Prophecy

I saw this picture on Betamax in '81 or '82 and it really got under my skin. Frankenheimer's monster movie is partly responsible for me getting into the business (along with Jaws, Alien, Raiders, Blade Runner, not that I'm really inviting such comparisons). I actually had occasion to have a smoke and chat briefly with Robert Foxworth about the making of the picture when I was grip on a made-for-TV suspense pic in Atlanta. He was approachable, friendly and enjoyed talking about that show. He said that they had lost a stunt driver, and narrowly escaped losing a cast member or two when their first construction truck/picture car (the 4wd monster truck our ensemble try to escape in) took a dive off a cliff. They had to scramble to find another one and finish the picture. RF also said that Frankenheimer was an accomplished chef and had occasionally treated the DP and Cast to gourmet meals.

Prophecy is now on DVD, presented the way it was originally shot. I think I bought my copy for less than $15. All of the criticisms of this film are true, and it does not belong in the first Frankenheimer potential box set with "The Train," "Manchurian Candidate," and "Seven Days in May." But with this marginal script and genre, bound together with a tired, preachy and inaccurate environmental message, Frankenheimer managed to put together a monster picture that has surprisingly stout legs. Remember, Paramount released this monster muppet against "Alien," arguably the best film of its kind ever made. The monster grizzly is enraged, frightening and unpredictable. It is key to the film's suspense. If the Emmerich/Devlin team gave 'Zilla the same qualities, suddenly that film is worth watching for more than the effects. Prophecy had virtually no effects by today's standards. They had to make up for this with shooting and editing; a.k.a. conventional, hand-crafted filmmaking. I may indeed be prejudiced, but I still like this movie with all of its problems.

Kind of an under-rated creature feature that is mostly forgotten and was poorly reviewed at the time of release. Coming after 'Jaws' and in the midst of the "pollution causes monsters" subgenre. In this one a doctor (Robert Foxworth) takes his wife (Talia Shire) to the Maine wilderness to collect samples to settle a dispute between a paper mill and the local Indian tribe. They stumble onto a series of mutated creatures and a web of deception designed to hide the true horror that stalks the woods.

This is a big budget B-movie that is expertly made. Director John Frankenheimer, always a professional, handles the material perfectly. The actors act their asses off and Leonard Rosenman's score is so intense that it is instrumental in creating much of the tension. There is some really smart writing and great scenes: a sequence where a family is killed in the forest is unexpected and shocking; an exposition scene involving a tape recorder is clever in its efficiency; some nice setups involving the wife being pregnant that are paid off nicely. Just watch all the cinematic tricks on display as a group of characters are hiding underground after a brutal attack. Not something you would get in a lesser film.

A main source of criticism seems to be the monster itself. Created by The Burman's Studio who did the effects for such classics as 'Planet of the Apes' and 'Star Kid.' The monster is a bit goofy but is mostly shot to hide that fact and is pretty effective. The parts where it's clearly a guy in a suit are silly to be fair, even though the creature is played by Kevin Peter Hall who would go on to be a different Predator a few years later. The monster in 'Prophecy' is fun and certainly not the worst ever committed to film. Another problem is the casting of non-Native American actors to play members of the Indian tribe. I mean Armand Assante, really?

So as Halloween approaches, I'll try to throw out some largely unseen horror films to add to the scares. 'Prophecy' is a good example of a slick monster movie, very well done by talented people in front of and behind the camera. It's not great but is more entertaining than it has any right to be. 7/10.

I know of and truly admire the genius of John Frankenheimer, who gave us The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May, Seconds, The Train, and more recently, Ronin. He also gave this ridiculous eco-monster movie enough discipline and artistic snap to raise it above the level of mutant frogs, bunnies, and snakes, all croaking, hopping, and slithering around the late 70s.

I don't dwell on plot in my reviews; I like to talk about what makes the movie worth expending your precious minutes or not, so here is what one geek loves about this silly, fun flick: Even with the overly intense performances, the Marcus Welby music, the clichéd-to-the-point-of-exasperation mean, old corporate polluters, the fact that Talia Shire's face seems to be melting off her head (cheap shot, I know), and the monster--think of Shaq in latex, p.o.'d, with fangs and Mad-Eye Moody peepers--you have a scary, fun, and interesting movie.

Hey, Stephen King liked it, although he was right in pointing out how silly it was to put the Indians in teepees in Maine.

I wonder if Robert Foxworth, Shire, and Armand Assante get fan mail for this 8th grader of a movie. Frankenheimer, God bless him, made this movie work, and passed away a few years ago (no causal relationship, of course). He was so serious and deep, a really, really skilled artist, but I also wonder how he would have responded to fan mail for Prophecy.

