Prophecy (1979)

(In French, On Cable TV, July 2020) Don’t confuse this 1979 Prophecy with 1984’s somewhat better The Prophecy. In this one, a government health inspector travels to Maine (played by British Columbia) to investigate tensions between loggers and Native Americans, and ends up encountering a monster created by pollution. But what begins as an eco-horror film with some potential ends up going straight to familiar horror clichés. For a few minutes, director John Frankenheimer does seem as if he’s hit upon something interesting: an environmental message, tensions with the indigenous population, city protagonists uncomfortable in the wild forest… there’s even some tremendously unsettling stuff mid-way through, as with unborn infants being mutated by pollution. But then the film crashes down with the arrival of an overly familiar big bad mutated bear antagonist, and a routine finale that never actually mentions important plot points (such as the heroine’s pregnancy) ever again. There’s a swing and a miss in Prophecy—a concept that could have delivered a lot more, but ends up with a whimper of clichés.