Prophecy (1979)

As far as giant mutated bear movies go, Prophecy is at the top of the list. Well, Is there actually a list?

All jokes aside, Prophecy is a fun, if a bit goofy, 70:s horrormovie with that kind of message overtones that are as subtle as a PETA commercial and horror scenes that seem kind of out of place in a movie rated PG, but those were the glorious seventies. For every piece of goofy dialogue there are high quality horror. And the bear? Well, yes, it does sort of resemble a pizza with extra meat toppings but it's still pretty darned effective.

Robert Foxworth (with a humongous afro and that cool beard he always has) travels to Main with his wife (Talia Shire who spends the entire movie either crying or just about to) to investigate claims that an evil papercompany has stolen lands from the indians and are polluting the water. Which, of course, they are. In fact, their pollution has created five feet salmon, deadly racoons, monster tadpoles and a gigantic, mutated grizzlybear that kills everything it gets its claws on. Hands up for pollution for creating mutant grizzly bears in places where there arent any. The locals belive the indians are behind all the murders but our hero soon realizes it's that damned mercury! Curse you, Mercury!!

Yes, the plot is pretty heavyhanded but it's perfectly functional in that special horrormovie way. All the actors play it pretty straight which serves the movie well. The first half is pretty talky but it does set up the characters for a handful of cool creative death scenes, where the classic is the little boy in the sleeping bag. Yes, this movie kills kids! And the kid is not even annoying! Good stuff. The final 30 minutes where our heroes try to flee through the forest in the middle of the night are really superior where my own personal favourite is the part where they travel by car and slowly scan the surrounding woods with a floodlight. Towards the end we even get a bit of Godzilla vs Logcabin before one of the coolest/silliest twist endings of all time.
Yes, there are a lot of things in this movie that you shouldnt take entirely seriously but there are equal parts of good horror too and I recommend it to everyone that likes a good monstermovie. Too bad John Frankenheimer cut some of the gore before it was released. Hopefully we'll get a nice special edition on dvd some day.

And the mercury would've gotten away with it if it hadnt been for that pesky Robert Foxworth.

Here is the awesome trailer