PROPHECY (1979)

Director: John Frankenheimer

Writer: David Seltzer

Producer: Robert L. Rosen

Cast: Robert Foxworth, Talia Shire, Armand Assante, Richard Dysart, Victoria Racimo, George Clutesi, Tom McFadden, Kevin Peter Hall (uncredited), Charles H. Gray, Everett Creach, Burke Byrnes, Johnny Timko, Mia Bendixsen, Graham Jarvis, Evan Evans, Lyvingston Holms, James H. Burk, Lon Katzman, Bob Terhune

Washington, D.C. Government Health Inspector Dr. Robert Verne (Robert Foxworth) brings his pregnant wife, Maggie (Talia Shire), along with him into the woods of Maine to assess the environmental impact of the Pitney Lumber Company paper mill. It is hoped that this assessment can help settle the conflict between the paper mill and members of the local Native American tribe who feel that their ancestral forests are being despoiled. The lumber company is blaming the tribe for recent disappearances of loggers in the forest. An elder of the tribe believes that Katahdin, a legendary forest spirit, has risen to protect his people and the environment.

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

The filmmaker who delivered the classic, dark-humored, political thriller The Manchurian Candidate (1963) might seem like the last guy in the world who was itching to make a monster movie. Apparently, director John Frankenheimer and his writer had some things to say, whether there was a receptive audience or not. The screenplay was by none other than David Seltzer, who had written the huge horror hit The Omen (1976).

Chasing the 1970s pack of animals-attack flicks, Prophecy is the eco-horror alternative to the radiation-spawned-monster movies of the 1950s. It has often been derided over the years, yet I have always liked it. Much of the negativity about this film is because it is loaded with issues. I suppose some people want to take offense at anything that raises concerns they are apathetic to or in denial about. There are also many moviegoers who don’t want anything too heavy when all they are looking for are thrills and chills. Others may argue that this film is being heavy-handed in the way it addresses its concerns.

There is no denying that there is a lot to ponder here beyond how to survive the big, bad monster. In addition to the main issue of industrial pollution that can poison people and the environment, there are also the conflicts of industry with Native American culture, concerns about overpopulation, business corruption, inadequate urban housing, and abortion. For many viewers this movie may have just seemed like a checklist of contemporary issues striving for some sort of relevance.

I never seek out a film or judge it worthy because it is trying to be relevant. I am hoping to be involved and entertained. In the case of Prophecy, I don’t have an issue with its issues-heavy approach. Who says horror can’t be thoughtful? I think the pollution angle is a good one providing a topical basis for the menace here. It also provides the basis for most of the cultural and character conflict in the film.

The four main characters articulate all of this film’s issues. Health Inspector Dr. Robert Verne is concerned about the pollutants the paper mill may be discharging into the environment. Maggie Verne is reluctant to tell her parenting-averse husband about her pregnancy. Paper mill supervisor Bethel Isely (Richard Dyshart) contends that his mill is ecologically safe and simply meeting society’s demand for paper. Native American John Hawks (Armand Assante) defends his tribe’s concerns for their land being ruined by the paper mill.

Despite these oppressive themes, Robert Foworth and Talia Shire give nice performances as the Verne couple. Although he is idealistic, EPA appointed investigator Dr. Robert Verne does not immediately take a side in the local dispute. Maggie Verne is looking for the right moment to tell Robert that she is pregnant knowing that he does not want to bring a child into a troubled and overcrowded world. We get to share one quiet moment of romantic relief with them in their rustic cabin on the lake deep in the idyllic Maine forest just before the film’s main concern literally shows up on their doorstep.

Perhaps the weight of all these issues would have been easier for the film to carry if there were a bit of humor to be found with some of these characters. They are all delivering exposition or debating. I am not about to suggest we need a comic relief sidekick bumbling about or that characters should be delivering sitcom-styled wisecracks, but despite most of this film taking place in the great outdoors, emotionally we could use a breath of fresh air. It may have alleviated Prophecy’s preachy atmosphere.

Prophecy gets off to a great start with an opening scene that does what the best horror films do. It establishes a sense of dread and intrigue; we wonder just what the hell the nasty thing is that makes mincemeat out of the first characters we meet. That immediately catches this horror hound’s interest and keeps me eagerly sniffing along the trail this story leads me on.

Many don’t like the monster. I do. It’s big, brutal, and ugly. While no one in the film gives us an exact definition of the beast, it is generally understood to be a mutant bear. This creature seems like a reasonable extrapolation based on the environmental pollution hazard that is this movie’s main concern. We are shown other forms of life in the area that have also been altered in size or temperament. As a supporter of exposition in films when it is needed to get our heads around challenging concepts, I appreciate the effort made to explain an industrial waste’s monster-making potential. I am sure some self-styled scientists out there won’t accept that such a mutation could occur. I say that toxic waste is just as believable a justification for a monster as radiation was back in the good old ’50s. In more recent decades, it seemed that all any filmmaker needed to do was throw around the term “genetic engineering” to get the audience to accept the creation of any monster or superhero.

