Monster Movie of the Week: Prophecy (1979)

PROPHECY (1979)

Director: John Frankenheimer

Genre: Eco Horror/Mutation

Ecological horror was all the rage in the 1970’s with a series of well publicized disasters like Three Mile Island and Love Canal adding to the already bleak and paranoid mindset of post-Watergate America. The Carter years gave us a few solid monster movies, with that gritty 1970’s /early 1980’s feel like Q: The Winged Serpent, Alligator, and John Frankenheimer’s Prophecy, which features a creature born of Maine waters polluted by chemical runoff from a paper mill.

If you liked Jaws, then you are going to love Paws.

Dr. Verne is sent on an assignment by the EPA to report on a logging operation in rural Maine. He takes his wife with him who is struggling with the decision of whether or not to tell him that she is pregnant, as he is against bringing children “into this world.” Soon they stumble upon an Indian tribe (lead by Armand Assante and part of a long tradition of having Italian American actors play Indians) that is showing signs of mercury poison from the local paper mill. The Indians believe that a legendary creature, the Katahdin, is loose on their lands and soon everyone present is hunted by a huge mutated bear-like creature.

Either Maggie is hiding from the Katahdin, or Adrian is seeking refuge from Clubber Lang. Either way I feel bad for her.

The heart of Prophecy is Talia Shire as Dr. Verne’s wife, Maggie as this is a movie that is preoccupied with pregnancy, monstrous birth, mutation and abortion. In a conversation with a female friend, early in the movie, Maggie is told that it is her right “to choose” and that her husband can’t make her have an abortion. Among all of the other things going on in the late ‘70’s, this movie is set in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade. Maggie’s pregnancy is used as an unsettling subplot throughout the movie. There is a great scene later in the movie, well after the two have consumed the some freakishly large river trout where her husband (who is still unaware of her pregnancy) describes to her the effects of consuming mercury-

contaminated food on a fetus. Later in the movie, they discover the pathetic mewling offspring of the monster and it falls to Maggie to take care of the horrible little creature. This imagery is the primary visual on the poster art, which features a monstrous infant in a placental sac. Interestingly, we are left to wonder about the fate of Maggie’s baby. Is it healthy? Does she keep it? Is it perhaps the embryo monster from the poster? Does it become a sort of ecological Rosemary’s Baby?

Manbearpig; it's totally cereal.

THE MONSTER/EFFECTS

Unfortunately, the monster is not quite as cool as the more memorable poster art (which I remember vividly from the Beta Video box at my local video store as a child). As it appears in the moive, it looks somewhat like the offspring of a Grizzly bear and a pig that got burnt in a bad fire. Worse yet is the very unscary way that it waddles around in an unnaturally upright way. It looks as though you could tip it over with a good push.

There are two “cubs” in the movie, one living and one dead. They achieve a certain level of creepiness in that you simultaneously pity and are repulsed by them, not unlike the unfortunate and misshapen infant from David Lynch’s Eraserhead.

MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT

Most people seem to remember the scene in which camper in a sleeping bag is awakened, hops around like an anthropomorphic banana and then is violently swatted against some boulders where he explodes in a pristine ball of white feathers.

DVD AVAILABILITY

It’s on Netflix. Put it in your queue.

Smokey warned us that only we could prevent forest fires but we didn't listen. Now he's going to have to kick some ass.

SEQUELS

None. Too bad. This movie could have had a really cool sequel.

TRAILER