Whoa! A new Skid Row single?!? What an ...awesomely odd way to get people to watch your movie...or buy your movie soundtrack...or whatever B-movies judge as a sign of success. Because let's face it, The Prophecy is a B-movie. If you look at the cast, or the fact that it has four sequels, you might think this was a fully fleshed-out piece of cinema. It's not, but that doesn't mean this movie is bad, even though it has every right to be awful.
The plot to The Prophecy is a little tangled, thanks in part to some unfortunate storytelling choices. Do you like prologues? Good, because you're getting a double dose with The Prophecy! The first is the voice-over from the angel Simon (Eric Stoltz), who explains that angels are fighting an epic battle for Heaven, and have been for some time.
Mistake #1: casting a soulless ginger as an angel
Okay, fine. That explains the hot angel-on-angel action we see later in the film. The movie then cuts to Thomas (Elias Koteas) preparing to take his final vows to join the Catholic priesthood, only for him to be struck by visions of angels fighting. Flash forward a few years and Thomas has become a cop without faith; you would think having visions of angels would strengthen your convictions, but no, you go cop. It's a natural progression. Well, maybe we need this background information because Thomas is the main character in the film and he will be the one making The Prophecy.
"I saw it prophesied that Casey Jones would want his nipple tweaked by Aragorn"
Or maybe not. The titular prophecy actually refers to a line in the 23rd chapter of The Book of Revelations, which doesn't exist in your average Gideon copy. It tells of a second war in Heaven, where one side refuses to acknowledge God's elevation of man over His other creations. How is that different than the first war in Heaven? I'm not a Biblical scholar, so...timing? Anyway, it has been prophesied that the soul of an evil man will be used as a powerful weapon in the war. So Simon comes to Earth to hide the soul, while Gabriel (Christopher Walken) comes to Earth to weaponize it. That sounds simple enough, right? So...what does it have to do with Officer Thomas? About as much as it has to do with a little girl and her schoolteacher, Katherine (Virginia Madsen). Luckily, the script gives each character ample screen time, so that pesky straightforward Gabriel vs. Simon plot has plenty of time to simmer.
All I can think of now is Christopher Walken telling me repeatedly to "simmer down"
The reason why The Prophecy is an overachieving B-movie is because the script is awful, the special effects are poor, and the plot is a jumbled mess. "So are the Transformers movies." True, but somebody took the time to polish those turds; there is no layer of gloss to hide the shitty nature of The Prophecy. What it does have in spades, though, is an improbably talented cast. Elias Koteas might not be the sexiest option for a leading man role, but he's a solid character actor who can play policemen (or deranged criminals) in his sleep; as luck would have it, the movie fakes out viewers with Koteas as a leading role --- he's actually supporting, which is where he functions best. Virginia Madsen's character makes even less sense as an interested party; I don't care how good of a teacher you are, there is a line in the sand where you do not court supernatural beatdowns over someone you are not related to/want to marry. Madsen played her ridiculous character fairly straight (which emphasized how unlikely her choices were), but she managed to squeeze some terror and emotion from a pretty dull part. Eric Stoltz might have played an angel, but that doesn't mean he gave up on being creepy. His character kisses a dead man and an elementary schoolgirl on the mouth --- don't be dirty, it's only because he was sucking the soul out of one and putting in in the other --- and he still manages to act holier than thou, which is impressive. Viggo Mortensen pops up for a few minutes as Lucifer and he was actually pretty excellent. Do you realize how good you have to be to distract viewers from Walken hamming it up? It's a tiny part, but Mortensen nailed it. It is odd, though, that there are so many screencaps of Viggo in this movie if you do a Google image search, but almost none of the rest of this non-Walken cast. Part of that has to do with the poor quality of the DVD print, I'm sure, but I was able to find multiple websites that break down Viggo's scenes by the second. Why is that?
