MovieChat Forums > Prince of Darkness (1987) Discussion > Why Doesn't Loomis Recognise Catherine?

Why Doesn't Loomis Recognise Catherine?

posted 9 years ago by Lugodoc
10 replies | jump to latest

SPOILERS

The Brotherhood Of The Dream is so named because sleeping near the cylinder causes everyone to have the same particular dream, which the brotherhood don't realise is a scientific phenomena, a telepathic message transmitted backwards in time from 1999 using tachyons in order to violate causality and change their present in 1999, because it needs changing because Satan is loose and awful 80's hair is back.

Father Loomis says that the dream becomes more complete with repetition suggesting that he himself must have seen all of it by now. At the end of the dream Catherine is clearly visible emerging from the church, presumably suggesting that if she has escaped from the evil dimension then so can Satan. And yet when Loomis meets Catherine he doesn't recognise her as the girl of his dreams.

Lugodoc

[–] tedeadite 9 years ago

Because the original tachyon dream does not have her in it.The dream with her is had by her boyfriend and may not be tachyon based but just a dream.

[–] GreatWhiteApeofBarsoom 9 years ago

Notice in the original transmission, the figure in the church in no way resembles Catherine. She only becomes the figure in Brian's dream at the end of the movie.

Requiescat in pace, Krystle Papile. I'll always miss you.

[–] spookyrat1 9 years ago

The figure only took on Catherine's shape after she jumped through the mirror. The last dream may not be tachyon - based and only experienced by Brian.🐭

[–] trifocal_skink 9 years ago

Smart, gorgeous redhead interested in theoretical physics

Certainly sounds like the girl of my dreams ;)

[–] MadSimian 9 years ago

Well, in the first place, one has to stay in the cylinder's vicinity to have the Dream unfold and, unlike the other priest that died in the beginning, Pleasance's character wasn't living at the church but had kind of stumbled into the whole mess. Secondly, he had only been exposed to the cylinder and the Dream for (at the most) a week before he brought in Birack and the other scientists to study it and translate the book. Thirdly, as we are dealing with a kind of time travel, one can assume that perhaps Catherine's sacrifice altered the future and that the Dream itself changed only after she actually performed said sacrifice; that is...if Brian's dream at the end is, in fact, still a version of the Dream as seen in the rest of the movie(which begs the question of who would have the motivation to try and re-open a portal to Limbo despite what had been experienced by the characters) but that is a discussion for another thread.

The laddie reckons himself a poet!

[–] razielim-2 9 years ago

(which begs the question of who would have the motivation to try and re-open a portal to Limbo despite what had been experienced by the characters

Brian himself, obviously.

I could see him, misguidedly devoting himself to reopening the portal in order to "save" the girl.

There's nothing magical about it, after all - it was the Jesus-aliens that science'ed the *beep* outa Anti-God and dropkicked him into the mirror-universe.

They provided all the essential knowledge necessary for the act of dumping Satan out of our universe before he even leaves his Schrodinger Box, in the form of all those super-advanced equations in the true scripture, though humanity was nowhere near advanced enough to understand it and the Church decided to suppress it.

Future!Brian, who's a physicist himself, likely gets his hands on the book somehow and forms a team to research it. The Book gets researched, equation is then understood, portal is re-established sometime prior to 1999, *beep* goes down[/i], we don't have the technology to punt Anti-God in the balls, The future people know exactly who was leading the research that led to this pandemonium, uh-oh - better send him a warning not to do that.

And if i interpret the ending correctly - the dream was what gave him the idea in the 1st place.

[–] MadSimian 9 years ago

Bingo!

Actually, I started a long running thread where I came to the same conclusion. lol It got 'cleaned up' a year or so ago when IMDb decided to do a bit of board purging.

I'd also like to add that Brian was the one who figured out how to send such a message(by using tachyons and knowing the coordinates at which to aim the transmission) and would know where he had lived before(he might very well even live in the same house in that future time). So, it would be easy peasy for him to have re-aimed the transmission as now HE is responsible because he mistakenly thought he could just save Catherine and not let the Anti-God out as well in the process. An act of hubris, I might add, and something very at home in a story such as this.

Ohhhhh no! There goes Tokyo! Go, go Godzilla!

[–] novimovieman 9 years ago

Someone put forth the idea that Brian waking from a dream inside a dream could be interpreted as the entire church episode was nothing but a dream that Brian had. The dream was malleable enough to insert Catherine into the role of Satan. And what was with the son of Satan in bed with him. Seems to indicate the whole thing was a bad dream.
You don't have to know someone to know someone.

[–] Navaros 9 years ago

And what was with the son of Satan in bed with him

That was the son of the anti-god in the body of Catherine; it is not the same body that he had earlier in the film. I wouldn't have even noticed the switch to Catherine's body unless I pressed PAUSE on that shot. I'm sure many or most other viewers will be in the same boat.

I took the the son's switch to Catherine's body to mean that he/she is coming for Brian ASAP due to Catherine's love for Brian coupled with the fact that the son is (for now) stuck in her body. But why he left the other lady's body and gestated in Catherine instead, that I'm not sure about. I suppose it was for revenge for against Catherine for defeating him and his dad.

[–] spydervein 8 years ago

Another user on here pointed out that Brian probably ends up being the one who re-opens the portal and causes the apocalypse. What better way to put the idea in Brian's head than to make him think he can still save Catherine?