The Prophecy Films

So I finally got around to watching The Prophecy films. I bought them in this nifty dvd which collected all three films in one disk, so I ended up watching them back to back. I know that these films have gone past their third installment, I believe they are currently on their fourth sequel, but I don’t even count the ones after part 3 because they don’t have Christopher Walken in them, they feel more like a cash in, a last desperate attempt to milk the franchise for all it’s worth. I just don’t have any interest in them. But if anyone out there thinks that Prophecy: Forsaken (2005) and Prophecy: Uprising (2005) are worth a damn, let me know, I just might give them a shot at some point. But for now, they don’t even register on my radar. This review will cover only the first three films. So it’s a three for one deal, enjoy!

The thing about these movies is that they started out with a decent theatrical release, which was the first film, the sequels after that all went straight to dvd which always raises a red flag for me because they make me think that if they went straight to dvd, then they weren’t considered good enough by the producers, at least not good enough to bother with a theatrical release. So maybe this is the reason why I had never bothered seeing these straight to dvd sequels that followed the original. But curiosity always gets the best of me and I found this dvd with all three so cheap that I went for it. I’m glad I did, the first three films are fairly decent on their own right.

The interesting thing about these first three Prophecy films is that they all had a decent cast. I mean, take a look at the first one where we have the always entertaining Christopher Walken as the human hating angel, Gabriel. You see on these series of films, some angels hate humans because they are jealous of them. They feel that God loves humans more then angels, so some angels have decided to completely annihilate the human race, just so they could be number one again. They want to make it like before, when God loved them best. In order to achieve this, Gabriel wants to find the soul of the most evil human on the planet, who just so happens to be a military leader for the U.S. army. Just watching Walken playing an angel is great, he has such fun with the character; who by the way gets funnier as the series progresses. He spews lines like “I’m an angel, I kill firstborns while their mamas watch!” These movies are that much enjoyable simple because Walken is in them. So anyways we also get Elias Koteas, the guy who always plays secondary characters in every single movie he’s been in except this one, where he   plays detective Thomas Daggett, a priest wannabe who every now and then  gets horrific visions from god. The whole thing makes you wonder why God would send someone such horrible images! But whatever, Daggett is investigating the appearance of dead angels, which keep popping up across the city. Along for the ride is Virginia Madsen who plays a grade school teacher and the always underused Eric Stoltz who plays the good angel that’s trying to stop Gabriel. But the avalanche of talent isn’t over my friends! The amazing cast continues with Amanda Plummer as a zombie/ghoul who helps Gabriel move around and Viggo Mortensen playing Satan himself! So we got an amazing cast rounding up this horror film! Was the film worth it?

Well yeah. The story is all about humans, it preaches on about how we are capable of a lot of good, but unfortunately, a lot of evil as well. The idea that an angel needs the soul of an evil human to help him destroy humanity itself says a lot about how the filmmakers see humanity. We are creatures capable of such violence, that our violent capabilities rival even that of God’s own angels! We are the experts on the subject; so much so that they need US to destroy humanity; as Lucifer himself puts it: “Humans -and how I love talking monkeys for this- know more about war and treachery of the spirit than any angel” The film unfolds in a very dark and eerie manner, with angels running around the city killing each other as lightning strikes the skies. Somehow American Indian folklore works its way into the film! Same as in many horror films, Indians always have the best connection with anything supernatural, which really is something of a cliché in horror films. There’s always an Indian burial ground, or an Indian spirit, or an Indian shaman to help out. The thing about these Prophecy movies is that they are always on the verge of some big apocalyptic event happening, but nothing ever does. The big war between angels and humans, or good angels vs. rebel angels never really consummates. But whatever, the in between was also fun.

These films are all filled with angels crouching on top of furniture or on top of buildings like birds; problem is they never really fly! I never got his about these movies, these guys are angels but they don’t seem to ever use their wings for flying. We do get to see a five second sequence of angels flying in the clouds, but we see it from afar, and briefly. And they re-use that same stock footage on a couple of these films, which I hated. I guess it had something to do with budgetary limitations, but we never really get to take a good look at the angels spreading their wings and flying. If an angel opens its wings, we only see the shadow of that, or someone’s reaction to it, but we never see the freaking angels taking flight. They do skip around a lot and jump around a lot though. I found it funnyt that since angels don’t know how to handle human machinery, they have to resort to having humans doing things for them like driving them around town or showing them how to use a computer or a walkie talkie. Why don’t they just fly where they need to go instead of using a car?

