost catatonic. Oops.

What follows is escalating horror, for the most part deftly done within the censorship and visual effects limitations of 1955. Nonetheless, The Quatermass Xperiment got an 'X' rating from the British censors for being too scary for children; Hammer simply altered the title to capitalize on this fact. In the US, the movie would be called The Creeping Unknown, another good title.

The actors have that committed, mostly low-key quality peculiar to the British. Even what appears to be a comical moment with a thickly accented pseudo-Cockney turns suddenly to dread and horror. Donlevy is good as Quatermass, who has to save humanity from the peril he himself has put it in.

Val Guest really achieves multiple creepy moments by emphasizing the aftermath of a monster's rampages, especially in the ruins of a London zoo. It's a worthy piece of horror, with Quatermass' final words supplying an augmentation of that horror which further Kneale serials and Hammer adaptations wouldn't follow: Quatermass would be humanity's defender after this, a sort of human, proto-Doctor-Who figure. Highly recommended.

Five Million Years to Earth (1967)

Five Million Years to Earth (aka Quatermass and the Pit) (1967): written by Nigel Kneale, based on the BBC miniseries of the same name; directed by Roy Ward Baker; starring James Donald (Dr. Roney), Andrew Keir (Prof. Bernard Quatermass), Barbara Shelley (Barbara Judd),  and Julian Glover (Colonel Breen): British writer Nigel Kneale created three television serials for the BBC back in the 1950's featuring British rocket scientist Bernard Quatermass, a sort of proto-Doctor-Who figure, albeit a fallible, human one.

All three serials, along with a fourth starring John Mills in the early 1980's, pitted Quatermass and company against various alien invasions of the British Isles. This 1960's Hammer Film was based on the third Quatermass serial, Quatermass and the Pit, in which the excavation of a site in London, England for a new subway line uncovers strangely deformed ancient human skeletons and the remains of what appears to be an alien spaceship.

History reports that strange occurences plagued the site whenever digging or some other form of vibration took place over hundreds of years. And something does indeed seem to be waking up. Will the military and the government do something incredibly stupid, leaving the fate of the planet in the hands of Quatermass and his dedicated scientist friends? What do you think?

This is a very English science-fiction movie in many ways, not least of which is Kneale's WWII-enhanced concern with fascism at home and abroad -- and the fear that fascistic group-think can overcome anyone, no matter how intelligent or empathetic that person normally is. We're the Nazis now.

Five Million Years to Earth is a well-done movie, small of budget but big on ideas and weirdness. It's one of a relatively small number of old science fiction movies that could be improved with just a few minutes of good visual effects, as a key visual effects sequence has to be explained at length to the viewer for any sense to be made of it. However, there's also a truly disturbing visual effects shot towards the end that I don't think modern CGI could capture, simply because modern CGI tends to go for the overly detailed literal rather than the suggestively obscure. In any event, highly recommended.