Prophecy (1979) — Triskaidekafiles

PROPHECY

WRITER: David Seltzer

DIRECTOR: John Frankenheimer

STARRING: Talia Shire as Maggue

Robert Foxworth as Rob

Armand Assante as John Hawks

Richard Dysart as Isely

Victoria Rasimo as Ramona

George Clutesi as M'Rai

QUICK CUT: A visit to the woods turns bad when a bear terrorises a growing family and the local natives.

THE MORGUE

Rob - A doctor with a deep understanding of social issues, since he has worked on the front lines trying to get poor people the help they need. He has grown a bit jaded over the years, as he keeps trying, but nothing gets better, however he keeps using his white privilege to lift up other voices.

Maggie - Rob’s wife, recently pregnant, and has yet to tell him. She’s a cellist, and living her own life, but things are not great at home, as both of their careers are taking up a lot of time. There’s a lot of love between the characters, but they’re struggling.

Isely - A man working for the local paper mill, a liaison to Rob as he does his work investigating, and, as far as these things go, a decent man, on the wrong side of things.

John Hawks - A native living in the Maine woods, who will do anything he can to protect his people, his land, and his culture. This has put him at odds with the government and the paper mill in particular, as progress and culture clash.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! Our Earth Day related movies kinda continue with the classic 1970s creature feature, Prophecy. Let's just get right to it.

The movie's credits roll as they slowly reveal a search team being lead by a dog just going absolutely spare as it chases something through the forest. To the point it blindly runs right off a cliff, and it would have plunged to its death if not for the team and the dog being tied together.

But he keeps fighting, and eventually breaks free, so the team assails down the cliff face after the pupper. Unfortunately they find what will be our monster for this movie, and it makes quick work of the entire squad.

C’mon guys, quit laying around on the job!

We meet Rob as he's dealing with some folks in a bad way in the slums as he tries and help them, and then he gets pressganged into helping out with a situation in the forest.

A paper mill has purchased some land that Natives claim is theirs, no one wants to be the one to decide, so they are trying to get Rob to look into environmental factors. If it's all good, the Natives won't have much to stand on, and if he finds some negative impacts, they can make it not worth the mill's time.

So Rob heads to Maine with his wife, Maggie. Whom we have learned is pregnant, and debating if she wants to keep it. Not sure if this is a great vacation idea, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do for the plot.

They witness the rescue dog, the only survivor of the opening massacre, and their liaison Isely tells them that the rescue team went missing, and the Natvies are using it to spread rumours of their local folklore monster, Katahdin.

Isely takes the Vernes into the woods, and their cars get stopped by a small blockade of Natives, led by John Hawks.

They try and convince John to let them through, but he refuses to let through any car from the lumber company.

Isley tells John this is against the law, and oh man, Armand Assante is NOT the guy you wanna go against when it comes to that!

The Natives remain steadfast, so Isley has his man Kelso try and cut down the trees that the chair blocking the road are attached to.

John brings an axe to a chainsaw fight, and that does not go very well for him. Rob does his best to step in and stand on his side, so no one gets hurt, and it all ends in the chain being taken down so the cars can go through.

We finally reach the cabin, the couple settles in, and as Rob does some fishing, we see a HUGE fish. Hey wait, I thought it was Texas where everything was bigger.

So after all that excitement with the chainsaw, the plot slows down a bit, which is fine, but we keep things rolling when a crazed raccoon causes a ruckus outside, and assaults Rob.

The couple struggles for a bit as the critter rampages through their cabin, and Rob finally takes care of their home invader when he catches it and tosses it into the fire.

Later, Rob calls in some updates, and runs into John, who wants to speak with him, and share his side of the story.

He tells Rob about how his people are afflicted with something, and his wife share stories of babies born deformed, or even dead. This is all enough to pique Rob's curiosity, and is important enough to his overall mission, that he agrees to go with them.

They meet with M'Rai, John's grandfather-in-law, and they talk more about how things grow big there, and eventually come around to Katahdin again. M'Rai describes him as being a part of all things, and he bears a mark of all creatures.

John catches a tadpole, and it's about the size of your head. Rob is understandably concerned, since that's large for the frogs that usually grow from tadpoles, and they learn this pond is connected to the river that feeds the paper mill.

So they head to the plant and take a tour. Everything seems normal enough, but Rob worries the logs are being soaked in chemicals further upstream, where it would affect the land near M'Rai's camp.

The foreman is insistent though, and offers to let them test the water runoff. Rob fears it's mercury, as evidenced by some silvery substance on his wife's boots, some other signs, and everything fits for mercury poisoning.

We get a wonderful scene as Rob puts everything together, the affects of mercury poisoning, the mutations, the way it could cause creatures to seemingly pick up traits as its fetal development is affected (Just go with it)...while at the same time, his wife is quietly *freaking out* because she's pregnant, and this could be affecting the baby he doesn't know about yet.

Meanwhile, our manbearpig finds the family that's been wandering through the plot, and makes short work of them.

The sheriff believes it was John, so they show up to arrest him and a few others while Rob is trying to gather blood samples to get more evidence to support his theories.

