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A Movie A Day: PROPHECY (1979)
Things grow big here. Real big.
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with the next installment of A Movie A Day: Halloween 2010 edition!
[For the entirety of October I will be showcasing one horror film each day. Every film is pulled from my DVD shelf or streamed via Netflix Instant and will be one I haven’t seen. Unlike my A Movie A Day or A Movie A Week columns there won’t necessarily be connectors between each film, but you’ll more than likely see patterns emerge day to day.]
I needed this movie after yesterday’s incredibly forgettable New Year’s Evil.
I’ve been aware of this movie, Prophecy, for many, many years thanks to a fairly heavy rotation of the trailer at the Alamo Drafthouse, but I knew very little about it. That poster art also had an impact on me as a kid going up and down the horror section at the local video store. I don’t know why I never rented the movie, but I do remember the box art.
So it was that I finally sat down, at age 29, to watch this flick and I was immediately struck by two things. First of all, the look of the film was that great late ‘70s/early ‘80s anamorphic film look that Spielberg made all his own. Being a big studio project (Paramount, god bless ‘em) this flick looked like a million bucks. The opening credits rolled over the sound of dogs chasing down something as their handlers, only seen via their headlamps, ran behind. It felt like ET to me.
There was that and then the directed by card came up and I was like “Holy shit! John Frankenheimer directed a monster movie!?!?” John “Manchurian Candidate, Ronin, The Train, Birdman of Alcatraz, Black Sunday” Frankenheimer?!?
How the hell it took me so long to find this movie is beyond me.
And it’s damn good, too.
I already mentioned it looks like a million bucks. On top of that it has a strong cast including a young Armand Assante playing an Indian fighting to keep his people’s little piece of Maine from being taken over by a lumber corporation and Talia Shire fresh off of Rocky.
Technically the star of the movie is Robert Foxworth, sporting a typical late ‘70s mountain man hero beard, playing Shire’s bleeding heart doctor husband who is recruited to be the go-between for the Lumber company and the Natives. His side mission is to investigate the area for the EPA and see if the Lumber company is an evil corporation killing the land.
The natives are having all sorts of medical troubles, babies are being delivered stillborn or mutated. Not to mention there have been disappearances that the Natives attribute to a local legend, a being as big as a dragon that the Gods loved so much they built it out of parts from every one of their creatures.
Whatever it is, it is killing people and breaths like a fat asthmatic trying scale the stairs of the Stature of Liberty.
Of course we quickly find out that the lumber company is using Mercury, which attacks the nervous system, especially in developing fetuses and is mutating the local wildlife and the Natives who live off the land.
This news doesn’t make Shire very happy as she has eaten a fish caught by her husband and is, herself, pregnant. This bit of news she hasn’t yet shared with her husband.
From this point it’s all about finding the proof and then realizing, with living proof in hand, that they’re 10 miles into the forest with the evil mutated creature hot on their heels and they have to find a way out.
From a production value standpoint the movie is pretty great. From an acting standpoint it’s pretty great. From a storytelling standpoint it’s pretty great. From a monster make-up standpoint… ehh… well, they tried.
The big monster is a giant mutated bear and the concept is far freakier than the execution. It’s kind of a Two-Face Bear, half of it bear, half of it gross pink tumors and mutated skin. Oh, and a pig’s nose. For some reason.
If they had nailed the creature aspect this could be a classic of the genre, but unfortunately half the time the creature looks like a guy in a bear suit or a rubber puppet. There are a few shots where the design really works, including one where an actor is running in the foreground and the bear is chasing him (on two legs) behind him and we get a sense at just how massive this thing is supposed to be, but had they had Rick Baker or Dick Smith on board they could have been set.
Now, one of the first things I noticed when the DVD was starting was that it was rated PG. At first I was a little disappointed, but then I remembered this is 1979 PG and I was happy again. And boy is this a helluva PG movie. Like JAWS before it, this film is fairly brutal. There are decapitations, maulings, killed kids and even a fairly noticeable wet T-shirt moment towards the end of the film where we see everything we need to without Victoria Racimo actually stripping.
You want to know what really won me over with this flick? There’s a camping family our leads meet as they arrive in Maine. We spend just enough time with this father and two kids, a boy and a girl, to expect them to play a bigger role in the larger picture, only to watch them horribly killed. It was a good filmmaking trick on Frankenheimer’s part.