So, in comes Prophecy II (1998) which was the most difficult to watch of these three films. I found it extremely boring, and disappointing for various reasons. Number one, I didn’t like the fact that the film resorted to using so much stock footage from the first film. To me this is a lame ass, lazy move from any filmmaker. You are showing us the same images from the first film! Don’t do this! We as an audience feel cheated as hell! Still, the director felt the need to show us the same sequence of angels flying far up in the sky, and these flashbacks of angels fighting that we already saw on the first film. Laaazy! On this second chapter of the Prophecy series Jennifer Beals has a one night stand with an angel. The angel is looking for the right girl to father his child. You see, the angels want to conceive a half breed, a half human, half angel child. This half breed is the one destined to stop the rebel angels from committing genocide. So Jennifer Beals character functions as a “Virgin Mary” of sorts on this film.

Even Satan doesnt want this guy in hell! 

Now here's where things dont stick to bible lore: in the bible the sons of angels are called ‘The Nephilim’. According to the bible angels actually looked down the from heavens at the eartlhy women and foudn them incredibly hot. Cant say I blame them, I'm merely a human and I find them irresistible. Yet, this idea of angels having sexual desires makes no sense because according to the bible, angels are supposed to be asexual! So anyhows, they found earth girls hot and materialized so they could get a taste of female flesh! So any way, they ended up having babies, and these sons of angels ended up being evil giants who terrorized the land. That’s right my friends, according to the bible giants once walked the earth! And they were evil! Yet on this movie the Nephilim is supposed to be some sort of savior! Humanities last hope for survival. See what I mean? No sense whatsoever. On top of this, the angel that screws Jessica Beals doesn’t even care for her, he just uses her! The bastard! Point is that this angel ends up committing what the bible refers to as fornication, which is just a big word for having sex before getting married. According to the bible, this is one of the biggest sins you could commit against god! But this angel doesnt care, he sins in order to defeat the bad angels? And these are supposed to be the good guys! So anyhow, this second chapter in the series has a cool cast, again Christopher Walken returns as Gabriel, we get Jennifer Beals as Rosario, we get Eric Roberts and Danzig as angels. And as an added bonus Brittany Murphy played the ghoul who does Gabriel’s beading!  But in spite of this film having a great cast, this second chapter in the series feels like an in-between chapter in a much larger story. It feels like they were setting everything up for something bigger. And that’s exactly what they were doing with this second film. The third film was far more entertaining and fulfilling. It wanted to end the series with a big bang! I think it achieved it.

Brittany Murphy in one of her earliest roles

The Prophecy 3: The Ascent (2000) surprised the hell out of me. Having seen the past two films and finding them only mildly entertaining, I went in to this third chapter with very low expectations, yet I’m happy to inform that I was pleasantly surprised. In fact, it’s the one that I enjoyed the most out of all three! One thing I like about these first three films is that they have continuity to them. Characters return and reappear; problem is that sometimes it’s difficult to realize this because they keep changing actors. In spite of this, you do get a sense of continuity, and Walken’s Gabriel is the one character that holds all three films together. One element I enjoyed about this one is that Gabriel is human on this one, and so he is kind of getting used to being human. He likes living on earth, he’s dropped the short black hair and trench coat for long white hair and living like a bum on the streets. On this film he is slowly learning to actually like humans. With this film they pulled a Terminator 2 (1992) on us and went and made the villain a good guy this time around. Walken is no longer hell bent on destroying humanity, he’s lightened up. One hilarious scene has him just enjoying a drive down the dessert on this beat up old car trying to play a trumpet as he drives, cause you know, according to the bible, angels play trumpets in heaven all the time, which kind of makes you think about who gives angels music classes, and who makes these holy musical instruments? 

But who cares seeing Christopher Walken playing a trumpet as he drives is hilarious right?! In Gabriel’s place we now have a villain called Pyriel who is still very much interested in destroying all humans and proclaiming himself the “next god”. The Nephilim Danyael (who was introduced in the second film) is now all grown up and has lost all faith in God. In fact he runs a church that preaches against god! I thought this was so interesting! But across the film he learns to accept his true destiny which is going up against the Pyriel, the leader of the rebel angels.

