10 Most Underappreciated '80s Horror Movies

4. Prince Of Darkness

Pumpkinhead 1988
Universal

While John Carpenter is rightly viewed as one of the greatest filmmakers of the 1980s - and beyond, for that matter - the Horror Master's The Fog, Escape from New York, and Big Trouble in Little China are viewed as masterpieces of that decade, and even Christine and They Live are cult classics of that period, but one Carpenter film that often gets massively overlooked is 1987's Prince of Darkness.

Prince of Darkness may not be up there in the conversation for the very best work of Carpenter's career, but it deserves to receive more love than it currently gets.

Pulling plentiful inspiration from the Quatermass series - Carpenter even crediting himself as Martin Quatermass on the screenplay - the ever-great Donald Pleasence takes centre-stage here as a priest who comes face to face with Satan. Well, kind of, for Satan is an eerie green liquid in a canister found in a church basement.

Calling in the help of quantum physics professor Howard Birack (Victor Wong), Pleasence's character - who's only ever named as Priest - has to deal with creepy sects, portals hidden within mirrors, and a slice of social commentary built around the AIDs epidemic of the time.

Like certain other John Carpenter classics, adding to the appeal of Prince of Darkness are some phenomenal SFX work and shocking visuals, which are all balanced with Carpenter's mastery of tension-building. On top of that,  it's just always a good time whenever Donald Pleasence gets to deliver some intense, erratic monologues - as is the case here.

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