And the scene itself is pretty fantastic without getting all bloody and schlocky. At this point we still haven’t gotten a good glimpse at the creature, so it’s still creepy. When it attacks the boy in his sleeping bag he essentially throws it into a giant rock at such a force that the damn bag explodes in feathers, surely killing the 12 year old inside.
Holy shit what a kill and what an inventive way to show the force and impact without going too gory.
Another interesting fact for horror fans is THE THING’s Doc Copper himself, Richard Dysart, plays the head of the Lumber company.
Final Thoughts: The flick is 3/4ths of a great movie and would be iconic if they had nailed the creature work. Some of that stuff is laughably bad now, but the movie around it is still good enough to really win me over. It’s a PG horror film that would be an R today and features some extremely strong early work from Armand Assante and a surprisingly adult story that doesn’t devolve into a tree-huggers vs. modern industry like you might think it would.
Currently in print on DVD: NO, but cheap via third party sellers
Currently available on Netflix Instant: NO
Here are the next week’s worth of AMAD titles:
Wednesday, October 13th: THE OTHER (1972)
Thursday, October 14th: THE MUMMY (1959)
Friday, October 15th: THE GORGON (1964)
>
Saturday, October 16th: MAD LOVE (1935)
Sunday, October 17th: REPULSION (1965)
Monday, October 18th: THE VIDEO DEAD (1987)
Tuesday, October 19th: THE BLACK CAT (1981)
Tomorrow’s an obscure ghost story called The Other. Looking forward to it. See you folks then!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
Follow Me On Twitter
>
Previous AMAD 2010’s:
- Raw Meat (1972)
- Ghost Story (1981)
- Two on a Guillotine (1965)
- Tentacles (1977)
- Bad Ronald (1974)
- The Entity (1983)
- Doctor X (1932)
- The Return of Doctor X (1939)
- The Tenant (1976)
- Man in the Attick (1953)
- New Year’s Evil (1980)
Click here for the full 215 movie run of A Movie A Day!
Readers Talkback
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let me know if the big guy ever reviews a new release again.
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Oct. 12, 2010, 9:06 p.m. CST
You forgto to mention Leonard Rosenman's hysterical score
by Nasty In The Pasty
All crushing minor chords and blaster beams twangs. Great fun (released on CD by FSM earlier this year).
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...isn't a hell of a compliment.
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Oct. 12, 2010, 9:07 p.m. CST
Wow, This Movie SCARED Me as a Kid
by The_Floating_Skull_of_Robert_Loggia
I remember watching Prophecy on The Movie Channel back when I was around 11 or 12 years old. That scene with the campers gave me the willies for days! It's one of those "holy crap! They just killed a KID!" moments, and, when they discover the skin/scalp bits on the tree the next day...yikes. Great movie, even if the monster looks like Manbearpig. As always, Quint, you're one of the main reasons I come to this site and this column rocks.
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...was pretty unimpressed. I think it was the look of the monster. I just remember being fairly freaked out and then thinking, "That's it? Really?" Years later when I saw Alien Resurrection I burst out laughing when they revealed the second-stage alien because all I could think was, did they just resurrect that piece of crap from The Prophecy? Still, I'm enjoying this feature and am looking forward to the next installments. Ever consider reviewing "John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness"? ??Pseudo?? Out.
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I saw this with my uncle and two other brothers as part of a double bill with the original Alien. What a night that was for a ten year old kid. I do have this on dvd though. If it was for the cheesy creature effects, it would be a great movie.
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I own it on DVD now. Big, goofy, monstery fun.
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Algore was right!
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I had the same thought when they revealed the creature for the first time. Manbearpig!
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where SP got the idea
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I am super serial! I remember this flick when it came out - don't think I saw it but why is the plotline so familiar?
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I saw this in the theater with my Dad. Holy fuck it scared the shit out of me. I was about 11 or so. He was laughing the whole time as I covered my eyes.
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Even in theater when I was a kid I remember hating it. Sleeping bag scene isn't supposed to be funny, but omg people were in tears when it happened. Something out of a monty python skit.
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This took a back seat to Alien, but I do remember the beheading creeping me out. lol
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Richard Dysart getting pulled under the fence will stay with me forever. That last jump scare at the very end as well.
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It's basically an animation of the developmental stages from that poster with a voiceover of the narration...but it creeped me out on TV when I was eight years old. And seeing it in the theater was a pretty impressive experience, too. Yes, looking back on it now 31 years later, some of the effects are dated. But the story, the mood and the acting are still hghly effective. A forgotten gem.
