Coventry Review of Prophecy

Prophecy (1979)

Fierce, inside-out creatures in Paul Bunyan country.

[4/10 · 31 December 2007]

In so many ways, "Prophecy" is such a typical product of the severely uneven 70's horror industry. On one hand the plot is ambitious, convoluted and it sternly spreads a handful of valuable environmental messages (oh yeah, this is pure and genuine eco-horror), but on the other hand the elaboration is so extremely cheesy, campy and poor that you can't possibly take the whole thing serious. The story is largely set in – as one of the characters cleverly points out – Paul Bunyan's birth region Maine, where the employees of a big paper factory quarrel with the last remaining members of an old-fashioned Indian community over who rightfully owns the forestry lands surrounding the factory. The eminent biologist Dr. Robert Verne is sent there, along with his wife, to investigate whether or not the factory harms the environment, as the locals regularly encounter bizarre & unnatural phenomena like gigantic fish and an unusually large number of deformed babies. The doctor and his Indian friends gradually discover that mercury poisoning from the factory is indeed responsible for the corruption of nature's balance. Moreover, decades of pollution also even spawned a giant & fierce mutated monster that (strangely enough) nobody has spotted until then! Given the plausible explanation of the pollution's origin (mercury poisoning), this could have been the concept of a legitimately unsettling and alarming eco-horror creature feature, but something obviously went awry during the elaboration. The first 45 minutes are professionally tense and classy, with fuzzy & unclear images of an 'animal' attack during the opening credits and a smoothly built up atmosphere of hatred between the primitive Indians and the barbaric woodchoppers. But then the script takes a couple of absurd twists (Talia Shire nurturing a mutant bear's baby?) and the intellectual concept gradually becomes replaced with mundane and unspectacular monster-chasing-men-through-the-woods sequences. The special effects sadly evoke more laughs and sentiments of pity instead of scares (ever seen an inside-out grizzly bear? Well, here's your chance) and most of the main monster's bloody rampage happens off-screen and the screenplay (spoiler!) doesn't even has the courage to kill off one of the leading characters, which is very UN-seventies I may add. John Frankenheimer was always one of the most underrated filmmakers in Hollywood, but horror clearly wasn't his field of expertise. Worth a peek in case you're a fan of typical 70's fare, but definitely no priority viewing.