Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

BeSummers Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

moonspinner55 For anyone still doubting the cruelty of show business, consider this tacky thriller was directed by John Frankenheimer, once an A-list filmmaker of merit reduced in 1979 to making a monster movie. Tenement doctor accepts a government job easing tensions in the forests of Maine, where lumber czars are taking land away from the Indian tribe; meanwhile, toxic waste attributed to the business has created its own rampaging monster, which looks like a melting grizzly bear and walks upright like a man. Depressing, distress-laden nonsense. One figures screenwriter David Seltzer had to be kidding; he's so heavy-handed with his messages, he even gives the doctor a pregnant wife afraid to tell her husband of her condition (he thinks there's enough people in the world already!). Good actors Robert Foxworth (looking a bit like Grizzly Adams himself), Talia Shire and Armand Assante are wasted. Assante, the stern, solemn mouthpiece for the Native-Americans, fights everybody in his path and gets kicked in the crotch for his trouble. Seltzer seems to be asking, "Who's worse, the lumber lunkheads or the beast in the forest?" Save a kick for Seltzer, who must have penned this for the paycheck. * from ****

richard.fuller1 Saddles somewhere between Snowbeast (1977) with Clint Walker and Intruder Within (1981) with Chad Everett came this offering, tho those were TV movies and this one was in the theatres. Nevertheless, they were all movies in which half the film was over before something happened, then you were lucky if you got a good view of the monster (before anyone saw the zipper on the rubber costume, of course). Prophecy to me, for some reason, has stand out scenes (the sleeping bag and I think this is the movie where the old Indian didn't realize his cigarette was burning his hand, which truth be told, can happen to anyone who has excessive drug use, but the insinuation was he was mutated and oblivious to pain, due to the poisoning chemicals as well). Yet the title always made the movie lost in all the other titles of a similar vein; The Legacy, The Truancy, The Dichotomy, The Buoyancy, The Sweltering, The Relinquishing, The Compilation, etc. Yes, Legacy is a real movie (don't know about the others. I was just trying to make them up as I went along) Legacy and Prophecy were the big two to me, but I have always managed to remember Legacy. Prophecy, I forget the title, the stars. In the end, it was like watching Stephen King's It. It's a giant monster spider. So that's it. Prophecy was the mutated bear movie. Pretty much what it should have been called. More people may have seen this movie, but like me, they don't recall what it was called.

Leofwine_draca Now this is what a monster movie should be like: an interesting story that doesn't rely on the creature to keep things moving along; realism wherever possible; a decent cast of B-movie types who you can play "who's gonna die next?" with.Much of the success of PROPHECY lies in the presence of director John Frankenheimer, who brings a sheen of professionalism to the proceedings that many other minor monster flick directors can't hope to equal. This is a film which inhabits the same ecological disaster type territory as LONG WEEKEND and FROGS, and proves to be just as entertaining: the story of a mutated bear-creature rampaging in the woods as a result of industrial pollution is a good one, and PROPHECY never disappoints.Along with the interesting story, this film benefits from a strong leading cast who bring life to what could be otherwise rote characters. Robert Foxworth is the bearded, wild-haired leading man, but Talia Shire (riding high from the success of ROCKY) is of the most interest, facing a dilemma that is irritatingly never resolved. Armand Assante plays perhaps the world's most unlikely Native American and Richard Dysart bags the great role of the company man responsible for the pollution.The monster effects are great – I'll forever take prosthetic and model effects work over CGI – and the horror scenes ultra effective, with the bit with the boy in the sleeping bag an example of 'one seen, never forgotten'. The most chilling thing, though, is is the implication of the environmental pollution, as evinced by the film's coda, with far more disturbing implications than an in-your-face out of control rampaging bear mutant.

Chase_Witherspoon When a city health specialist trades the ghettos for the serenity of a mountain landscape to investigate an apparent health hazard at a timber refinery, he (Foxworth) and his wife (Shire) find a disturbing by-product has evolved from the toxic pollution, putting the local Native American community and their rival logging employees at risk. A giant mutation (akin to a bear) has become the apex predator of the local wilderness, forcing foes to join forces to combat the threat.Picturesque and generally well-developed tale of nature gone awry, combines an initially sobering dose of environmentalist pathos, indigenous injustice and commercial greed with the common monster-on-the-loose theme to reasonably satisfying effect. The principle characterisations are well drawn, and generally played to type, benefiting from a talented cast, well accustomed to dealing with aggressive animals (see Foxworth in "Ants"). Frankenheimer strays from the conservation cause in the latter half, instead concentrating on the action, where the characters forgive one another's sins, in common struggle against a more immediately present enemy.The monster (portrayed here by future "Predator" Kevin Peter Hall) and its not so cute as a button offspring are such an unfortunate looking consequence, that one can't but feel sympathy for its mindless fixation with mayhem. Naturally, the protagonist (Dysart, as the logging manager) claims redemption for his company's misdemeanour, and is appropriately exorcised by the unholy creation, but the sub-plot involving Shire and her suspect foetus is never fully developed, lost amid the action of the second half. As such the audience is left to ponder the outcome, although, as is formula for these types of films, the door is left open for a film franchise to be borne.While the sequel never materialised, the message remains clear – mess with nature, and trouble you shall get. "Prophecy" isn't especially prophetic, but it is entertaining, and easy to absorb on a basic level. And for the conscientious film buff, the scene in which the monster walks under water apparently inspired the hilarious scene from an episode of the "The Simpsons" when Skinner is hunting a truant Bart Simpson, terminator style.