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)
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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
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