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...were two movies that freaked me out majorly as a kid. I remember watching this for the first time and freaking out so much at age 10 or 11 that my parents wouldn't let me watch any more... I snuck back down and finished watching it anyway. Couldn't sleep for days after that... picked it up on DVD a while back and laughed my ass off at the creature effects (the rest of the movie still held up though). The chase scene that Quint mentioned is the one that did me in... all I could think about was a mutated crazy A&W Bear running after the guy.
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The Monster Movie!
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John "Reindeer Games and Island of Dr. Moreau" Frankenheimer directed this.
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Evil capitalism.<P>Minority oppression.<P>Female reproductive rights.<P>What possibly kept Quint away for so long?
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Oct. 12, 2010, 10:20 p.m. CST
I saw this in the theatre hoping to see Talia's tits!
by Professor_Monster
The sleeping bag scene is the most memorable thing in the movie. And no - Talia's tits were kept safe.
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Oct. 12, 2010, 10:21 p.m. CST
She ate toxic fish and had Jason Shwartzman - makes sense
by Professor_Monster
he's a tool
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anytime it plays on television, the description in the on-screen tv guide always describes the Christopher Walken movie.
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Went to the theater to see Moonraker then went across town to see Prophecy the same day. I loved them both as a young'un...still love this one. Bought the dvd and showed it to my girls when they were 11. We all busted up and replayed the sleeping bag scene.
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http://www.yout ube.com/watch?v=Y8Wlq Fdlo6g Looks like a "The Story of Riki-Oh" death. Can't. Stop. Laughing.
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Seeing that brings me back to the glory days of USA, back when they used to show random ass films on 'USA Up All Night' like "Hell Comes To Frogtown" and "Spookies". I'm curious what you have to say about it.
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Though I was more scared seeing the pics of the mutated, half-melting, 15-foot-tall bear thing in FANGORIA. Never actually saw the movie until the early 90's. Kinda disappointed to say the least (as reading about it and seeing that pic of the melting bear towering over the demolished house that Questor was in really built the movie up in my fertile imagination), but it still has it's good moments. <p> Annnnd unintentionally bad ones (the kid in the sleeping bag scene).. I mean, didn't the director see that and know right off people would laugh at how ridiculous it was? If it exploded in blood and guts and goose down, okay then, but that's not exactly what happens...
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I could never figure why this didnt get more love. It is friggin great. I even like the Monster. I am a huge fan of quality creature features, and this is one of the best.
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seeing it as a kid and being freaked out. I laughed my ass off after seeing it again (also as a 29 yr old.) I swear there are a few more awesome death scenes other than the sleeping bag scene. Too funny.
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Oct. 13, 2010, 12:40 a.m. CST
I begged my parents to take me to see this when I was a kid...
by elgato73
but never got them to. I ended up seeing it though on ABC back in the mid eighties and it had a really great lead up until we actually see the monster. The Manbearpig creature in the movie (obviously Parker and Stone saw this film too) just wasn't that scary but I thought the mutant baby creature that Talia Shire took care of at the end was pretty cool. But at the very end right before the credits roll when Foxworth and Shire are taking off in the helicopter, we get a quick, final glimpse at another creature which looked 10 times more cooler and scary than the Manbearpig thing which was the star of the film. We get that quick glimpse of this chimera like thing and it is really horrific (and in fact looks a lot like what Assante's character had talked about in his tribe's legend) but then the credits roll. Oh, well.
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I had totally forgotten about this Prophesy. I automatically think of the angel war Prophesy. Which I absolutely love...at least the first one.
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How sad. Sorry there aren't any creative conservatives in existence to make music, film and other artwork for you... Guess you'll have to stick to watching FauxNews...
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I love The Black Cat. Best killer Cat movie ever!
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I was not scared any longer and could not take this movie seriously! I saw this in Puerto Rican and the entire movie theatre was blazing with laughter!
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I could have sworn this was already on AMAD...<br><br>Or, maybe, I'm thinking of next year......
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This is the one where they couldn't afford a halfway decent fake bear, so at the end, they grabbed what appears to be only a marginally more realistic stuffed animal than a teddy bear, and shove it across a model pond. Right?<p> And the crappy dummies?<p> And the mutant bear keeps growing and shrinking?<p> And not just the sleeping bag death, but the person doing the bunny hop when trying to escape, while in their sleeping bag?<p> It's essentially a 50s "animals are mutated by toxins/radioactivity and go on a rampage" movie. Updated for the late 1970s with environmental issues, evil CEOs (Dysart is a hoot), and the Native American plight stapled on. Someone didn't give David Seltzer (fresh off The Omen) the news that he was making a schlocky horror movie, and he decided to make it very... very... "deep."