"The heir of Isildur has a fanbase"
Adam Goldberg clearly enjoyed his role of unwilling evil henchman, and he should have --- this is one of his more amusing early roles. Amanda Plummer played a similar part, but was whinier, which was far less amusing. None of that truly matters, though, because this is Christopher Walken's movie, and he owns it completely. In the hands of almost any other actor, Gabriel would have been quite sinister, and Walken did have moments where he got worked up.
What Walken brought to the table was his trademark awkward charm and bizarre choices. To give you an idea of how wide-ranging this character is, he describes a human soul as being "bigger than a breadbasket," but he also says this:
I'm an angel. I kill firstborns while their mamas watch. I turn cities
into salt. I even, when I feel like it, rip the souls from little girls,
and from now till kingdom come, the only thing you can count on in your
existence is never understanding why.
Any role that lets Christopher Walken monologue I am A-OK with. It's also worth noting that Walken is on the top of his game here, as far as making inappropriate faces goes. On the one hand, he's a great, scary villain. On the other hand, he's absolutely hilarious to watch. Really, if I can't get Walken in a movie with great dialogue, I at least want to be able to enjoy his oddness.
What would have made this scene better: Walken explaining to the audience why angels perch.
The Prophecy was written and directed by Gregory Widen, who you might remember as the writer of Highlander.Knowing his history, you can safely assume that there is a solid core idea here, but the execution is lacking. The Prophecy is Widen's only film directing credit to date, so a lot of the things you might take for granted with experienced directors --- editing, pacing, etc. --- are missing here. From a technical standpoint, Widen only barely directed this movie; the only thing that keeps it watchable is the cast that is far too good for this film. Surprisingly, Widen's writing was worse than his direction. Even if you ignore the fact that he makes the hero angel --- as in, angel from Heaven --- seem kind of like a pedophile, there are still plenty of issues with this script.
"In Widen's defense, I only take roles where I can be creepy"
Let's say that you are the two normal human beings in this movie, okay? Each of you has been independently following some truly unbelievable supernatural stuff over the last few days, and now you've found someone who has some of the missing pieces to your puzzle. As you Scooby-Doo-Jinkies your way toward the truth of this plot, do you:
A) Comment on how weird this has all been
B) Freak the fuck out because, you know, angels are smiting folks
C) Calmly recap for each other and show plain-faced acceptance
A) could happen, but anyone who doesn't pick B) is lying to themselves. Of course, The Prophecy picks C) because these characters obviously don't have anything resembling human emotions. That isn't even one of the worse moments in the film; that was just extraordinarily unlikely. There is a lot of inconsistency from scene to scene. One angel dies one way, another dies another way. Angels that can do fantastic things allow mere humans to engage them in fisticuffs, instead of lighting them on fire or turning them into salt (which would have been awesome).
"Fire is reserved for corpses making Christ poses"
Gabriel needs someone to drive him around, because he doesn't know how to operate cars, but at times it seems like he teleports. So much of this script feels lazy, like it didn't get proof-read. I love the core idea of angels doing battle on Earth, but does there have to be this level of stupidity?
How does it all stack up? Does the relatively high quality of the cast, along with an opportunity for Christopher Walken to do whatever the hell he wanted in his scenes, make up for the amateurish script and direction? I think so. We're not talking about a movie with cool special effects or an intelligent idea that can distract an audience --- this is a movie that needs every character to be appealing if it is going to work. The Prophecy succeeds more than it fails, thanks to its cast of angels (fallen or otherwise) and a few solid actors who were willing to play the straight parts. It is certainly no masterpiece, but The Prophecy is far better than it has any right to be.
Have you ever heard of Alan Smithee? For a little over thirty years, it was the credit given to directors that wanted to disavow their work in a particular film due to the final version of the film not meeting their creative vision. In other words, if the star or studio re-cut the movie, the director could protest by crediting the work to Smithee. It's happened many times over the years, and Eric Idle made a terrible movie that joked about the process, so you may have heard of Smithee by now. What I didn't know until I researched it for two or three minutes (I love the internet!) was that directors sometimes requested a Smithee credit for re-edited versions of their movies, like those shown in airplanes or on television. Why do I bring this up? I knew that one of the many versions of Dune that was aired on television had David Lynch's name removed from both the directing and writing credits. While I haven't seen the Smithee version of the film (also known as the "Extended Version" on DVD), it can't be much worse than this approved version.
