Here are his clues:
Scene 1: An Asian-looking guy is stuck in a closet or something and he can look into the room and there is a woman laying on a cot and her skin looks like she has leprosy or something. He's locked in there and there are two people trying to dig through the wall to get him out. The leper woman wakes up and comes to the door and knows he's in there, so the guy flips out and starts beating his way through the wall with his mag light. He gets through and they cover the hole.
Scene 2: The same girl with the leper skin is reaching into a glowing mirror or doorway and is pulling some kind of demon or monster into our world, dimension, or whatever. There is another girl in the room and she heroically charges the leper chick and knocks her into the portal and falls in with her. At the same instant some dude throws something on the portal and it closes. I remember the chick reaching out to get saved and that always creeped me out. The dimension where the demon/monster was like water…if that makes any sense…like the chick was floating down into water reaching out.
Not much to go on, I know, but if it were easy everyone would do it. That first clue had me thinking THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS, but nothing else in it fits and my co-worker knows T.P.U.S. and swears that's not it. Hope you guys can solve this mystery, or else I'll have to do laundry.
AUNT JOHN SEZ: Since the holidays are the times that we should be doing things for others, let's put on our helper hats and see if we can spare the VICAR OF VHS the indignity of doing laundry and into a free t-shirt. If anyone knows what this one is, please sound off in the comments or shoot us an e-mail.
UPDATE: It took reader EegahInc all of two minutes to recognize this one as JOHN CARPENTER's classic PRINCE OF DARKNESS!!
John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness (1987), one of my faves.
Eegah, That's got to be it!!!!!! Thats one of my faves too and I didn't even recognize it by the description at all! Good job!
Holy crap, I only missed it by a couple of hours. And I haven't even seen the whole movie O_o
If that's the correct answer, I'm going to kick myself and then my coworker. I am also a big fan of Prince of Darkness, but didn't recognize it at ALL from that summary. And this coworker claims that Halloween is his favorite movie of all time, so I'd think he'd be familiar with Carpenter's other gems.
I'll let you know if you hit the bullseye as soon as I find out!
As far as I know PoD is the only "asian guy in a closet with leprous woman on a cot in the next room" movie in existence. Â Although I could be wrong…
Reader NGRYJOHNY emailed this confirmation:
I have the trailer for Prince of Darkness posted here:
Wow, thanks, Carny! I've never seen that trailer. It's unusual in a couple of respects: it uses actual music from the film (so it must've been made after the whole thing was in the can since I'm sure scoring the soundtrack was the last thing JC did) and it completely gives away the ending!
I'm also really curious about that last shot – was that just made for the promo or was there an alternate ending where something comes out of the mirror at Jameson (and pulls him by his mustaches to the dark dimension no doubt)? Hard to tell with the PoD logo supered over the object. The DVD has no mention of any other ending and the actual ending is so perfect I doubt the latter is true. Nevermind…
This is a movie that has a wonderfully moody setup(that 10-15 minute credit sequence), a fascinating concept(the Brotherhood of Sleep, Satan's Son trapped in a vessel, the book containing the extra-terrestrial Jesus' scientifically advanced writings), and a really creepy mounting terror as Satan's Son begins to expand his influence around the church. Unfortunately, it suffers from an underbudgeted incarnation of Satan's child(the aforementioned leprosy woman) and some rather silly zombie play. The movie then finishes off with one of the most chilling horror movie climaxes, a cheap- but really well done- fast scare, and a final shot that leaves your heart pounding.Â
This movie also uses one of my favorite horror movie devices: a bit of information that is slowly revealed throughout the story- in this case, the dream. I think the final version of the dream and what is revealed stuck with me for some time. Heck, I get chills thinking about it now.Â
And, yes, the shot of the girl reaching out "under water" just before the screen goes blank and completely silent is truly unnerving. Also, Donald Pleasence at his very best.