I’ve been watching John Carpenter’s Apocalypse Trilogy and these are my thoughts.
I’m a fan of Carpenter’s work but I’m not a fanboy. I’m not blind to his film making faults. So here we go.
Three unrelated movies they might be, but they have a common theme and that’s the end of the world, not with a bang but through gradual decay of what we perceive to be reality.
The movies are: The Thing, Prince Of Darkness and In The Mouth Of Madness. They might seem very different from each other but strip away the flesh and you find very similar skeletons underneath. They all, for instance, rely on a claustrophobic atmosphere to up the ante. Trapped and isolated in Antarctica with an alien able to mimic any living thing in the case of The Thing. Trapped in an old, abandoned church with the threat of an anti-god seeking to break into our world in the case of Prince Of Darkness. Or trapped in a small, New England town populated by crazies with seemingly no way out.
The Thing works very well. It stays reasonably close to its source material and has a pretty good dynamic running through the various characters. Suspicion and terror are rife and grow almost exponentially as the threat of what this creature could accomplish if it ever reached civilisation is revealed. It could absorb and replicate every man, woman and child it comes into contact with until there is nothing left of the Human race. Not only that, but if it ever managed to replicate an aquatic animal or maybe a bird, it could make its own way to civilisation. The tension builds until, by the end of the movie, even the audience can’t be sure who is human and who is not.
The threat of the end of the world comes with a creeping, gradual subversion. When will our reality be gone? Extrapolating, we would reach a point in the future when nobody knows if they are the only human left. Do they even know that they are an alien copy? This film bites into our sense of self. It shakes our notion of who we are and attacks all that makes us feel real.
The Thing, in my opinion, stands alongside Alien and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (a movie with a very similar premise) as the pinnacle of Science Fiction horror of its time. One of Carpenter’s great triumphs in movie making.
Moving swiftly along….Prince Of Darkness. This is a film that seeks to fit our concept of godhood and the embodiment of good or evil into our world with the aid quantum mechanics. As in the anti particles of quantum physics, we have the idea of an anti god seeking to enter our reality.
It starts off well enough as our heroes/heroines gather in the old church where, hidden from the eyes of ordinary folk, the Catholic Church has guarded a container filled with what can only be described as the essence of evil.
Unfortunately, the movie tapers off halfway through into a hack-fest. A fighting retreat from room to room ensues as the servants of this evil, intent on fulfilling their purpose, attack the ever dwindling band of investigators. We know that if the anti-god can be brought into our reality, it’s the end for all of us.
At this point, with all the panic and fighting to survive mindless minions, it has more in common with Night Of The Living Dead than Quatermass (which, apparently was the inspiration for this film). It’s a film I kind of enjoy but wish it could be better. I get the distinct impression that Carpenter started off with a good idea but just couldn’t seem to develop it enough. Any of us who have tried our hand at a bit of writing can relate to this.
In its favour, I think it carries some interesting observations. It challenges reality by showing how those with power and influence (in this case, the anti-god) can manipulate and control those who do not. They can do this to such an extent that it appears to change what we see as reality. Even in our own times, this comment is still all too relevant. Carpenter revisited and developed this idea further in his wonderful dark SF comedy They Live.
Overall, interesting but a lot of unfulfilled potential in Prince Of Darkness.
In The Mouth Of Madness.
An insurance investigator is tasked with finding a missing writer and his manuscript that is due for publication. Strange happenings ensue in this nod to all things Lovecraftian. He eventually finds himself in a weird little town not on any map. By mid-movie, he constantly seeks to leave Hobb’s End but always ends up back there.
From the old hotel owner with her naked husband chained to her ankle to all the weird little kids and ever changing painting, we know that this is a new reality. And this, of course, is the theme. Reality is a consensus fed by what we know and learn. Information. It is, in essence, what we agree it to be and if we decide to agree it’s different then different it becomes. That change comes by reading the book and seeing the world in a different light. The more people that read the book, the more things change. As the world slowly morphs into the book that, by now, millions are reading, moral decay and panic ensue. The end comes through, not only the physical horrors unleashed but at the hands of our own subsequent madness.
I think, like Prince Of Darkness doesn’t quite deliver but it’s certainly not a bad movie.
For all their faults Prince Of Darkness and In The Mouth Of Madness are still worth watching and it’s interesting watching all three back to back because it does help see and understand the common thread running through them.
Most folk consider Halloween his best and I can see why. It practically started its own genre. But for me, The Thing is Carpenter’s true masterpiece.