Dune is a high-concept science fiction yarn based on the excellent book of the same name by Frank Herbert. Dune tackles a lot of serious themes and has an intricate plot that was thought, for many years, to be unworkable as a movie, and they may have been right. This is a movie that delves into politics on a grand scale, ecology, Zen Buddhism, and revolution, all in two-and-a-half hours. If that seems like a long movie, you're right. It's still not enough time to develop all of those concepts simultaneously. On the bright side, the movie soundtrack was done by Toto! They rawk!
Okay, now a quick quiz... What's the best part of this video?
A) The sweatbands on the keyboardist's wrists.
B) The singer finding Africa: The Book! and giving himself a satisfied nod.
C) The band singing a song allegedly about Africa and the video taking place on a large book.
D) That it manages to devalue an entire continent (54 countries!) in under five minutes.
The film begins with Princess Irulan (Virginia Madsen) explaining the state of the universe to the camera. In the distant future, the universe is ruled by Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV (Jose Ferrer) and the most valuable resource in the universe is the spice melange. Melange is kind of like a cosmic LSD, only useful; it expands the mind, prolongs the user's life, and is essential to space travel. The Spacing Guild's Navigators use the drug to see the future and fold space, which makes space travel faster and safer. The problem with melange is that is only grows on one stinking planet, Arrakis AKA Dune. With this explanation, the Princess is not seen again until the last ten minutes of the film, where she might not have had any dialogue.
Are you with me so far? Well, in an effort to smash a political rival, Emperor Shaddam is giving control of Arrakis to, um, his rival, Duke Leto Atreides (Jurgen Prochnow). That doesn't make much sense, does it? Well, the Emperor is arranging to have the Atreides' longtime rival, the Harkonnens, ambush Atriedes on Arrakis. When the Spacing Guild's Navigators foresee these events, they demand that the Emperor kill not only Duke Leo, but also his son, Paul (Kyle MacLachlan). These future-seers think that Paul is a danger to their melange supply. So, the Emperor agrees to off the kid. And with that, we are about five minutes into the movie!
From here on out, things pretty much fall into place. The Atreides go to Arrakis and they get ambushed. Paul and his mother escape into the desert and encounter the native Fremen, who manage to live in the desert and have learned how to live with the incredibly destructive sand worms that are a danger to everybody else. But why should the Fremen help these strangers? And, even if Paul and his mother get help, what is next for them? Revenge? That seems a little petty. How about a step toward universal domination via guns that are powered by special words? That seems a little ridiculous. It's a little of both.
Legend has it that David Lynch's final script called for this film to be a little over three hours long, but the movie studio forced it to be whittled down to a trim two-and-a-quarter hours. I cannot find a way to suitably express my condolences to anyone who had to watch a three-hour version of this movie. Two hours was all I could take, and that is only because I stopped questioning the plot. This movie positively drags. Well over half of the movie is pure exposition, with the ambush of the Atreides serving as a mid-movie huge action scene. The odd thing about that battle is that very little of it is shown. Then there is more exposition, and a whole boatload of weird stuff shoved into the last half hour.
The biggest problem I have with this film is its use of voice-overs. Sometimes, they are used to explain plot. Sometimes, they seem to indicate telepathy. Whatever. They are all just awful. I don't need to hear Kyle MacLachlan's voice explaining more than his dialogue does --- I need the scenes to explain the plot, instead. Voice-overs that explain plot are a lazy, cut-corner trick to salvage a movie that has become too expensive to re-shoot scenes, and the fact that this movie is full of them should indicate the quality of the movie.
