Truly and Purely Evil:
A Look at Pure Evil in the Work of John Carpenter
by
Max McPike
“And the Prince of Darkness was himself sealed, that old life, called the Devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.” Looking across the career of filmmaker John Carpenter, his films often feature an unstoppable entity of pure evil, which in Prince of Darkness (1987) reaches unsurpassable heights. I will use Prince to explore its aspects of pure evil, for which I will then explore and compare similar elements in Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) and The Thing (1982). What is pure evil? Whether it is a street gang or Satan himself; in Carpenter’s world pure evil is anything and everywhere.
In Prince of Darkness, a priest (Donald Pleasance) discovers a canister of swirling green liquid in the basement of an abandoned church. With the help of a group of researchers they soon discover that encapsulated in the canister is Satan himself. Carpenter provides an immensely interesting back-story through the translation of an ancient text found near the canister. Lisa (Ann Yen) reveals that the canister was buried long ago in the Middle East by a god—the father of Satan—“who walked the earth before man” and “was somehow banished to the dark side. And within the container was his son. Dr. Leahy (Peter Jason) asks the priest how this was kept a secret for so many years, for which he reveals “a decision was made to characterize pure evil as a spiritual force, even within the darkness and hearts of men…substance, malevolence…that was the truth…asleep until now.” His statement raises a number of questions concerning the origins of evil. Does this imply that evil as a spiritual force and its potential within each of us was never there?—that there is no original sin? Is the liquid in the jar the original and one true evil aside from Satan’s father? If this is so than how do we account for all the evil in the world? The film offers no explanation for these sorts of questions. The information is simply hinted at through exposition and the character’s conclusions are only conjecture.
As the entity gains in power it is able to drain itself upwards from the container forming a pool on the ceiling surface, which spews into the mouth of Susan (Anne Howard) infecting her. Under the possession of the green liquid she is able to orally infect several of the others who too become possessed. Some may wonder how it was able to drain itself from the container, but Susan’s spectrograms revealed an elaborate locking mechanism that can only be opened from the inside. It also exerts its power indirectly through the control of nature. Worms are seen covering the windows of the church while beetles crawl over those possessed. This same exertion of power is used to control a horde of street people who surround and barricade the church. Those that attempt to leave are killed, such as Etchinson (Thom Bray) who is impaled with a bicycle by the leader of the street people (Alice Cooper). The question that remains though is how the entity was able to attain its power after laying dormant for so many years.
The priest argues that it is our disbelief and “stubborn faith in common sense” that empowered him (the entity) and allowed for his deception upon the world. What if it was our faith that kept him at bay, while our decline in faith granted him his power? The susceptibility of the street people to his influence I would attribute to their being weak minded and as Anna Powell notes, their “social and mental marginality (Powell 147).” The fact that they are homeless and likely mentally ill points to Carpenter’s utter hatred of former US President Ronald Reagan. As governor of California, Reagan systematically shut down a number of mental hospitals and cut federally-funded aid for mental health programs. As a result, the homeless population in California dramatically increased in the ‘70s and ‘80s and many mentally ill people were put on the streets (“Ronald Reagan”).
However, the priest also says that “in the atoms…smaller…invisible…he lives in all of it—the sum of its parts.” Lisa’s translations also reveal that Christ “was of extraterrestrial ancestry, but a human like race” who came to warn us. It is determined that he is crazy, “but [is] converting a lot of people to his beliefs,” so he is killed. “But, his disciples keep the secret and hide it from civilization until man could develop a science sophisticated enough to prove what Christ was saying.” If the priest is right in the idea that evil lives “in the atoms” and that a science was needed to prove what Christ was saying; is pure evil a force of nature? We’ve seen its ability to control and possess people, but does that mean its powers are naturally occurring? If science can prove its existence, then it must operate on a sub-atomic level. This would explain its ability to possess people via the green liquid, as well as its influence over nature and anyone in close proximity of it. But, if science can prove its existence, than science can possibly stop it.
The characters soon find out that Kelly (Susan Blanchard) has been chosen as a host for Satan so that he may bring his father back from the dark side. Professor Birack (Victor Wong) theorizes that…
…there is a universal mind controlling everything; a god willing the behavior of every subatomic particle. Now, every particle has an anti-particle. It’s mirror image. It’s negative side. Maybe this universal mind resides in the mirror image instead of our universe as we wanted to believe. Maybe he’s anti-god; bringing darkness instead of light.