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Fucked me up pretty good, and still gives me the willies! The scene where the helicopter pilot is tied to the top of the truck and is essentially helpless as the beast pulls his head off was a total doozy... might have to spool this one up in the DVD player tonight!
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Oct. 13, 2010, 4:37 a.m. CST
@Killik : Armand Assante was on Chuck (again) the other night.
by V'Shael
He's still alive and kicking.
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The Black Cat is fucking awesome! you'll love it.
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BRING YOUR BANANA BAGS!!!!
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It's a good movie that is unfortunately seriously damaged by its bad effect work.
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As kids we used to take hot dogs, take off the skin, dip them in milk and call them "prophecy hot dogs"
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I love this fucking movie. That part where the people hide underground while the bear-monster trashes the camp is classic.
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... a stunt-kid in a sleeping bag rigged with explosive squibs hanging from a wire harness, getting ready for the "kid tries to hop away from mutant bear in a sleeping bag only to have mutant bear whack him violently into a rock, exploding his sleeping bag into a snowstorm of goose down" scene.
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This was movie night at band camp one year. It's an unsettling movie because you're laughing at the effects but then something truly horrible happens. The sleeping bag scene may be accidental humor or it may be sheer genius -- screaming, terror, monster, fear, OMG LOOK AT THAT HAHAHAHAHA......uh, it just shattered a kid against a rock....hahaha...uh.......
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Oct. 13, 2010, 7:51 a.m. CST
Ah, an old school classic. Not to be confused with
by Grammaton Cleric Binks
The Prophecy.
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Reading the Novelization of this film as a kid and wanting to see the movei SO badly! I begged my sisters to take me (I was only 14 and the "Rated R "Under 17 Not Admitted Whithout An Adult" rule was sometimes heavily enforced at local theaters back then!)..nope! I begged my Aunt to take me to see it...nope. Well around 5 years later I am have enlisted in the US Military and stationed over in Germany and I finally get a chance to rent the move on VHS...I psyched, can't wait to see it finally...I am thinking it's going to be an excellent Monster movie... Man was I ever disappointed!! This was such a crappy movie to watch and the monster special effects were just terrible. That was my opinion then I have since seen this movie on AMC a few times and...it's not as bad as I once thought it was..but still totally campy and schlocky and the kind of movie you only wanna watch late at night and it you have nothing to do.
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Remember seeing this at the theater and being very disappointed due to the intense marketing campaign. As I recall it had a great trailer that far surpassed the film. Looked like a bear with Pepto Bismol smeared all over it's body. I seem to remember a scene at the beginning where a trout the size of a Volvo jumps up from a lake to catch a bird.
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Remember seeing this at the theater and being very disappointed due to the intense marketing campaign. As I recall it had a great trailer that far surpassed the film. Looked like a bear with Pepto Bismol smeared all over it's body. I seem to remember a scene at the beginning where a trout the size of a Volvo jumps up from a lake to catch a bird.
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I'm an angel. I kill firstborns while their mamas watch, I turn cities into salt, and sometimes, when I feel like it, I tear the souls from little girls and the only thing you can count on in your existence is never understanding why.
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Tiffany and Debbie Gibson
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i always thought that the whole trilogy is crap.
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This film was being shot at the same time as ST-TMP back in 1978. I was on the lot one day during my time working in and watching them shoot ST-TMP, I was walking around the lot with one of Gene Roddenberry's production assistants, Roseanne Attias, and the huge door was open on one of the stages where the original STAR TREK was filmed. We walked in, and there was the perfect reproduction of a mountain cabin, complete with trees and a pond! There was no activity going on that day for that shoot, but it was really something to see!
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. . . SCARED to death of it as a kid. LAUGH my ass off at it now. And as a kid it took me 3 viewings to see the whole thing. I remember my parents turning it off as I balled over that berserk racoon that gets flung into the fireplace. Then it got turned off when I cried over the mutant baby bear in the creek. Now it is ever so f'ing hilarious. I'm picturing a scene where the bear is actually running on 2 legs w/ the rubber suit bouncing around. And there's a scene near the end where the bear is animated and juggling the animated old Native American dude around in the lake. Good times. If they had just dolled up a real bear like they did w/ Cujo, it might have been MUCH more successful.