Speaking of Kyle, I have to admit that I am not a big fan of his work. He's actually not too bad here, but the things that the script forces his to say often sound really, really stupid. Do you remember the Fatboy Slim song, "Weapon of Choice?" It borrows one of Kyle's lines: "If we walk without rhythm, we won't attract the worm;" of course, Kyle then proceeds to walk normally. Actually, I don't particularly dislike any of the actors in this film, with the possible exception of Kenneth McMillan who, as the evil Harkonnen leader, couldn't have been more comically evil if he had a six-pound handlebar mustache to twirl. Brad Douriff, Sean Young, Linda Hunt, Freddie Jones, Richard Jordan, Dean Stockwell, Max von Sydow, and the already mentioned Jurgen Prochnow all played their small roles capably. They looked and sounded silly doing so, but they took their jobs seriously and did the best they could in difficult circumstances. Patrick Stewart has a small role in the film, too, but the aspect of his performance that struck me the most was the fact that he apparently grew a skullet as the movie progressed. I can't say that I was particularly pleased by the young Alicia Witt (in her film debut) and her bizarre voice, but her character was pretty weird and the voice may have been changed in post-production. Now, Sting gets a lot of attention on the various DVD covers for this film, and I'm not sure why. Maybe because of this:
Umm...is that a bird...servicing him?
Whatever the case, Sting gets to overact and has an anticlimactic fight scene with Kyle. I would critique his work, but I can't look at those weird fiberglass undies and keep a serious thought in my head.
So, at least the acting's not bad. There's no great work, but it all fits the film. For this movie to even come close to succeeding, though, it needs to look awesome. As George Lucas has shown, if your movie is visually spectacular, nobody cares about the plot. Sadly, Dune couldn't get that right, even with a large budget. Problem #1: the stillsuit.
It's like they have Hitler 'staches, with a left sideburn connection
Everyone on Arrakis has to wear these things to survive; they recycle your body's moisture and fluids to prevent dehydration on the desert planet. Unfortunately, that means that everybody spends substantial time wearing nose plugs.
Problem #2: the special effects looked bad, even by 1984 standards.
An actual frame from the movie. No joke.
In the beginning of the movie, young Paul turns on his "bodyshield" for a sparring match; it is blocky, sometimes opaque, and it made Star Wars-inspired noises. Awful. Thankfully, this suit is never seen again after the half-hour mark. The sets in general looked cheap, the costumes were lame, and the special effects were often not done to scale; when you see a human and a worm in the same frame, it's hard to tell how close they are supposed to be to each other. For being a science fiction epic tale, there is surprisingly little imagination or innovation in the visual effects.
Problem #3: the story is damn near incomprehensible.
An actual page of script from Dune
I read several Dune books as a young whipper-snapper, and I was clueless when watching the movie. I can only pity someone who approaches this movie out of pure curiosity or, worse, a devotion to David Lynch. I choose my words carefully here, because I want there to be no misunderstanding: this movie is confusing, even by David Lynch standards. That's right; it is easier to decode his movies where actors switch characters in the middle of the film than to follow this plot.
I'm not even going to go into Lynch's direction, except to say that this film looks awful, and that's usually his strong point. Did you know that Lynch was considered as a director for Return of the Jedi? He opted to make this mess instead. I suppose that's a good thing, because his fondness for strange dwarf characters would only have lead to some bizarre scenes with the Ewoks.
The one good thing I can say about this movie is that it approaches the source material with respect. The final product may resemble the diarrhea of someone who digested the book, but the intent to honor it was there. I don't even want to blame anyone in particular for this monstrosity. I just want to forget about it.
That is a great visual. When I looked at that poster, I wasn't sure what was happening --- is that kid vomiting liquid marble? --- but I thought it looked pretty cool. Obviously, with a title like The Haunting in Connecticut, it must have something to do with ghosts, but that tag line threw me for a loop. "Some things cannot be explained" sounds like a cop-out for a satisfying ending. On the other hand, the poster claims that this film is based on a true story, so perhaps there's some spooky ambiguous ending. All in all, I think this poster made the movie look pretty promising.
But you know what they say, rules and promises are made to be broken.
