SOURCE: Wilmington, Michael. “A Jumbled Prince of Darkness.” Los Angeles Times (23 October 1987): section 6, p. 23.

In the following review, Wilmington asserts that Prince of Darkness is implausible and excessive, but notes that the film is directed with visual elegance.

In Prince of Darkness, John Carpenter seems to be hovering between cold-eyed mechanical fear-making and horror camp. The movie deals with cataclysmic possibilities—the destruction of the world and the triumph of Hell—in a peculiarly light-headed way, with a premise that jumbles together Night of the Living Dead, The Omen and Carpenter's own The Thing.

Throughout, it alternates between a bogeyman solemnity and a forced humor that makes you wonder if the wilder jokes are always intentional. What can you make of the scene where a zombified black student clumps up a staircase, giggling hysterically and singing “Amazing Grace”? Or the movie's symbol of ultimate evil: a cylindrical canister...