Directed by John Frankenheimer
Starring Robert Foxworth, Talia Shire and Armand Assante
Not to be confused with THE Prophecy. You know, the one with Christopher Walken. It's not hard to figure out, what with the decided lack of "...'s" floating around the premeses.
Like a lot of the movies that I review on the blog, I have a lot of nostalgia for the flick in question today. Prophecy got a hell of a lot of airplay on the Turner stations back when I was a kid. Every so often, TBS would occasionally get a big boner for movies about nature run amok, and this movie was always one of the featured pieces of cinematic mastery. Sometimes, the TV Gods would even REALLY smile on 8-year-old me and have a whole slew of movies strictly focused on bears. It goes without saying that this was the one that I saw the most. Oh yeah, this movie is about a giant killer bear. Spoiler alert.
I don't know what it is about "killer animal" movies that are so scary to me, but they get me nine times out of ten. Maybe it's just the realism factor. Prophecy is an out there movie; it definitely would never be confused for having biting realism on any level, but it's the IDEA of a giant killer bear that gets you. Who knows. Way out there in the forests, there are still sections of the globe that haven't been explored. It's not outside of the realm of possibility that something like this could be out there. Thus, if you make things like spiders, sharks or bears scary, I'm there. Unless it's on SyFy. Then I couldn't care less. Since this movie was released exactly 14 years before that channel hit the airwaves, we're safe here. It was also a pretty big deal back in the day, with a big-time action director in John Frankenheimer attached, a $12 million budget and a box office gross that made it a big hit. I suppose that's enough nonsensical jibber-jabber; let's get to the show.
Meet Dr. Robert Verne (Robert Foxworth), newly hired worker for the Environmental Protection Agency who is hired to write a report on a paper company operating in the woods of Maine. Since this is a horror movie, it also means that we have to have a bunch of people either tagging along with or following Dr. Verne. First and foremost, and in the horror movie hall of fame as one of the most endearing characters in all of history, is Dr. Verne's wife Maggie. Maggie is pregnant, conflicted about it, and played by Adrian Balboa herself. Back when I was a kid, I thought Talia Shire was the most gorgeous woman on the planet, and with the rose-colored glasses taken off...I was 50% correct, as every time she isn't geeked up to look like Rocky's wife I still think that late '70s-early'80s Talia is scorchin'. The same holds true here, and she's even a pretty damn good screamer to boot. A shame she wasn't in more horror movies, because she could have been one of the queens. As a consolation prize, she later did a movie where she played a woman with a lesbian stalker who hires a man to hold her at knifepoint to force her to make orgasm noises so that she can play it back for...enjoyment. And folks, I'm not making that up.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are in the "introduce all potential victim characters" phase of the movie, and the movie doesn't disappoint here. There's a vacationing family, a group of local natives who are in the midst of a dispute with the paper company, and various workers connected to the mill itself. Of these, the most important are Hawks (Armand Assante), the most outspoken of the Indians, and mill director Bethel Isley (Richard Dysart, a.k.a. Ben Murphy's boss in the pilot episode of Gemini Man). Since Prophecy was released JUST as slasher movies were starting to become a thing, it doesn't quite feel as if the characters are being lined up to slaughter; there is a bit of suspense as to who will live and who will die.
From what, you ask? Well, we've seen some strange stuff, due to some negligent activity by the paper mill (which is kind of shoved down our throats, to be fair, because everyone knows how much I love social issues stuff in my movies). A giant fish. A tadpole the size of your fist. A VERY ill-tempered raccoon that would make Dr. Evil laugh with glee. And...the giant, mutated bear creature that soon shows up and begins murdering the f**k out of everyone in sight.
The bear, dubbed "Katahdin" by the locals, is without a doubt one of the coolest things that movie audiences had seen in 1979. It's a truly nightmarish creation; just type "Prophecy Katahdin" into Google if you're curious, but if you're too lazy to do that, take a brown bear. Make it eight feet tall. And add a whole bunch of gnarled flesh, fur and nasty facial scarring. And loud roaring. The chemicals that Evil Paper Mill have been putting in the water have done some nasty stuff, but nothing nastier than Katahdin. Yeah, this movie scared the hell out of me as a kid, and it was because of this thing. Admittedly, that build - of which I spent three full paragraphs describing in what was totally not a result of my poor writing skills but a clever allegory to simulate the effect of watching Prophecy - was pretty slow. But once the giant bear shows up, the movie takes off.
A lot of the deaths in this movie are real crowd pleasers. It's not a flick that's real big on the "stalk and slash" technique; instead, it's more "blitzkrieg and that's all, folks," with rapid-fire deaths ticking off with little warning and little remorse. Having said that, after the initial round of slaughter, with the survivors on the run from Katahdin and taking up refuge wherever they can in an attempt to escape it, the movie throws one of the best jump scares in horror history at us. Picture this: a gigantic bear assaults the entire group of survivors, who hide in an underground cave. A full minute of agonizing silence ticks by. Finally, one of the characters gets up the bravery to stick his head out of the hole...and use your imagination. It was effective back when I first saw this movie in 1991, and it's still pretty damn effective today.
The "shit hits the fan" section of Prophecy is awesome - so awesome that it's enough overcome that criminally slow start. Admittedly, the main character husband-and-wife duo of Dr. Verne and his wife are also pretty engaging, but the other characters...yeah, I barely mentioned them for a reason. Effects-wise, the movie still holds up pretty well, but that's to be expected from a director like Frankenheimer. Not a single digital effect to be found here; this was back in the days when it took some actual ingenuity to make it look like a mutated murderous bear wanted to eat everything in sight. So puppets and forced perspective photography FTW, people.
Rating time. Let's give this flick *** out of ****. It's not a masterpiece by any stretch, but it's easy to see why this was a big box office hit back in the day. And if you're a fan of monster movies, this one is cause for rejoice.
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