Sarah (Virginia Madsen) and Peter Campbell (Martin Donovan) have three children, one of who, Matt (Kyle Gallner), has cancer. Matt is undergoing some experimental treatment at a hospital in Connecticut, but the commute takes over four hours each way, so the Campbells rent a place near the hospital to ease the strain on Matt. The house is old, full of hidden closets and somewhat creepy rooms; in the basement, there is a door to a mysterious room that refuses to open for the family. As soon as the Campbells start staying in the house, Matt starts to have strange dreams, both when he's awake and when he's asleep. Unfortunately for him, these aren't visions of supermodel nude beaches, but of dead bodies being mutilated and the walls being filled with meat paste. Assuming that the visions are a side effect of his experimental medicine, Matt keeps them to himself. Surprisingly, that turns out to be a bad idea. As the story goes on, we learn that the house was once a mortuary, which would be a creepy place to live, I'll admit; the place is still fully equipped, with the mystery room in the basement being the place where the magic happened. That brings up an obvious question: What kind of Realtor rents a fully equipped funeral home to a family without making a casual mention of the building's history? I'm not insisting that they make it sound awful, like, "Oh, and, if you happen to spend time in the basement, you might see some embalming tools. No biggie, the previous owners touched dead things," but at least toss the term "mortuary" somewhere in the deal. That is just the tip of the disturbing iceberg, though. Eventually, Matt befriends a fellow cancer patient undergoing the same treatment who so happens to be a priest (Elias Koteas). In a bizarre coincidence, this priest can see ghosts, too, and knows how to get rid of them. What luck! But can even Casey Jones help this family uncover the terrible secrets that lurk within their home?
I know, I know, it's a sucker's bet watching a movie because the poster looked cool. Really, if publicists are doing their jobs, all movies should have at least somewhat intriguing posters. Still, I saw the poster image and wanted to see what the deal was; I was rewarded with a visually cool moment in the film, surrounded by about 90 minutes of awful movie.
What makes this movie bad? Well, the acting isn't great --- Kyle Gallner is a poor man's misshapen Devon Sawa, minus any talent --- but that's not the problem. The premise could work; I'm not a huge fan of spooky ghost stories, but the effective ones tend to have rich atmospheres and let your imagination take over. Unfortunately, the story goes for shock more than spookiness. For most of the movie, Matt is the only character that reacts to the ghosts, but the ghosts are often shown as mini-scares in scenes with other characters. That takes away the question of Matt's sanity and (since the ghosts don't affect anyone else) undermines the effectiveness of the ghosts. Part of that is the script's fault, but first-time director Peter Cornwell deserves blame, too. Under Cornwell's guiding hand, this ghost story was shot more like a slasher film, without a mysterious killer. Ambiance was sacrificed for some cheap scares that didn't pay off. Yes, the image from the poster is cool, and that scene was pretty cool-looking, too. That's not nearly enough to make up for this boring, poorly executed attempt at horror.
Do you know what the worst part about the movie was, though? Nobody ever asked this question, but there would not have been an answer if they did: The Campbells are renting the house; they still have a home four hours away...why don't they just leave when they realize that the rental is haunted?
I enjoy horror movies, but I am more than willing to admit that most of them are pretty bad. The horror genre usually doesn't have much more to offer than some unique ways to kill teenagers, but every so often, I get surprised. Candyman was one of those times. This film distances itself from its horror brethren in some very basic ways. There are no teen-aged main characters, for starters. Instead of creating a fictional city or town, this movie takes place in Chicago, primarily in the Cabrini-Green housing projects, which are scary enough on their own. The main character in this movie is played by an Oscar nominee (not for this role), which is one of the few, if not the only, time that has happened in a horror movie. Oh, and it doesn't completely suck.
Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) is a graduate student researching urban legends for her thesis. She polls freshmen for any legends they know and notes that most legends have many versions. While researching, she comes across the Candyman legend. Like Bloody Mary, if you say his name five times in front of the mirror, he allegedly appears and murders you. Helen doesn't think much about the legend at first, and she and her friend Bernadette jokingly say his name in the mirror five times. Nothing happens. Big surprise. Later, she meets a maid at the university who claims that the Candyman story is true. This intrigues Helen, because being able to trace a legend back to its real-world counterpart would be a scoop for her thesis. The maid claims that the Candyman murdered someone in the Cabrini-Green projects, which leads to Helen finding some newspaper articles about a hook-related murder. She has some theories on the crime that would help explain some of the more supernatural elements of the story, like Candyman appearing near the mirror, she just needs some hard evidence. Helen researches the story on location in the projects, but she does not come much closer to the truth.
That's when he appears. While Candyman (Tony Todd) doesn't look like a nice guy, he doesn't have the gross disfigurement that most iconic horror villains possess. He does have a hook in the disgusting stump where his hand should be, which I suppose makes up for his otherwise normal appearance. Candyman is upset by Helen's research, as she is helping convince others that he does not exist. Candyman urges her to become his victim (which is a little awkward), but she resists, so he decides to prove himself to her. Helen blacks out and awakens in the Cabrini-Green apartment of the nicest resident she interviewed during her research; Helen is covered in blood, notices that the apartment's dog has been decapitated, and the resident's infant is missing. Beside herself with grief, the resident attacks Helen, who is forced to protect herself with a butcher knife. Not surprisingly, this escapade lands her in jail, but her husband (Xander Berkeley) bails her out.
Bad move. Candyman begins appearing more and more frequently, but only to Helen. He has the baby hidden somewhere and will kill it if Helen does not give herself to him, to join him and strengthen his legend. As the movie continues, Candyman keeps killing and Helen keeps getting blamed for those crimes. Despite being wanted for murder, Helen realizes that she is the baby's only hope of survival and decides to do whatever it takes to save it.
That might not sound too good, but there's a lot to like in this move and there are some aspects that I genuinely appreciate. I like Candyman's desire to seduce Helen into becoming his victim. He could have killed her at any time, but he wanted to make her, the urban legend debunker, part of his urban legend. That's actually a pretty cool motivation. I like Candyman's voice; the production team treated his dialogue as voice over, so when he spoke, it felt like an omnipotent narrator was speaking. That was a nice touch that definitely added to the creepiness of the character. I also liked the scenes where Candyman handled/was made of bees. I'm not a huge fan of bugs crawling all over characters, but bugs that sting are definitely scary. I don't usually squirm while watching movies, but that made me wiggle a bit.
I think this was a pretty smart slasher flick, too. It went out of its way to avoid a lot of slasher cliches; all the people that died were truly innocent, not promiscuous, drunken teens on a drug binge. If this film had been edited just a little bit better, there would even be a question as to whether Candyman existed or not. He's only on screen without Helen for about fifteen seconds; everything else happens with Helen present. If those fifteen seconds had been cut, then there we could make a valid point that Helen could be responsible for everything and Candyman was either her going crazy or something that possessed her. That angle would have improved this movie's IQ enough to be a classic.
Unfortunately, that is not this film's only shoulda-coulda-woulda. Despite all the unique and smart things in this movie, a lot of careless mistakes are made:
Ted Raimi has a cameo as a "bad boy"
Helen walks into a public men's restroom outside Cabrini-Green. That's a whole horror premise by itself.
Trevor, Helen's husband, is a professor married to a graduate student in his own department. He cheats on her with one of his students. And he's paid enough to have a gigantic apartment on Chicago's North side with a view of downtown? How does that happen?
Helen's Chicago apartment does not have a deadbolt or latch. Now that's fiction.
A lot of horror movies get people to overlook the overall crappiness of the film by going all-out for the climax. Not so much here. I thought the climax was pretty ineffective, but it did set up a pretty good ending. That's a trade-off I'm willing to make, and just one of the many choices that director Bernard Rose makes that work well. Most of the budget went toward special effects instead of actors and script, so the casting choices are pretty solid (Tony Todd is a creepy man), even if their acting isn't great (Xander Berkeley, I'm looking at you). Is this a masterpiece? No, it's too stupid for that. It is a good horror movie that is also a pretty decent movie in its own rights.
