Prince of Darkness

   1) Title given to SATAN and BELIAL. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, Belial is appointed by God to corrupt and to serve as “the prince of the dominion of wickedness.” He is followed by the children of falsehood. The Prince of Darkness also is the Angel of Death.

   2) Prince of Darkness (1987)

   Horror film written and directed by John Carpenter, about the attempt of SATAN to release the ultimate evil into the world. In writing the script, Carpenter sought to merge the idea of evil with the physics of matter and antimatter. The film is regarded as one of the creepiest good-versus-evil horror films. Donald Pleasance stars as Father Loomis, who, with other priests, has discovered a mysterious large glass cylinder in the basement of an abandoned church in Los Angeles. The cylinder contains a swirling green liquid. Loomis invites a college professor, Howard Birack (Victor Wong), to investigate. Birack arrives with a team of students, who tackle the problem via physics. They learn from a text that the liquid is actually Satan himself, and he is the son of an even more evil force, an anti-God, who is trapped in another dimension. If released from the cylinder, Satan will seek an interdimensional portal to draw his father through into the world.

   The liquid begins spilling out of the cylinder, enabling Satan to take POSSESSION of the students one by one. Once possessed, they turn on the others. There are swarms of insects. The students are prevented from fleeing the church, which comes under siege by an army of possessed people outside. In addition, they share a chilling dream, a warning sent back in time from the year 1999, in which a fragment of video shows a dark figure emerging from the church. A voice repeats, “Warning, this is not a dream.” One possessed student tries to draw the anti-God through a MIRROR portal, but the mirror is too small and the attempt fails. The student finds a larger mirror and begins to draw the hand of Satan’s father through it. He is tackled by Catherine Danforth (Lisa Blount), another student, and both fall into the mirror and the portal. The priest shatters the mirror, trapping everyone, including the satanic Father, inside.

   The evil is dispelled. The possessed students die, the unpossessed recover, and the possessed crowd disperses. Later, Danforth’s lover, Brian Marsh, also one of the investigators (Jameson Parker), has the recurring dream again, except that the dark figure that emerges from the church is recognizable as a possessed Danforth. Still dreaming, he rolls over in bed to find Danforth in the form of Satan lying beside him. He awakens screaming and goes to his bedroom mirror, touching it as the film ends.