SCREENnDevil Troublenby Sam KarnicknPrince of Darkness; directed bynJohn Carpenter; screenplay bynMartin Quatermass; UniversalnPictures.nWhen they hear about Prince of Darkness,nunsuspecting moviegoers maynenvision a thrilling story of the occult.nSome person will probably releasenSatan from his underworld domain,neither deliberately or unwittingly; thendemon will run rampant over the globenfor a short time, and finally be sentnback—quite unwillingly, of course —nto where he belongs.nIn Contemporary stories of Satanismnand the occult, from Rosemary’s Babynthrough The Exorcist to The WitchesnofEastwick, Hollywood almost invariablyntreats the Evil One as a personalnforce, with a mind and will of his own.nPrince of Darkness, however, marks andeviation from this tradition. The filmnopens quite intriguingly, with a priestn(Donald Pleasance), a physicist (VictornWong), and several brilliant graduatenstudents (led by Jameson Parker) gatheringntogether in an old church toninvestigate a bizarre phenomenon. Innthe basement of the church is a cylindrical,n10-foot tall glass chamber, fillednwith a green liquid, which writhes andnroils sinisterly.nA cryptic manuscript provides somenclues to the nature of this weird chambernand the mysterious substance. Thenmanuscript, written by a group ofnmonks over the course of hundreds ofnyears, is in Hebrew, Latin, Greek, andnother tongues, and, when translated bynone of the scholars gathered in thenchurch, suggests that the object in thenbasement is the jail in which Satan isnbeing held. The manuscript frequentlynmentions “The Beast,” and paraphrasesnpassages from the propheciesnof Isaiah and Daniel and the Book ofnVITAL SIGNSnRevelations, including Rev. 20:2-3:n”He laid hold of the dragon, thatnserpent of old, who is the Devil andnSatan, and bound him for a thousandnyears; and he cast him into the bottomlessnpit, and shut him up, and set a sealnon him, so that he should deceive thennations no more till the thousand yearsnwere finished.”nIn a conventional film of the demonic,nthis would set up the release ofnSatan from his bondage, providing anlook into his personality and thereby annexamination of the nature of evil, as innThe Omen. But in Prince of DarknessnSatan’s “personality” turns out to benconsiderably different from the traditionalnChristian understanding of it.nFurther translation of the aforementionednmanuscript reveals a decline innthe influence of biblical prophecy andnthe substitution of something very different.nThe manuscript characterizes “ThenBeast” not as a powerful being living inndeliberate rebellion against God, butnrather as a “negative force” found in allnmatter. Just as a positron is the negativencounterpart of an electron, and annantiproton is the negative counterpartnof a proton, so, says the film, the Princenof Darkness is to God. Neither force isnpersonal or willful; each is found in allnmatter, and all matter is charged withnspiritual power.nThis is clearly not Christian theology,nthen, but rather “New Age”nphilosophy — the latest attempt innWestern society to incorporate ideasnfrom Eastern philosophy and the occult.nProminent aspects of the NewnAge movement are the interest innreincarnation; spirit channeling; then”power of positive thinking”; and thenuse of drugs, meditation, and hypnosisnas “mind-expanding” experiences.nIt’s easy to see how the theology ofnPrince of Darkness fits into thisnscheme. The New Age declares thatn”All is One,” that there is no death,nthat man is God, and that all matter isncharged with spirituality. Similarly, wenfind the notion of Satan debased in thisnnnfilm into a simple conception of thenYang to what we are to understand asnGod’s Yin.nBut while Shirley MacLaine’s booknand TV-film {Out On a Limb) havenbeen presented as “one woman’s personalnodyssey,” which the reader ornviewer can accept or dismiss as henchooses, Prince of Darkness incorporatesnits New Age ideas into a fictionalnnarrative which, in this biblically ignorantnsociety, is very likely to confusenviewers. If the narrative were honestnabout its New Age ideas and didn’t trynto give them scriptural sanction, thisnuneasy mixture of biblical prophecy,nthe pseudoscientific ideas of Gurdjieffnand his ilk, and the theology of GeorgenLucas’s Star Wars trilogy would be asnunpalatable to orthodox Jews andnChristians as it is to materialist atheistsnand agnostics.nThe film is particularly offensive tonChristians. The manuscript revealingnthe truth about the substance in thenglass chamber posits Jesus Christ tonhave been an extraterrestrial, who presumablyncame to our planet to teach usnhow to defeat the negative force in allnmatter through the power of positiventhinking. This, of course, is a fairlynstraightforward presentation of thenNew Age notion of “Christ consciousness,”nwhich sees Jesus not asnmankind’s personal Savior, but rathernas one in a long line of great prophets,nwhose teachings are on a par withnthose of Confucius, Buddha, Muhammed,nand the Reverend SunnMyung Moon. While the film’s idea ofnJesus will obviously not persuade annorthodox Christian, in the context ofnthe film it could easily confuse thosenwho are less firm in their beliefs.nIn fact, the New Age ideas oi Princenof Darkness are not only theologicallyndeceptive, but also aesthetically bad. AsnAristotle noted, drama is based on thenchoices the characters make — whethernthose characters are people, animals,nangels, demons, or whatever. But innPrince of Darkness the characters makenfew choices of any importance, spend-nOCTOBER 1988145n