Prophecy (1979)

John Frankenheimer made his name as a film director in the sixties, with a string of intense monochrome movies highlighting strong male characters facing various moral and ethical dilemmas, they ranged from prison drama The Birdman of Alcatraz through conspiracy thrillers like The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May, to science fiction with Seconds.  With the seenties he turned to colour, producing muscular action dramas like Grand Prix and literary adaptations like The Fixer and The Iceman Cometh.  Then his career seemed to go off the rails somewhat, to the extent that, by 1979, he was to be found directing the eco-horror movie Prophecy.  This is another of those films which seemed to become difficult to see, with no TV outings or home media releases for many years.  This, despite the fact that, not only did it have a 'name' director, but it was also a studio backed picture, (a Paramount production), which, by the look of it, had a reasonable budget.  Having recently had the opportunity to see a decent copy of the film, it is easy to see why it isn't well remembered, or particularly loved by either its studio or director.  Made in the wake of Jaws (1976), Prophecy is fashioned as a 'revenge of nature' type film, with visitors and residents to a mountain community falling prey to 'something' big and nasty in the woods.  These events are framed by a dispute between a ruthless logging company busily deforesting the area to provide trees for its paper mill and the local Native Americans and an investigation into possible pollution of the local river by a a doctor sent by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Being a John Frankenheimer film, there are plenty of alpha males on hand, but here they seem to be full of insane levels of testosterone fuelled aggression.  The main male characters are always angrily butting heads.  Be it the doctor and the logging company exec clashing over whether or not the paper mill responsible for the local pollution and consequent mutation of the local flora and fauna, the exec and the leader of the Native Americans arguing over access to the mountain roads, (one confrontation results in an insane axe v chainsaw fight), or the doctor and the Native American leader trying to establish just who has seen the most poverty and deprivation.  These constant confrontations quickly become wearisome and do little to advance the plot, which progesses jerkily enough as it is.  Only the underlying conflict between by science and spirituality does anything to help move the story along: the Native Americans believe that the force doing the killing is a spirit sent to defend the forest against its destruction by the loggers and all the other phenomena observed there - giant salmon and tadpoles, for instance - are similarly the result of divine intervention.  The doctor believes that it is all down to dangerous levels of mercury (used by the loggers as a fungicide), in the water that is causing not just mutations to the local wildlife, but also the sickness afflicting many of the Native Americans.

Of course, the doctor is proven right and the avenging forest spirit turns out to be a giant mutated bear, which eventually chews and claws its way through most of the cast before meeting its doom.  Which might sound exciting, but the film takes too long getting there.  There's far too much talk and earnest discussions about the environment, which simply serve to slow down the action.  Moreover, the script is far too clunky to allow any suspense to be built up around the monster attacks, which are always abrupt, coming out of nowhere with little or no build up.  On the plus side, however, the film looks great, making effective use of some beautiful Canadian locations.  Also, the monster itself is surprisingly well realised, based around a reasonably realistic looking mutant bear costume that, to be fair, rarely looks like a man-in-a-suit monster.  Frankenheimer, wisely, very rarely allows it to be shown in full, instead giving us close ups of its snarling visage, or glimpses of slashing claws.  The final battle between survivors and mutant is, as one would expect from Frankenheimer, very effectively staged and filmed.  The cast are basically B-level, certainly lacking the presence of the likes of Kirk Douglas, Frank Sinatra, Burt Lancaster or James Garner, with whom he had worked previously, but do as best they can with the material at hand.  Robert Foxworth as the doctor tends to underplay too much, while Armand Assante as the Native American leader overplays most of his scenes.  Richard Dysart as the logging company exec is probably the most effective performance, refusing to play the character as a stereotyped corporate villain, instead giving the character some depth and nuance, while Talia Shire gives a restrained and dignified performance as the doctor's wife.  

In the end, Prophecy is hamstrung by the way in which the script constantly pushes it's 'messages' at the expense of storytelling.  The end result is a movie that isn't horrific enough to be a horror film, nor thrilling or suspenseful enough to be a thriller.  More emphasis upon telling a clear story, simply allowing the eco-messages to speak for themselves, and better character development, (rather than just presenting the audience with constant conflict), might have yielded a more enjoyable, not to mention commercially viable, film.  In his defence, Frankenheimer later claimed that he made Prophecy at the height of his battle with alcoholism, which probably explains a lot about the film's directorial problems.  Sadly, his career never really seemed to properly get back on track, with a series of not entirely satisfactory films  Of his post-Prophecy film projects, (he had a number of far more successful TV projects in this period), only Ronin really stands out for me, with his last film, Reindeer Games, being particularly dismal.