This third film distinguishes itself for various reasons, first, it was directed by one Patrick Lussier. Now this is a director whom you can either love or hate, depending on how much cheese you can take. Lussier is the guy behind Drive Angry (2011), a film I enjoyed hating. He also made My Bloody Valentine (2009) and is currently hard at work putting the finishing touches on Halloween III (2012). He’s also the guy behind all those Dracula 2000 movies. All of these films are high in octane and cheese, unapologetic about their b-movie nature. I guess this is the reason why this Prophecy film was so fun to watch. The previous two films feel dreary and boring when compared to this one which is filled with chase sequences and matrix-style fighting. Also, it has this awesome showdown during its last sequences between two angels that is the most exciting thing in the whole trilogy. The film even has a happy ending to it! 

Another thing that made this one cool: it has Brad Dourif playing a gun totting religious fanatic who walks around with the bible in one hand and a gun to shoot any infidels on the other! This is yet another crazy character to add to Brad Dourif long list of freaky characters he's portrayed on film.Well, I guess I’ve run out of things to say about these movies. Not a bad trilogy of films, the third film offers up a nice wrap up to the trilogy and has finality to it. At least this series isn’t as bad as the Children of the Corn movies which by the way I will comment on soon. But these Prophecy films prove one thing to me once again: God hates to appear in horror films,  while Satan loves them. For proof of that check out one of my most popular blog posts: God and Satan inFilms. And another thing, if you freeze frame the last image in Prophecy II, just before the ending credits you can see a face forming in the clouds, while thunder and lightning crackle…don’t know if that qualifies as an appearance by God or not, what do you guys think?

Rating: The Prophecy (1995)  3 out of 5

Rating: The Prophecy II (1998) 2 out of 5

Rating:  The Prophecy 3: The Ascent (2000) 3 1/2 out of 5 

  

Drive Angry (2011)

Title: Drive Angry (2011)

Director: Patrick Lussier

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Amber Heard, William Fichtner, Billy Burke, David Morse

Review:

Drive Angry is the title they gave this film because that’s exactly what the producers of this film expect everyone to do once they walk out of the theater: Drive Angry, very freaking angry! I guess with that title, they figured they might as well let audiences know what they can expect ahead of time. Wow, what a bad movie. That debt that Nicolas Cage has with the U.S. Government for millions of dollars in unpaid taxes must be a real bitch because the guy is taking every pay day he can get! No matter how crappy the movie is! Are you making a terrible film no one wants to be in? Contact Nicolas Cage’s agent, I’m sure he’ll have no problem squeezing you in to his continuously growing line up of bad films. Yes my friends, here we are once again talking about an extremely shitty Nicolas Cage film which he obviously did out of necessity. At least I hope he did! No self righteous actor would have agreed to be in this poor excuse for a movie. But alas, you might think I’m being overtly cruel with this picture, but I tell you I am not! As I watched it, I just couldn’t help seeing the words “tear this one a new asshole” flashing in my minds eye. And so here I am, poised and ready to tear this one shit stain of a movie a new one. 

This pic makes this film look cooler than it actually is

This film tells the tale of John Milton (get it?) a guy who has just escaped from hell itself! And what is his reason for escaping the fiery pits of Hades? To save his infant granddaughter from being sacrificed by a cult of inbred Satanists; so he has a noble cause at least. Along the way, he befriends an ex-waitress who has just quit her job. And guess what? She's in luck because Mr. Milton arrives just in time to save her from being killed by her abusive boyfriend. Of course, this is just a lame-o excuse so that she feels she like she owes her life to him, so that Cage can have a hot babe tagging along in his adventures. Funniest part of the whole film is that this girl has nothing to do with anything! She’s not related to Milton, the baby isn’t hers, and she has nothing to do with the Satanists, yet she insists in tagging along, risking her life for no reason whatsoever. A simply thank you would have been fine. Unbeknownst to this poor girl is the fact that Milton is being followed by a demon from hell who calls himself ‘The Accountant’. This demon is trying to recover Satan’s gun. You see,  Milton stole it from under Lucifer’s noses. And yes, you read that right kids, Satan has guns in this movie! Shouldnt be that weird, if you accept the fact that there are cars in hell as well, Milton actually escapes from hell in one! Ha! But anyways, Milton doesnt just steal any old gun, this is the gun with which Satan intends to kill God with on Judgment Day! The guns name is “The God Killer”! To be honest, I don’t know why Satan would want this gun; all it does is fire crappy looking CGI bullets that turn anything they hit into an even crappier CGI effect. Will The Accountant ever catch up with John Milton? Will Milton get to rescue his granddaughter from the clutches of the Satanists? 

