That wonderfully alliterative bit in the second sentence up there is actually from a bumper when this movie was run on TNT years ago. My introduction to this movie was in broad daylight, in the middle of the afternoon, surrounded by family in my grandmother’s living room. I was about 8 years old. It scared the holy living shit out of me. The fact that this flick still gives me the heebie-jeebies today probably has a lot to do with the fact that I was traumatized by seeing a slimy, deformed bear fetus trying to rip out Talia Shire’s throat when I was only in second grade.

I understand that there are great swaths of goofy carved through this movie, and that when we see mama bear in all her glory the suit is bulky and stiff and looks more than a little bit retarded, and that I have never heard an unapologetically kind word said about this movie in any review ever. Perhaps it deserves that treatment, perhaps not. But I have plenty of kind words to say about it, because this is one of my favorite monster movies ever, and one of the few movies that never fails to wig me out every single time I watch it.

The opening sequence (and more than a few other sequences throughout) is a fantastic example of how sound effects can be way scarier than actually seeing something horrible. We begin in total blackness. Wind can be heard howling on the soundtrack as, in the distance, lights begin to bob and flash. Before long, the audience collides with a search party, dogs straining at their leashes and dragging the searchers farther into the pitch black woods. One of the dogs falls off a cliff, and several men follow it down, picked off one by one by a roaring, hungry something at the bottom of the cliff. We never see the monster, but the sounds it makes, combined with the keening of the wind, as if the very night itself is moaning a dirge for the hopeless search party, leaves you wondering just what the hell you got yourself into. Damn, but that opening sequence is just about the most perfect teaser. It’s been done before, it’s been done since, but it’s probably never been outdone.

Then we’re smacked with the movie’s message, long and hard, for fifteen or twenty minutes, as we’re introduced to inner-city doctor Robert Verne, and his pregnant girlfriend Maggie. She’s pregnant, but doesn’t want to tell him because she knows he’ll want an abortion. Why would you bring a baby into a polluted, overpopulated world that is quickly circling the drain? Blah blah blah. Then they decide to take a vacation to Maine, and we’re back in the action.

John and Ramona Hawks are a Native American couple leading their tribe in a battle against the local paper mill which is poisoning the local water with methyl mercury runoff. [Intra-review History Lesson: This plot device that was taken from a real-life environmental case in Japan, minus the Native Americans, of course. In 1956, a new neurological disease was discovered in Minamata City, Kumamoto prefecture. The Chisso Corporation was releasing methyl mercury runoff into the local water system. It accumulated in fish and shellfish, which were eaten by the local population. The disease can cause numbness, muscle degradation, narrowing of field of vision, hearing and speech problems, coma, and eventually death. A congenital version of this disease can also “jump the placental barrier” as Robert says in the movie, and affect developing fetuses. As of 2001, 2265 victims have been officially recognized, and 1784 of them have died.] On the other side of this battle is Isley, the corporate creep running the paper mill. Robert begins seeing strange things in the forest, such as giant trout that eat ducks, a psychotic raccoon that tries to kill him, and tadpoles the size of small dogs at the Hawks’ campsite.

All the while, some huge thing has been skulking around the bushes, huffing and wheezing and growling and making the sounds that, if someone asked you what were the absolute last sounds you would want to hear in a dark forest, you would say these very sounds. After the infamous exploding sleeping bag scene, in which the mutant bear slams a camper into a rock and his down-filled sleeping bag explodes in a shower of feathers, the shit really hits the fan. Isley winds up trapped with Robert and Maggie and the Hawkses, running like mad from a pissed off 10-foot skinned mutant bear mama whose nasty, slimy, deformed cub they’re carrying.

The bit where they find that cub is the part that really burned itself into my head. Our heroes have taken a helicopter out into the woods to do some exploring. Robert and company find claw marks at the nearly 12-foot level on some trees, along with flaps of mutant bear skin. Maggie has experienced a bout of pregnancy-related nausea and walks down to the river to catch her breath, where she finds a fishing net containing the bodies of two horribly deformed bear cubs, one alive, one dead. Now, I’ll state for the record right here that nothing wigs me out more than deformed fetus monsters, and this one takes the fucking cake. So of course they have to take the live one back to camp with them for evidence against the paper mill, and mama comes a-callin’. Oh, and remember how that nasty mercury accumulates in fish? And remember how Minamata disease can be congenital? And remember how Maggie was pregnant? And remember how Robert spent a lot of time fishing for their supper when their vacation began…? I think my ellipsis speaks for itself. But just in case you’re really dense, HER BABY IS GOING TO BE A DEFORMED MUTANT HORROR!

One of the major complaints about this movie is that it’s too preachy. In places, that’s true, but once the monster action starts coming thick and fast, you forget about the preachiness real quick. John Frankenheimer takes what would otherwise have likely been an entertaining but generic monster movie and makes it a white-knuckle horror show that almost stands up to its bigger-budget cousins from the same time period. In fact, as far as scariness goes, I’d actually say Prophecy beats its same-year competitor Alien by quite a lot. Now don’t get me wrong here. Alien is probably one of the best movies ever made. Certainly one of the best horror/science fiction movies ever. It’s tense and atmospheric and shot more like a work of art than a movie, but as far as actually making me glance nervously out my window before bed, the slimy mutant bear fetus hits closer to home than an acid-bleeding insect several thousand years in the future.

Prophecy was the movie that started the movement of Hollywood movies shooting in Canada for cash reasons. The woods of British Columbia, while unquestionably beautiful, are made to feel like a hostile and terrifying alien environment here. The horror stuff takes place mostly during rain storms or at night, and there’s nothing quite so scary as knowing something is out in the dark and the trees stalking you, and not having any idea where it is until it comes charging out of the bushes right next to you and it’s too late.

I understand this flick is flawed. I don’t begrudge anyone their negative views of it. I just happen to totally and unequivocally disagree. Prophecy is one of the finer points of monster movie history, and definitely the crown jewel of the 1970’s eco-horror movement. Long live the skinless mutant killer bear fetus!