There’s so many good posters out there, I had to have Steve make one and throw one into the hat. He had troubles with Donald Pleasance’ face so I went with this woodcut that covers it up :

It’s hard for me write about my favorite movies since most of the time I write cheap crap about cheap crap movies and maybe we have a good time and maybe you don’t but I try and maybe we swing from the rafters and drink to the dead just like Clutch told us to or maybe you just have some French onion soup over there at the corner table and demurely read the local city magazine with a spoon in one hand and a long, smoky cigarette in the other or maybe someone gets the spirit and runs up and down the street naked or maybe someone just nods off over there by the fireplace after writing notes in a leather notebook for hours – one of those hand bound jobs – or maybe someone makes out behind the hutch or drinks beer in the walk in refrigerator or any number of things we can think of here but in any case it’s hard for to write serious things about serious things I like. I probably won’t ever write about Rocky out here or The Professional – did I write about The Exorcist 3 I can’t remember, I feel like I haven’t but anyway I’ll probably just stick to the stuff I do best worst easiest but I was depressed and watching this the other day and thought I’d give it a shot, depressed or not.

I saw this back in the theater back in the old days so that’s a good memory for me to start with. I was just able to drive and my dad gave me his old car – a 77 Buick Century and we tore shit up out there (as far as you can tear shit up in a 77 Buick Century). This is when we were now living in the big city but I remember when it was still fun to go steal beer and go off into the country and the dirt roads and sit out in the fields and turn the radio up and not have to worry about taxes and mortgages and shitassdouchebag bosses or getting up at 530 or 6 every single morning and boo hoo cry cry and anyway those were the good old days. And I remember I went to see it with this girl named Jennifer and I drove her all around and we went to this movie and held hands in this thing and maybe I was real smooth and put my arm around her shoulders but I don’t remember exactly but that’s a good set of memories there for what are left of them with her but i remember now that things didn’t go crazy in there because that was in They Live and I saw Prince of Darkness with this other girl I dated named Shelly. Normally this would be the place to probably start rambling and blathering about this or that but I don’t want to doo doo around one of my favorite things and attract stinkbugs so let’s zip up our shirts and re-staple our trousers and talk.

What’s this about? This old priest fellow dies and his body is found holding a key. Donald Pleasance, investigating, uncovers a chamber hidden in the basement of a dilapidated old church, with a door only that key can open. Inside the chamber something sinister seems to live inside a container seemingly sealed for 1000s of years. He enlists the help off Egg Shen I mean his old friend the quantum physicist and his class of students to investigate. In they meantime they all start having the same dream about something rather unholy coming out of the church front – but there’s a voice saying this is a transmission sent back in time from the year 19__….

I’ve mentioned my friend JB on here before and I remember about six or seven years ago OMG TEN on her old blog we watched this at the same time and texted (maybe google hangout-ed) through the whole movie and it broke my heart she didn’t like it waaah cry cry cry what is making me so sad here today? And I just finished this again the other night and I can see how she or anyone else might not feel the vibe. There’s some shitty attempts at humor that don’t fit and could have been left out especially the I LIVE I LIVE I LIVE part but oh well I still loved it and to each their own of course and always.

I think what really got my hooked in this was when that one lady was translating the text and it reads: YOU WILL NOT BE SAVED BY THE GOD PLUTONIUM. If we think about this a little, it’s no spoiler that the son of the anti-god is trapped in the container and he can control people at a subatomic level so butt slaps for Carpenter for writing a horror movie with some quantamy-ness in there, and I really love that whoever he is controlling to write his scripture, he’s transcribing his captor as the “god plutonium” while i would just think it was a container keeping him trapped there (at least that’s how i interpret it). I think that’s really clever and thought out and I appreciate that. I also appreciate when there’s another but where she’s transcribing the book that there’s a passage about how Jesus sent his angels to bury that container out in the desert where it could be hidden until mankind had the technology to keep it contained and now n the church that seal is getting loose so we’re here at the starting point of the big portion of what the movie is about. I think that’s good writing and it makes me happy.

Otherwise – I think most of the rest of it is great too aside from some limitations you can see they had with 1980s gimmicks and effects. I liked the big cast and crew and I think I wrote about this in Assault Precinct 13 that I just love how Carpenter used to use his cast members to actually be doing things in the background that have purpose instead of just standing there like dicks or what’s the phrase holding their dicks in their hands. Or is it dick on a fish I don’t remember exactly but they do good things here. I also liked growly Alice Cooper and the Carpenter-y running joke about trying to recognize who that one student was “you know, short, glasses… cute”

And what about Pleasance’ character? A priest of good faith who believes in everything he’s been taught and preached yet he starts to lose it all as the story goes on, turning into kind of a mumbling Donald Pleasance madman towards the end but then – an action of sacrifice and mercy and he’s once again ready to receive paradise. All of this while everything is turning to shit all around the place.

I’m not a good maker of lists because I can be so “wellllll it’s really good like that one but this had this and this” so if I ever made some top ten list it would probably have 50 things in there with little caveats. I mean I’m not afraid to commit or anything but I like to give everyone a chance which is to say I always love watching this and it’s easy for me to get depressed and I don’t know why I brought that up but I was having the blues when I watched this that last time and it made me feel better. Kind of like a mini zeitgeist I suppose.

FILED UNDER: YOU COULD PASS FOR ASIAN, THE GOD PLUTONIUM AND MAN THATS A SHITLOAD OF BEETLES