Prince of Darkness

Prince of Darkness (1987) is a horror film from John Carpenter you can watch online on iFILM. In the basement of an abandoned Los Angeles church, a priest uncovers a giant cylinder filled with a slowly swirling green fluid. Tests date the thing at roughly seven million years old.

A physics professor and his graduate students are brought in to study it. An ancient text claims the canister holds Satan himself, and hard science suddenly runs headlong into something it can't measure. The fluid starts seeping out, taking the researchers one by one. Outside, a crowd of silent homeless figures seals off every exit, so no one is leaving. Each night the survivors share the same grainy video message beamed back from the future, a warning they're hearing too late.

This is the second chapter of Carpenter's loose Apocalypse Trilogy, sitting between The Thing and In the Mouth of Madness. The director composed the eerie droning score himself, rocker Alice Cooper turns up as the leader of the street horde, and horror veteran Donald Pleasence plays the priest. Stream Prince of Darkness (1987) online on iFILM.