YMMV / Prince of Darkness

• Awesome Music:
  • It's a John Carpenter film. Are you not surprised?
  • Alice Cooper himself also got in the act by composing a theme song for the movie (in which he also acts). The song can be briefly heard through the headphones of one of the scientists though it was only released the next year after the film's release by Cooper.
• Broken Base: This is one of the most divisive Carpenter film. Some fans will go as far as to say it is one of his best, while others will say it is one of his weakest.
• Complete Monster: Satan, though terrifyingly eldritch, is still recognizably evil as the titular Prince of Darkness. Introduced as a Leaking Can of Evil, Satan possesses dozens of people, from the homeless to college students, and compels them into homicide and insanity for the purpose of freeing him from his seal. Satan uses some of the only moments it has for dialogue for mocking the heroes on their impending doom at the hands of its apocalyptic father, The Anti-God, gloating that "you will not be saved!"
• Fan Nickname: Father Loomis for Donald Pleasence's character. He's even called that in the DVD subtitles.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • One of the characters gets impaled on a bike, a death which stuck out to many as bizarre and a little amusing even when it wasn't meant to. One has to wonder if this is where Steven Heck got the idea.
  • Kelly jokes to Catherine about the use of "a wreath of garlic, a benediction, a crucifix". All these things are common items used to defeat vampires. Years later, John Carpenter directed Vampires.
• Memetic Mutation: You may have seen that animated GIF where a mustachioed man wakes up from his bed all nervous and sweaty, turns around and screams in horror after seeing (X)... well, it comes from this film!
• Narm:
  • As painful as it looks, impalement by bicycle is a pretty stupid way to go.
  • More than a few reviews during its release stated it was hard to take a barrel of green goo seriously as a scary villain.
  • "You will not be saved by the Holy Ghost. You will not be saved by the god Plutonium," is an unnerving pair of lines. Concluding with "YOU WILL NOT BE SAVED AT ALL!" with all-caps and exclamation mark included comes across like liquid Satan is sending an angry text message.
  • Some of the Special Effects Failure in the climax, as well as the climax itself, can draw laughs. The moment in which Satan telekinetically traps the priest behind a closet is particularly silly, as it just looks like he merely placed the closet in front of him. The priest later screaming "Christ will win!" when throwing the axe towards the mirror doesn't help.
  • The last words on the main page when you know that Caca is also a French word for poop.
• Narm Charm:
  • Calder continuously Laughing Mad after being possessed can be a bit silly given his rather over the top facial expressions, but it’s equally unnerving considering he’s desperately trying to fight back against the mind control.
  • Dennis Dun's irreverent performance as Walter, which is very similar to his role in Big Trouble in Little China, even though this is a much more serious movie. He sometimes serves as successfully off-kilter comic relief and other times feels like he wandered in from a completely different movie while everyone else is taking things seriously.
• One-Scene Wonder: Alice Cooper doesn’t get that much screen time as the leader of the possessed homeless people, but he makes a big impression.
• Questionable Casting: In a good way. Alice Cooper plays the lead murderous hobo, who does very little except look creepy and attack the heroes. Why famed musician Alice Cooper? Well, the film's executive producer Shep Gordon (subject of Mike Myers's documentary Supermensch) was and indeed still is Cooper's manager.
• Values Dissonance: The "Walter is gay" jokes have aged like milk, and some of the male scientists' treatment of their female colleagues comes off less like amusing hijinks and more like harassment to a 21st-century audience.
• Vindicated by History: Like most of Carpenter's films, it has amassed quite the following. Getting a Collector's Edition release by Scream Factory certainly helps.
• The Woobie: Several of the students, but most notably Calder, an earnest guy, who is excited at the possibility of uncovering "the universal truth", gets possessed, clearly retains a lot of self-awareness and utterly fails in his attempt at Dying as Yourself.

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