Director: John Carpenter
Starring: Donald Pleasence, Victor Wong, Lisa Blount, Jameson Parker
Running Time: 101 minutes
Running Time: 101 minutes
Synopsis: In the underground chamber of a semi-abandoned Los Angeles church, a priest (Donald Pleasence) discovers ancient writings and a canister filled with a swirling green liquid. Fearing an impending cataclysmic event, the priest calls upon quantum physicist Professor Howard Birack (Victor Wong) and his college students, including lovers Brian and Catherine (Jameson Parker and Lisa Blount), to study the canister and decipher the writings. The church is soon surrounded by slimy creatures and violent homeless people, while the green liquid activates to turn the amateur detectives into agents of evil.
What Works Well: Director and writer John Carpenter achieves a reasonable state-of-siege ambience, and the ominous but simple music score (co-composed by Carpenter) adds to the sense of mounting danger. The make-up and special effects are capable, while judicious humour lightens the mood. By far the best idea on display (and unfortunately shortchanged) is a suitably unsettling and spooky dream sequence.
What Does Not Work As Well: The student characters are bland to the point of irrelevant irritation, not helped by an underpowered cast. Donald Pleasence and Victor Wong do their best as the elder statesmen, but they are defeated by script full of religious and scientific bafflegab. Given the grandiose return-of-the-devil premise, too much time is spent in stock one-victim-at-a-time slasher territory, while the resolution defeats 7 million years of anticipation with a nudge.
Conclusion: A devil less intimidating than Michael Myers has a real problem.
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