I’m a fan of Carpenter’s work but I’m not a fanboy. I’m not blind to his film making faults. So here we go.
Three unrelated movies they might be, but they have a common theme and that’s the end of the world, not with a bang but through gradual decay of what we perceive to be reality.
The movies are: The Thing, Prince Of Darkness and In The Mouth Of Madness. They might seem very different from each other but strip away the flesh and you find very similar skeletons underneath. They all, for instance, rely on a claustrophobic atmosphere to up the ante. Trapped and isolated in Antarctica with an alien able to mimic any living thing in the case of The Thing. Trapped in an old, abandoned church with the threat of an anti-god seeking to break into our world in the case of Prince Of Darkness. Or trapped in a small, New England town populated by crazies with seemingly no way out.
The Thing works very well. It stays reasonably close to its source material and has a pretty good dynamic running through the various characters. Suspicion and terror are rife and grow almost exponentially as the threat of what this creature could accomplish if it ever reached civilisation is revealed. It could absorb and replicate every man, woman and child it comes into contact with until there is nothing left of the Human race. Not only that, but if it ever managed to replicate an aquatic animal or maybe a bird, it could make its own way to civilisation. The tension builds until, by the end of the movie, even the audience can’t be sure who is human and who is not.
The threat of the end of the world comes with a creeping, gradual subversion. When will our reality be gone? Extrapolating, we would reach a point in the future when nobody knows if they are the only human left. Do they even know that they are an alien copy? This film bites into our sense of self. It shakes our notion of who we are and attacks all that makes us feel real.
The Thing, in my opinion, stands alongside Alien and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (a movie with a very similar premise) as the pinnacle of Science Fiction horror of its time. One of Carpenter’s great triumphs in movie making.
Moving swiftly along….Prince Of Darkness. This is a film that seeks to fit our concept of godhood and the embodiment of good or evil into our world with the aid quantum mechanics. As in the anti particles of quantum physics, we have the idea of an anti god seeking to enter our reality.
It starts off well enough as our heroes/heroines gather in the old church where, hidden from the eyes of ordinary folk, the Catholic Church has guarded a container filled with what can only be described as the essence of evil.
Unfortunately, the movie tapers off halfway through into a hack-fest. A fighting retreat from room to room ensues as the servants of this evil, intent on fulfilling their purpose, attack the ever dwindling band of investigators. We know that if the anti-god can be brought into our reality, it’s the end for all of us.
At this point, with all the panic and fighting to survive mindless minions, it has more in common with Night Of The Living Dead than Quatermass (which, apparently was the inspiration for this film). It’s a film I kind of enjoy but wish it could be better. I get the distinct impression that Carpenter started off with a good idea but just couldn’t seem to develop it enough. Any of us who have tried our hand at a bit of writing can relate to this.
In its favour, I think it carries some interesting observations. It challenges reality by showing how those with power and influence (in this case, the anti-god) can manipulate and control those who do not. They can do this to such an extent that it appears to change what we see as reality. Even in our own times, this comment is still all too relevant. Carpenter revisited and developed this idea further in his wonderful dark SF comedy They Live.
Overall, interesting but a lot of unfulfilled potential in Prince Of Darkness.
In The Mouth Of Madness.
An insurance investigator is tasked with finding a missing writer and his manuscript that is due for publication. Strange happenings ensue in this nod to all things Lovecraftian. He eventually finds himself in a weird little town not on any map. By mid-movie, he constantly seeks to leave Hobb’s End but always ends up back there.
From the old hotel owner with her naked husband chained to her ankle to all the weird little kids and ever changing painting, we know that this is a new reality. And this, of course, is the theme. Reality is a consensus fed by what we know and learn. Information. It is, in essence, what we agree it to be and if we decide to agree it’s different then different it becomes. That change comes by reading the book and seeing the world in a different light. The more people that read the book, the more things change. As the world slowly morphs into the book that, by now, millions are reading, moral decay and panic ensue. The end comes through, not only the physical horrors unleashed but at the hands of our own subsequent madness.
I think, like Prince Of Darkness doesn’t quite deliver but it’s certainly not a bad movie.
For all their faults Prince Of Darkness and In The Mouth Of Madness are still worth watching and it’s interesting watching all three back to back because it does help see and understand the common thread running through them.
Most folk consider Halloween his best and I can see why. It practically started its own genre. But for me, The Thing is Carpenter’s true masterpiece.