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or book it was based on (don't know what came first) is actually really good. Bought it for 25 cents and loved it. The sleeping bag scene is much cooler.
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I refuse to read tomorrow's entry - scared the hell out of me as a kid (never jumped into hay again) My recommendation for today is "Tales from the Hood" - I can't believe it, but best horror movie I've watched in October. http://wp.me/p165o5-W follow on twitter @dumbricht
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Oct. 13, 2010, 11:56 a.m. CST
You guys want to see a John Frankenheimer movie that fuck you up
by AsimovLives
Watch SECONDS. If the ending of that movie doesn't ruin your mood for the rest of the day, you are not a human being.
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Maybe your parents couldn't read. Unless you're talking about the Christopher Walken "Prophecy", which WAS rated R,,,this film, released in 1979, was PG. Look it up. That's the only way I was able to see it in the theater--I missed out on two other movies I would have liked to have seen in the theater that year--"Alien" and the Frank Langella "Dracula", because both were R, and I was eight in '79. I saw both of them a year or so later when they came out on video--I had a friend whose parents owned a video store, and we watched all *kinds* of shit ;) But Prophecy, I saw in the theater.
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he was creating a pro-ecology horror story, and wake up call, that this has happened before, it can happen again. He references the Minanata, Japan methylmercury poisoning that affected thousands in the 50's and 60's, time and time again. So what better way to spotlight the evils of chemical dumping than create a mutant killer bear? What brings the movie down for me is the solemn tone, the seriousness of it all, the noble Native American who is one with the land, Foxworth with his matching beard and hair (he's like one of those puzzle drawings that upside down or right side up, it looks like a face), any laughs are purely, PURELY unintentional. I remember a review that said the creature look like a bear with a plate of linguini on the side of its face..good call.<p>Yea, it looked like a million bucks, it was a summer release after all, it just didn't know it was a B-movie.
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...have a solemn tone? Oh, probably the same reason that jaded people with no imaginations let special effects ruin the impact of a film. I watched the film just a few months back--still holds up for me.
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with my mom and sister. My sister still hasn't recovered. Still remember that movie because of the look on my sisters face for the next few days.
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...when fimmakers keep fucking with their movies, I would almost support taking a film like this and updating the special effects. This film and The Dunwich Horror are both good films that are marred by the effects at the end. Oh, and To The Devil, A Daughter. I forgot about that, but I remember Christopher Lee bitching that they'd run out of money or something, so he didn't get a good death scene, just kinda falls down and vanishes.
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That just looks ridiculous. And you kind of expect the kids to escape. So really, it's all the more shocking to find yourself laughing as you see a very brutal kid death.
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THE OTHER is considered "obscure?"
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Yeah, that was my reaction, too. "The Other" novel was a horror blockbuster, one of the first really, and the movie got traction from that fact. Maybe its because we're older than Quint that we know that.
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who also directed what is considered one of the best novel-to-film adaptations ever, To Kill A Mockingbird.
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Late night HBO or something. I distinctly remember the exploding sleeping bag. But other than that, i thought it was kinda meh.
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That was one of the taglines for that pig-in-the-Alien-egg image that for awhile I was actually getting confused with Alien back when these add campaigns were young (and I was still just a kid). Both gave me nightmares, though I loved trying to draw my own versions of the poster art in pencil. How oh how could anybody simply DRAW anything so utterly horrifying? I never did master visual art though, sigh.
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... of traumatic, horrifying experiences, that is. It's probably a lot scarier if you grew up in a small town... this could have been happening to my neighbors when I saw it as a kid!
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Quint just has to have not seen it. I could be wrong.
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what state?
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Fucking CHILLING ending that haunted me for days afterwards.
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Much of this movie was filmed in BC, specifically Squamish BC and the surrounding Sea to Sky area. I (as a young child) remember them filming at two locations, The Squamish Airport (and the entire town was there that day)and Daisy Lake(the cabin on the lake set)on the way to Whistler BC. In addition, the location where Richard Dysart's character gets killed is still standing - fences and all. Every time I hike up to that location(Debeck's Hill)it always gives me the creeps since it's so easy to climb over that damn security fence! All he had to do was climb over the fence...but he had to killed by a cliche.
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Just watched the scene in which the kid dressed as a banana explodes into feathers....hilarity....to think that this film shares a birth year with "alien"
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in every way.. from espying the dreaded "leonard rosenman" in the title credits it was downhill all the way...
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