Prophecy (1979)

The disposable creature feature Prophecy was released in the United States within just a few weeks of Ridley Scott’s Alien, and I smile as I compare the two because the former is a moving joke and the other is a classic.  They tell a similar story, more or less, about a group of people attacked by a slimy creature that they don’t understand.

Alien tried to find a reality in its setting – an interstellar spaceship wherein the crew are attacked by something that keeps evolving the more it is permitted to live.  Prophecy takes place in much wider expanses – northern Maine where the people could just as easily board a plane and go back home.  Plus, the creature in this movie is kind of confusing.  At one point it dwarfs the forest and in another it is the side of a 12-year-old.

The story (what there is of it) centers on a dispute between the peaceful natives and the un-environmental white people.  The only people willing to listen to the natives are a big city doctor (Robert Foxworth) and his pregnant girlfriend (Talia Shire).  That might be enough but then the white folk start hearing rumblings about a monster that lives in the woods and is unhappy with the way that whitey has been treating its natural habitat.

What follows is pretty much what you expect.  A rubbery creature that lumbers along, looks like a molting grizzly bear stalks its prey one by one.

I saw this movie one night at a friend’s house with a group of people who looked bored, tired and seemed far too lethargic to change the channel.  On the occasions that we got to see the creature, a few people laughed, others snored.  I’m with the latter.