This seems to imply that even as gods they operate at an atomic level, thus indicating that they may in fact be life forms, but likely of great omnipotent power. Birack’s theory turns out to be correct as Satan/Kelly utilizes a mirror to bring his father into the world of light, for which we are briefly able to see the dark side as he reaches in and takes hold of his father’s hand. Aside from a few glimpses of murky darkness we are never able to see the dark side, which leaves us to wonder if it is in fact a mirror image of our side. Just as his father’s hand reaches our side, Catherine (Lisa Blount) tackles Satan/Kelly causing them all to fall through the portal, which is then sealed as the priest breaks the mirror. While Birack’s theory regarding the mirror was correct, we are still left to wonder whether Satan’s father would have been able to destroy God had he crossed over. When we look at Prince in relation to Carpenter’s previous films we are able to see where many of its elements are derived from.
In Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13, a closing police station nestled within an empty inner-city neighborhood comes under siege by a street gang seeking death and possibly revenge. While an action film first and foremost, his depiction of the gang is almost supernatural by comparison and paints them as a seemingly unstoppable entity. They use silencers to cover their noise and hide all evidence of their activities, as well as using the surroundings to their advantage by hiding in the shadows and using cars for shields. This is echoed in Prince as the entity uses the surroundings to its advantage by exerting control over the street people, as well as nature in the form of ants, beetles, and worms. As mentioned earlier, one of the street people uses a bicycle to murder one of the researchers. Assault’s similarity to Night of the Living Dead (1968) is where much of the supernatural comparison comes into play, for the gang surrounds the precinct and kills those who attempt to leave, just like the street people. Like the church in Prince, the precinct in Assault is soon to be abandoned and those trapped inside lack any means of contacting the outside world.
As the gang descends upon the precinct they are unrelenting in their attack and never fall behind in numbers despite casualties. Prince takes this to new heights in that the characters become trapped inside with their antagonist, which spreads itself through the oral exchange of its liquid form by those possessed by it. The gang’s supernatural quality also derives from their lack of emotion (and motivation) which is typified in the scene when the White Warlord (Frank Doubleday) kills an ice-cream driver (Peter Bruni) without any mercy or remorse and nonchalantly shoots the young girl Kathy (Kim Richards). Unlike the other gang members who run away after being chased by Kathy’s father (Martin West) the White Warlord briefly remains seated before casually getting out of the car. He reacts unfazed to getting shot and looks at his wound as though it were nothing. He eventually drops dead after being shot a number of times by the father. Three of the gang members even approach the station with declaration that they are unafraid of dying. Their lack of emotion is echoed in the street people who for the most part stare crazily ahead as they stand surrounding the church.
In his essay “A Siege Mentality?” Steve Smith describes the gang in Assault as “palpably ‘other,’ anonymous, psychopathic and amoral,” and that “Carpenter reduces…a pressing social problem [into an] abstract status of evil villainy (Smith 39).” With Assault I feel its depiction of the gang is a device to move the story forward and that whatever commentary arises from it is not the film’s intent. While Carpenter does the same to a degree regarding the street people in Prince, his output of films in the ‘80s are marked with an anti-Reagan attitude. So, while the street people are among the film’s villains the government is to blame for their situation—not to mention that they are be used by a malevolent entity. Susan A. Philips notes that the “association with criminality and random violence” has likened the gang to a ‘frightful organism—a cancer feeding off the body of society, spreading like a fungus to destroy itself and everything it touches (Smith 39).’ This is shown through the emptiness of the neighborhood, in which all that was once thriving has been destroyed by the gang(s). “Frightful organism” can also describe the entity in Prince, which spreads itself like a disease by those possessed, and the consequences of it succeeding in its plans are catastrophic (Smith 39). With Halloween (1978), many believe that Carpenter achieved ultimate evil in the form of the unrelenting killer Michael Meyers, but Carpenter took it to new heights in his remake of The Thing.
The film concerns an Antarctic research team who encounter a malevolent shape-shifting alien capable of imitating the life forms it assimilates. Prince derives many of its elements from the film, such as being trapped with the very entity that is laying siege and its infectious spread. Shortly before his death, Fuchs (Joel Polis) postulates to Mac (Kurt Russell) that “a small particle of [the] thing” may be “enough to take over an entire organism.” Later, when the infected Norris is being burned its head detaches itself and grows spider legs with the intent of escape. In order to determine who is and isn’t infected Mac initiates a blood a test. He says:
Watching Norris in there gave me the idea that maybe every part of him was a whole; every little piece was an individual animal with a built in desire to protect its own life. You see when a man bleeds it’s just tissue. One blood from one of you things won’t obey when it’s attacked—it’ll try and survive; crawl away from a hot needle just the same.