Naturally, he makes a run for it, and Rob and friends head for the campsite where the family was slaughtered.. Which just so happens to be where John shows up to.

The place is trashed, and they find huge, deep, claw marks where claw marks should not be, and when investigating some nearby nets, they find several horribly mutated creatures.

Rob wants to save one that's still alive, as evidence, and they head to M'Rai's camp, since a storm has kicked up preventing them from getting to the chopper.

So they get the creature into a warm, dry tent, and while Rob does what he can to keep it alive, he sends someone to town to get whomever he can; people from the newspaper, the paper mill, and the sheriff, so they can be shown the truth.

After Rob finds out he's about to be a dad, the others arrive, and Isely is confronted with the consequences of his actions.

Which gives us another wonderful moment as you can see he's affected by this, and when asked if he knew what his plant was doing, he just says that he didn't want to. And that really says it all.

Good to see Weasel didn't become your typical child actor, and still has a career today

And that's the perfect time for Katahdin to show up and wreck the campsite, kill a few people, and send the rest of our cast hiding in some tunnels.

The movie tries to build up some tension and suspense as everyone sits silently in the tunnels, waiting for Katahdin to move on. It's good, but maybe goes on for juuust a bit too long.

We get a few too many plot complications once the sun comes up of "What do we do now?" with no good options, until Isely volunteers to go to a nearbyish radio tower to try and get some help.

Just as he comes in sight of the tower, he runs right into Katahdin, who chases Isely right up to the fence. He starts crawling under it to get through, and the manbearpig chomps his legs off.

Cutting to the chase, our survivors find a vehicle from the lumber company and use it to try and make their escape.

After a little too much driving, Katahdin finds them, knocks over their truck, and those who can run away make it to the river and try to swim across.

M'Rai stays behind, staring into the face of what to him must seem like a godlike creature. ...It then proceeds to literally toss him around in the air like a hacky sack.

Come on! Come and get me! I’m here! Do it now!

Unfortunately, they forgot that little detail that it's a giant fucking bear monster, and it just walks across the river to come and get them.

They make tracks for Rob's cabin, barricade it as best they can, and load up the shotguns. But, it is hard to barricade against something that thinks walls are merely a suggestion, and as it tears into the cabin, shots are fired.

Hawks takes flight as he is smacked into the sky and dies from the impact. Katahdin turns its attention to Rob, scooping him up, and getting stabbed in the face with an arrow repeatedly.

I’m going to hug him, and squeeze him, and name him George.

Somehow, the stabby arrowhead is too much for the mighty beast, and it falls over dead. Geeze, that's kinda weak. It should've taken, I dunno, at LEAST a rocket launcher.

And so Rob and his wife who is still pregnant and probably about to give birth to Charles Xavier, fly off into the sunset, as another manbearpig howls at the credits.

TRISK ANALYSIS

Video: A very nice transfer on the Blu Ray. Lots of depth and detail.

Audio: A good mix, strong dialogue, effective surrounds.

Body Count: Katahdin does a very nice bit of carnage, even if some of it does happen off camera, and the majority of it is in two main chunks. Also, I might have miscounted slightly here and there with a couple body piles, but I did my best.

1 - About five and a half minutes in and a dangling body gets slashed.

2 - Another dead body dangling from the rope

3 - And another

4 - One on the rocks

5 - And another

6 - Katahdin smacks a kid so hard he explodes against a tree

7, 8 and 9 - The rest of the family dies off screen.

10 - One of the natives gets smacked into a campfire

An untold number get slaughtered in the camp off screen

11 - Sheriff gets his head squished.

12 - Isely gets eaten in half

13 - Someone gets killed after the transport goes down

14 - Katahdin plays with M'Rai like he's an airplane

15 -And finally Katahdin himself is felled by an arrow to the face.

Best Corpse: There’s a few nice ones here, and I won’t go with the sleeping bag explosion, because that’s pretty bloodless, and only memorable for being so over the top. The sheriff getting his head popped and his remains falling back into the tunnel is nicely done.

Blood Type - B: A lot of this goes for the monster, and the baby monsters. Some striking visuals there that borders on uncomfortable. I know some people mock it, but it hits just the right notes for me.

Drink Up! every time Isely shows up.

Movie Review: I very much enjoyed this movie. I’m not normally one for creature features, or man vs. nature movies, but this goes the extra mile that I really appreciated. It’s not JUST a bear, it’s a mutant gooey bear monster. Plus, there’s some still relevant social commentary, both environmentally and about racism and white privilege and progress. I really appreciate it when a horror movie uses a story about a monster to say something more. There is a bit of dragging, a little too much sitting around, to build tension, and the movie suffers just a tiny bit because of it. Still, solid acting, some fun creature design, and a movie that has something to say gives this a four out of five manbearpigs.

Entertainment Value: I sometimes forget Armand Assante is a good actor, and not the scenery chewer he is probably more known for. Loved his performance in this, and the entire cast is solid. The kills are great, and the monster is a treat. It has those few slower moments, but there’s a lot here to be entertained by. Four out of five logs sailing down the river.