By 1979 environmentalism was a full fledged tour de force in American cinema, with movies of various genres addressing the terrifying notion of sickness and mutation from either chemicals or nuclear radiation. This was the year The China Syndrome and other such movies which warned humankind that our unnatural tampering with Momma Earth would eventually rise up to figuratively (and in some cases literally) bite us on the ass.

Well, whenever there’s a trend in Hollywood, you can be assured that with the cream comes the cheese. Prophecy falls so squarely into the latter category that it could be sealed in red wax and put on the shelf next to the gouda.

The plot unfolds something like this: A search party running through a thick forest in the dead of night is attacked and slaughtered by a large unseen something.

Then we switch to a ghetto, where physician Dr. Robert Verne (Robert Foxworth, seen prior to this as satanic apostate Paul Buher in Damien:Omen II) is approached by a colleague to head over to a logging community in Maine where the indigenous Native American people are protesting the expansion of a logging mill which the tribal folk claim is poisoning their land. This is the same geographic location where we just saw a group of men get turned into about six hundred combined pounds of ground chuck, so you know there‘s trouble brewing.

Verne - accompanied by his wife Maggie (Talia Shire, who at least had the excellent Rocky II on her resume for the same year) - arrives and meets with the head of the logging mill (Richard Dysart) and after seeing a dog (the sole survivor of the ill fated search party) being air lifted to safety (this is what they use helicopters for in Maine?) heads to the cabin where he will be staying. It is revealed that Verne is oblivious to the fact that his wife is pregnant and is afraid to tell him because his cynical world view clearly states he has no desire to bring a child into a world where millions are already starving (One has to wonder whether the good doctor considered these convictions when he was slipping it to his wife sans protection, but back to the review).

What does Verne do the following morning after his arrival? Go investigate the mill? Test he water and soil for possible contamination per the tribal claims? Nope. He goes salmon fishing, because nothing says dedicated environmentalist like a good bout of early morning salmon fishing, While on the water, the doctor sees a five foot salmon leap from the waves after having just devoured a duck. Yes, you read that last part correctly.

Here’s where the film starts to really go the “cheddar is better’ route: A physician sent to investigate claims that a logging operation is contaminating tribal lands in Maine arrives and sees a five foot salmon eat a duck and leap out of the water ..so what does this guy do? He catches a load of fish and brings them to the cabin, where he and his wife proceed to consume them. Yep, this guy is alternately earning that doctorate status and doing his alma mater proud.

Anyway, en route to finally check out the damned logging mill, Verne and the foreman run afoul of a band of Native Americans headed by a perpetually pissed off Armand Assante. This guy has to be seen to be believed. He’s not just angry- he’s violent. Never does he smile and he frequently lashes out in rage. Why anyone would be near this man armed with anything less than a fully loaded double barreled shotgun is beyond me. He’s one of the primary protagonists of this film.

From here Prophecy develops as your basic monster movie. Verne meets the locals, discovers that something is making tadpoles grow to the size of bullfrogs and (in the single funniest sequence in the film) is also causing psychotic raccoons to invade cabins and begin leaping at the occupants.

Some tribal lore is espoused about a creature named Katani that is one part every creature on earth. The requisite tribal Grandfather makes known his opinion that the thing running around knocking off mill workers and search parties is the embodiment of this myth (thus the title), but actually it’s a mutated bear.

The problem with Prophecy isn’t the story itself. It’s not a bad idea and director John Frankenheimer (who had directed classics such as The Manchurian Candidate, Black Sunday and later on the terrific Ronin) tries to imbed a sense of flavor and style into the picture. The film is beautifully shot and the effects are the late 70’s prosthetic and latex kind that are cheesy but no more so than in other movies. The gore is actually pretty decent for a PG flick. Even the performances are okay.

Where the film goes wrong is on the screenplay level, a lamentable surprise as the film is written by David Seltzer, the man who wrote The Omen. I guess ol’ Dave was either a one trick pony or he was just having an off day when he cranked out this narrative mess. Every time the film has a half way decent plot development, it’s almost immediately countered by some asinine character action or event that pushes the needle on proceedings past “absurd” and straight into “ludicrous.”

Some shining examples:

After Verne discovers the source of the contamination and that the water and soil were affected locally, his wife is the one who realizes that eating the fish he caught was potentially dangerous. Once again, way to represent the AMA doc.

Classic WTF moments: Adrian- I mean Mrs. Verne - is fleeing the mutant bear with the others. A mutant bear baby is seen biting into her throat. These people run for about five minutes across a half a mile before anyone notices the monster bear cub attached to her neck, despite the fact that there is at least one person in front of her and another directly behind her.

The group clears the lake and ends up on a dock. Mutant bear chases them into water, submerging. All of three seconds later the doc screams “Yeah! It drowned!” while the others watch a series of bubbles rise from the lake, clearly indicating that something is making its way towards them underwater. Despite the fact that they have all seen this thing knock over armored transports, tear roofs apart with one swipe and mutilate everyone in its path, they actually stand there and wait until it rises from the water eight feet from them to start running.

The necessary “hero takes on the beast“ moment: I’ll say only this- it involves a man hurtling thirty feet through empty space like some sort of ninja warrior while brandishing an arrow. Not a bow and arrow, mind you. Just an arrow.

I sound as if I loathed watching Prophecy, but nothing could be farther from the truth. After having not seen the film for almost two decades, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this! For all the stupidity (and there’s more, unmentioned here), this is a genuinely entertaining flick. It's definitely a bad movie, but it’s a bad movie with a good heart and a somewhat good flick trapped inside of it. I suspect any B-movie fan will find a lot to love here and I definitely recommend the film for fans of “Man -made-monster-on-the- loose” junk cinema.

This review is for the widescreen DVD. No extras at all, but a crisp, beautiful sound and picture transfer. Filled with terrific aerial shots of North West forests (where the film was presumably shot instead of Maine), this movie really does look gorgeous.

Seven out of ten chilling sleeping bag kills which predated the introduction of Jason Voorhees by at least a year.