I hope all involved had or have senses of humor and when confronted with a request for an autograph on the VHS box, respond with, "Hey, thanks for your support, you geek!"

PROPHECY is the kind of movie that makes you go, "Aw, man!" Not because it just plain sucks, but because the movie never once lives up to its potential. It repeatedly pulls its punches and draws back just as it's getting good.

The poster is probably the best thing about it, showing a creepy little mutant fetus floating in a womb. A movie about that thing? As an eight year old kid, I was the first on line! And, as an added bonus, it was PG, so I knew I could get in. Not to mention the fact that this was when Hollywood still had some balls, and a PG movie could still contain some hefty doses of gore and T&A.

I remember finding individual scenes to be pretty scary. A family is slaughtered while camping in one scene. A guy in an overturned jeep gets his head ripped off. And the giant mutant bear is, at times, genuinely freaky.

But even I, as a little kid, could tell that the movie was uneven and poorly paced. When the monster isn't attacking, it's yawn city, with Robert Foxworth pontificating endlessly to the point where, even though I agreed with every word he said, I wanted to bash his face in. And Talia Shire's eye-bugging and whining got pretty tiresome after a while as well.

You rarely, if ever, get a good look at the monster. That technique worked in ALIEN, but, whereas ALIEN kept the monster hidden through stylish photography and sly editing, PROPHECY is just poorly shot, badly lit, and sloppily put together.

Ridley Scott wanted to keep the alien partially hidden, so all you saw was teeth and claws and could put the thing together in your mind. I think John Frankenheimer just couldn't figure out how to hide the seams in the dime-store monster costume he had to work with, so just lit everything so dimly you could barely see anything. The monster is pretty grotesque and occasionally looks fearsome, but usually looks like nothing more than a big gray blob.

The baby monster bear that Shire cradles through the second half of the movie is much more freakish looking. PROPHECY is watchble enough if it shows up on cable one rainy day when there's nothing else to do. Just remember to watch it through an eight year old's eyes.

Reviewers of the film are quick to undercut its actual effectiveness as a film without realizing that many parts of the film succeed, including the tension of the characters against the beast, the horror of the beasts' attacks, the helplessness of man within nature, etc. Reviewers would be accurate to attack the cheesy effects, hokey dialogue at times and overall loss on energy in the film toward the climax, but there's much more going on here.

Prophecy is, at best, a) a departure for John Frankenheimer, b) a 70's horror movie with a social conscience and, c) not withstanding amateurish special effects, predictable dialogue and long-view shots of Talia Shire looking petrified beyond speech, an actually entertaining, somewhat surprisingly satisfying film. The novel created an intelligent, often compelling case for early environmentalism and the frightening consequences of doing nothing in light of the dangerous contamination of the Earth. Prophecy as a film suffers from a deplorable special effects deficiancy (case in point: at one point in the film, the monster is clearly "walking" on the dock with the courtesy of a mechanical dolly and hydraulic levers...uggh) as said before, but looking beyond this, the film's plotline does build tension, though it loses steam in the end, concluding with a rather lamely tacked-on "surprise" ending that is more befitting of the TV networks in the 70's. Frankenheimer captures a "land-locked" Jaws-like eating machine on film with a vengeance, and the subsequent carnage is, while unfortunate, in light of the circumstances that created the beast, understandable. The focal point of the movie, the beast itself, operates as a deranged ecological locomotive ( actually sounding like one onfilm at times ) hell-bent on taxing mankind for its misfortune.

Remarkably ( and most likely accidentally) the film achieved a perfect "of the moment" time slice capture of the late 70's era, replete with the worries, political movements, ambiguities and uncertainties of the time all woven within the backstory of the Indian's struggle against the papermill, global overpopulation, bigotry and commercialization at the expense of nature.

Beautiful scenery ( courtesy of British Columbia, circa 1978/1979), believable performances, particularly from Richard Dysart and Armand Assanti, combined with circumstances and sequences never actually realized on film before combine to make a pretty meaty B movie. Case in point, the opening sequence with the dogs and the cliff, the tunnels of the Indian village and their subsequent use later in the film. I saw this film when I was 11, and the memory of the camping family and their fate in the film has YET to leave me. Don't think I've ever camped again without recalling that scene...

I recommend the film without taking it as seriously as it seems to take itself, though the message of environmentalism is one worth listening to. The plot device of methyl mercury poisoning in Minimata, Japan is based on true life actual events, and is considerably more frightening than the sum of this movie, but is worth researching sometime.

• Monstergarp