Mac is ultimately correct when Palmer’s (David Clennon) blood jumps from the petri dish screaming. Before its demise, the Palmer-thing manages to infect Windows (Thomas Waites) as it thrashes him about the room. The infectious nature of the alien also presents end of the world consequences. Blair’s (Wilford Brimley) computer program projects that if it were to reach civilized areas, the entire world population would be infected 27,000 hours from first contact. This sends Blair into a frenzy resulting in him destroying the radio equipment, the helicopter, and one of the snow vehicles. As dire as the situation is in The Thing, it comes in second in terms of the ultimate evil.
What makes the entity in Prince of Darkness the ultimate evil? In the end the gang in Assault is human and driven away by the arrival of police reinforcements. The three surviving protagonists live to see another day. The thing’s infectious nature makes it a formidable opponent, but is capable of being destroyed by fire. The film ends with Mac and Childs (Keith David) sitting amidst the burning camp in below freezing weather. They have managed to destroy the thing, but at the cost of their lives. However, we are left with doubt regarding the thing’s destruction with this exchange between the characters:
Childs
How will we make it?
MacReady
Maybe we shouldn’t.
Childs
If you’re worried about me—
MacReady
If we got any surprises for each other, I don’t think we’re in much shape to do anything about it.
Childs
What’ll we do?
MacReady
Let’s just wait here a while—see what happens.
The ending of the film is debatable, but is arguably left open-ended for the audience to decide—not to mention that there still remains a means of combating the organism.
In addition to the entity’s controlling and possessive capabilities, the end of the world consequences are taken to even greater extremes in Prince, for should the father of Satan cross over from the dark side into ours it would mean the destruction of God and conceivably all life as we know it. The characters have only one chance of preventing this and we the audience feel the weight of the situation. The researchers are also pervaded by a recurring dream of what looks to be a video transmission accompanied by a static voice showing a dark figure standing in the entrance of the church. The priest reveals that anyone within close enough proximity of the church has the same dream. A static voice reveals:
This is not a dream…not a dream. We are using your brain's electrical system as a receiver. We are unable to transmit through conscious neural interference. You are receiving this broadcast as a dream. We are transmitting from the year one—nine—nine—nine. You are receiving this broadcast in order to alter the events you are seeing. Our technology has not developed a transmitter strong enough to reach your conscious state of awareness, but this is not a dream. You are seeing what is actually occurring for the purpose of causality violation.
In the end the protagonists are ultimately unsuccessful, for even after the mirror is sealed Brian (Jameson Parker) has another dream, only this time the figure in the church doorway is Catherine. We can assume that she was somehow utilized by the entity to re-enter our world. The film ends with Brian reaching toward a mirror before going to black. One could argue that because they are receiving another dream there is another chance of preventing the crossover. On the contrary, the fact that it is now Catherine in the dream demonstrates that what they are up against is an unbreakable cycle and inevitably cannot be defeated.
Using Prince of Darkness, I was able to explore its aspects of pure evil, for which I then explored and compared similar elements in Assault on Precinct 13 and The Thing. Professor Birack argues that “we’ve sought to impose order on the universe,” but “we’ve discovered [that] while order does exist in the universe, it is not at all what we had in mind.” The ultimate in pure evil was something we definitely did not have in mind.
Works Cited
Assault On Precinct 13. Dir. John Carpenter. Perf. Austin Stoker, Darwin Joston, Laurie
Zimmer, Tony Burton, and Nancy Loomis. Image Entertainment, 1976. DVD.
Halloween. Dir. John Carpenter. Perf. Donald Pleasance, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nancy Loomis, P.J.
Soles, and Charles Cyphers. Compass International Pictures, 1978. Film.
Night of the Living Dead. Dir. George A. Romero. Perf. Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea, Marilyn
Eastman, Keith Wayne, and Judith Riley. Image Ten, 1968. Film.
Powell, Anna. ‘Something Came Leaking Out’: Carpenter’s Unholy Abominations. Ed. Ian
Conrich and David Woods. Wallflower Press: Great Britain, 2004. 140-154.
Prince Of Darkness. Dir. John Carpenter. Perf. Donald Pleasance, Jameson Parker, Victor Wong,
Lisa Blount, and Dennis Dun. Universal Pictures, 1987. DVD.
“Ronald Reagan: The Bad and the Ugly.” Daily Nugget San Francisco, 8 June. 2004. Web. 7 Mar. 2012.
Smith, Steve. “A Siege Mentality? Form and Ideology in Carpenter’s Early Siege Films.” Ed. Ian
Conrich and David Woods. Wallflower Press: Great Britain, 2004. 35-48. Print.
The Thing. Dir. John Carpenter. Perf. Kurt Russell, A. Wilford Brimley, Donald Moffat, Keith
David, and T.K. Carter. Universal Pictures, 1982. DVD.
