October Horror Challenge 2022 #76: "Prophecy (1979)"

I watched this movie when I was about twelve with my mom and my brother. My mom wasn't big on letting us watch horror films, but she had seen this one and thought the monster looked really silly, so she didn't think this one would be too bad for us to watch, plus it was only rated PG, so it couldn't be too gory if it was only rated PG, so she let us watch this one. I haven't seen it since then, so I was interested to see how it would hold up after all these years.

In this movie, an angry dispute arises between a logging operation and a nearby native American tribe, so Dr. Robert Verne and his wife Maggie are brought in to mediate the dispute. The native American chief John Hawks insists that the logging operation is poisoning the local water supply and the company denies this, but Dr. Verne can't ignore the mutated wildlife that is roaming the local woods. Dr. Verne captures a bear cub for testing, and he soon finds himself the target of a monster, an angry mutated grizzly.

The movie opens with a massacre of some of the loggers, and though there's not much blood shown, the monster amasses an impressive body count. Of course, the monster keeps to the shadows so we don't see much of it, which is probably for the best since the special effects aren't very special in this movie. Or perhaps it's not that so much as the camera insists on lingering on the monster in bright light, showing every flaw in breathtaking technicolor. But the message of environmental horror is a topical one, even today when we're still polluting our natural resources just as much if not more than we did back when this movie was released. This monster could come today, killing people just as much as it did in this movie, it's scary to think about something like this happening in real life, but that is the way these movies work, playing on fears of how we're destroying the planet and how a monster like this isn't so far fetched when you consider our current environmental crises. A monster mutated and poisoned by toxic waste chowing down on feinds who are destroying the environment might not be such a far-fetched idea after all. This movie holds up well as far as its message is concerned, if not necessarily it's special effects, and for that, I'm glad I checked it out.