There are also special effects nitpickers wanting to find fault with the monster that I have never really understood. Prophecy is using many techniques of the time to realize its menace and to tell its story. I think that it accomplishes this, even if we think we know many of the tricks that were used. Nowadays, people will accept any absurdity presented with CGI and yet are so jaded that they are not impressed. About the only notice now given to CGI is when it is poorly done. While some back in 1979 were obviously not making a practical effects-to-CGI comparison, they seemed to be unwilling to engage with this issues-heavy film. Hence, they criticized everything from its characters, to its plot, to its issues, to its special effects.

With Prophecy this horror junkie gets a little extra kick beyond the high I will usually settle for. This is a horror movie with a thoughtful consideration of the environmental factors that justify its menace. We also have characters strongly motivated and impacted by those factors beyond just the most imminent threat of the bloodthirsty monster. Perhaps best of all, we get the innovative sleeping bag kill. Eat your heart out, Jason Voorhees.

THE GIANT CLAW (1957)

Director: Fred F. Sears

Writers: Samuel Newman, Paul Gangelin

Producer: Sam Katzman

Cast: Jeff Morrow, Mara Corday, Morris Ankrum, Robert Shayne, Edgar Barrier, Louis D. Merrill, Frank Griffin (as Ruell Shayne), Morgan Jones, Clark Howat, (and uncredited cast) George Cisar, Robert B. Williams, Fred F. Sears, Sol Murgi, Benjie Bancroft, Brad Brown, Al Cantor, Dabbs Greer, Bud Cokes, Leonard P. Geer 

Electronics engineer Mitch MacAfee (Jeff Morrow) is helping to calibrate early warning radar stations for the U.S. military near the North Pole. While piloting a plane during the tests, MacAfee reports a UFO moving too fast to be seen clearly, but he describes it as being as “big as a battleship.” When jet interceptors are scrambled, the unidentified flying object is not located and one of the planes does not return. MacAfee’s account is doubted until more aircraft in other parts of the world are also reported missing. Eventually, the UFO is identified as an enormous birdlike creature that is invisible to radar, impervious to weapons, and attacks to feed on anything that moves, especially humans. 

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Taking potshots at that infamous terror turkey, The Giant Claw, has long been a popular sport for sci-fi film fans. It would be an absolutely generic example of the 1950s sci-fi monster movie if not for its sub-par special effects, extravagant science, and earnest performances coping with some loopy lines of dialogue. Despite all of its deficiencies, I still find it as rewatchable as its monstrous cousins of a far finer pedigree like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and Tarantula (1955). 

This is a movie that seems like its script is really trying to impress with an original variation on the giant monster movie. A giant bird is certainly a change of pace from giant bugs and dinosaurs. To further distinguish it, The Giant Claw’s airborne atrocity is plumed with more sci-fi claptrap than a fleet of flying saucers. 

It is not only the scientific speculation and theories bandied about that put the screenwriters’ typewriter keys through contortions. Their characters’ lines in many scenes are as circular as the monster bird’s flight pattern. The roundabout dialogue seems to be hell-bent on trying to be clever. Once writers Samuel Newman and Paul Gangelin coin a quip or metaphor, they just gotta keep it in circulation. That “big as a battleship” reference to the creature’s size is repeated so often that you would think it is a standard unit of measurement used by the National Audubon Society. 

The writers’ characters often engage in banter that lobs idioms back and forth in an attempt at witty and colorful conversation that often falls flat. The most strained and almost successful attempt at this is when Jeff Morrow’s Mitch MacAfee is putting the moves on Mara Corday’s Sally Caldwell. They engage in an elaborate verbal bout of likening the routine of seduction to the game of baseball. Morrow and Corday are good enough actors to make this contrived dialogue amusing. But then Morrow’s hero caps it off with a clumsy attempt at romantic poetic wit before they start necking on a plane full of other passengers. I would have proposed this far more apt bit of verse:

For each conversation there's a time and place.

But right now let's just use our mouths to suck face.

My poem’s direct sincerity avoids the utter irrelevance of the first line in the Mitch MacAfee composition. However, it probably would have resulted in our amorous hero getting slapped in the kisser, but that would have been more entertaining. It’s not enough to just bitch about a movie’s flaws unless you know damned well how to fix them. 

Of course what most fright flick fans think needs fixing in this film is that not-so fine feathered flying freak from outer space. (You know I was just dying to drop an F-bomb to lengthen that line of alliteration.) Actually, a different creature design would be a mistake. It is this outrageous monster that is solely responsible for this movie’s enduring reputation, bad as that rep tends to be. I am rather fond of this big bird’s bug-eyed, badass expression. The damned thing even has twitching nostrils on its beak! It looks goofy and vindictive at the same time. I can’t think of any other giant movie monster’s puss that has more personality than this big, baleful buzzard. 

Our leads had headlined their share of classic 1950s sci-fi before they went on this turkey shoot. Jeff Morrow had starred in This Island Earth (1955), The Creature Walks Among Us (1956), and Kronos (1957). Former showgirl, pinup model, and October 1958 Playboy Playmate Mara Corday had already starred alongside perennial sci-fi horror hero John Agar in 1955’s Tarantula. She would also soon join another genre stalwart, Richard Denning, in The Black Scorpion (1957). 

These two are pretty game performers that maintain our interest in their characters without engaging in any actual character development. As electronics genius Mitch MacAfee, Morrow is that oh-so American ideal of the heroic professional who “makes his own rules.” At least his ability is based on intelligence and technical know-how tempered by a bit of humility. None of that modern-day movie snark and swagger or one-man-army bullshit is to be found here. Mara Corday’s mathematician Sally Caldwell is capable and not around just to be menaced and saved. Yet, unlike many of today’s movie heroines, she is not trying to prove that she can play with the boys by acting like Rambo in a skirt. She is just doing her job. She is also not trying to assert her independence by contriving some animosity against the leading man who we just know will win her over anyway. They begin by teasing each other a bit before they actually become an item. This relationship is never made into a Screenwriting 101 character arc; it just happens and the movie is better for it. 

Both Morrow’s Mitch MacAfee and Corday’s Sally Caldwell come across as simple, appealing characters. Despite some of the script’s trying-too-hard, clunky dialogue, there are also times when these two get to deliver some funny lines. Their performances were probably helped by the fact that Morrow and Corday had no idea what the monster would look like, since a south-of-the-border, cut-rate effects shop made the bird creature puppet and its scenes were shot separately. 

Another pair of genre reliables provides the U.S. Air Force authorities that have to deal with the winged menace. Robert Shayne, as Gen. Van Buskirk, and Morris Ankrum, as Lt. Gen. Edward Considine, play the military brass that recruit MacAfee and Caldwell to help them destroy the seemingly invulnerable flying monster. Ankrum had played another military general role in director Sears’ Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956). 

Director Fred F. Sears was the B film specialist who had helmed the great 1956 sci-fi double feature Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and The Werewolf. His sci-fi sophomore effort the following year was The Giant Claw paired with The Night the World Exploded. Both later films deal with some far-out science fiction concepts that are let down by their filmed execution. 

I can’t speak personally on the latter film’s shortcomings, but budget is probably the major factor in the much-maligned special effects of The Giant Claw. Even though notoriously cheap producer Sam Katzman was in charge of 1955’s It Came from Beneath the Sea and 1956’s Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, those two films displayed some fine effects work due to the stop-motion animation expertise of Ray Harryhausen. Producer Katzman probably wasn’t inclined to allow the time or money for anymore of Harryhausen’s meticulous efforts, so we end up with the special effects audacity on display in The Giant Claw. 

In all fairness, the monster does commit a satisfying amount of carnage (even if a few shots of chaos and destruction are swiped from earlier productions such as Earth vs. the Flying Saucers). Aside from the sometimes too-obviously miniature props it plucks at and its visible puppeteering wires, the monster’s movements are sometimes nicely done. I just love the scene of it swooping in to gobble up people dangling helplessly from parachutes. Every monster kid remembers that bit of bad bird behavior. 

I really appreciate that in the can-do 1950s sci-fi films, there was usually effective collaboration between the government, military, and scientists to cope with unprecedented, catastrophic threats. Unfortunately, such efficient cooperation seems unlikely these days in our troubled world. After consultation with the military and scientist Dr. Karol Noymann (Edgar Barrier), Mitch MacAfee’s highfalutin physics come in handy devising a weapon to try combating the creature. 

Dr. Noymann’s character is the guy that really lets this movie’s sci-fi logic genie out of its bottle. He explains that the monster can generate an antimatter shield making it indestructible and undetectable by radar, and more speculation determines that it came from an outer space, antimatter universe. However, despite all of this scientific gobbledygook regarding the intergalactic gobbler, we are never told how it traveled through outer space to arrive on Earth. Flapping wings don’t propel without an atmosphere. As Gen. Buskirk grumbles: “It’s just a bird!” 

I guess the titanic turkey’s ability to reach our planet is left to my all-too fertile imagination. Hmmm… since the aerodynamic principles of winged locomotion don’t work in the airless void of outer space, I theorize that the monster generated antimatter flatulence to propel it through the galaxy. Eureka! Now, after all of that brilliant brainwork, I’m hungry. Where is my beautiful mathematician to serve me my well-deserved helping of coffee and sandwiches?