When you watch Nicholas Cage acting in films like Drive Angry, The Wickerman (2006) or Season of the Witch (2011) you kind of have to wonder if he still gives a crap about acting. You also have to wonder if he’s sold his soul to the devil. I mean what is this, his fourth Satan related film? Let’s see, first there’s Ghost Rider (2006) where he sells his soul to the devil in order to save his fathers life. He then goes on to become the devil’s personal henchman. Then there’s Season of the Witch (2011) a terrible film in which Cage must go on a journey to destroy an evil witch who is possessed by a demon. Then there’s Drive Angry in which he steals Satan’s gun and escapes from Hell to stop a group of Satanists from sacrificing his granddaughter, and finally, there’s the upcoming Ghost Rider 2: Spirit of Vengeance a film that is going to be showing its ugly head sometime in 2012. Not exactly the best films to have on your resume, but then again, considering how much Cage gets paid per picture, the guy should be out of debt and making good movies in no time! Right? In fact, in a small glimmer of hope for Cage’s cinematic career, it was recently announced that Cage would re-unite with Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze on a new film project. Something good should come of that reunion, after all, these where the same three guys who brought us the critically acclaimed Adaptation (2002). I’m sure one day we’ll look back at Nicolas Cage’s filmography and think of this particular time in his career as his “tax paying films”; when you think about it, it comes as no surprise that the villain in Drive Angry is called ‘The Accountant’. 

Nicolas Cage's worst nightmare! The Accountant!

Drive Angry is the kind of film that is so badly made that your compulsion to burst out laughing wont be helped; it’ll just come out of you naturally. How bad is this film? Let me count the ways: first off, this film has some of the worst computer animated images I’ve seen since Dinocroc vs. Supergator (2010). I mean, the CGI on this film looked like something you’d expect to see on a Sci-Fi Channel movie of the week. How the hell could Patrick Lussier, this films director, look at this footage and be okay with it? How could he live with himself knowing he’d be responsible for this terrible film? Heres an example of how shitty the effects are: there is this one scene in which a truck hits a bunch of police cars and ends up flying through the air hovering above Cage’s car, and then falls back on the ground. This scene is a text book example of a badly constructed action sequence. The scene was not convincing at all. It had zero believability, zero tension, what it did have was the fakest looking computer effects! The truck was so obviously not there! You know how in some of the worst movies, when characters are talking inside of a moving car, the background looks fake and you can tell the actors are just sitting in front of a projection screen? That’s what happens on this film, you can tell they are sitting on a car with a green screen behind them! Ugh! I haven’t seen effects this bad since Ballistic: Eck Vs. Sever (2002). I clearly remember people laughing at that one in the theater, I’m sure Drive Angry had the same effect on many theater crowds. Just expect some of the worst CGI of your life. 

The worst special effect of all? Nicolas Cage's hair do! 

Patrick Lussier is the director orchestrating this attempted homage to Satanic films. It’s obvious Lussier and crew saw many Satanic classics before deciding to sit down to make this one, the most obvious influence being Race with the Devil (1975), even going as far as using the same car used in that film. Unfortunately, no matter how hard they tried, this isn’t a good film about Satanist. Then again, I really haven’t seen a film about Satanists that wasn’t funny or goofy to some extent. I mean, there are some good ones out there like for example Roman Polanski’s Satanic double whammy Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Ninth Gate (1999). It’s really difficult for me to see a film about Satan worshippers and not find it silly somehow, I guess adults dressed up in black hoods, thinking Satan is real is kind of silly to me. If you don’t believe me, then watch The Devils Rain (1975) where you can see Ernest Borgnine become Satan with a beer belly. If you want to laugh even harder check out Christopher Lee in To the Devil a Daughter (1976), and while your there, say hello to Christopher Lee’s ass while your at it, it makes a cameo during an embarrassingly bad orgy sequence. It’s not for nothing that this film ended up being the final nail on Hammer Film Studios coffin. I guess you can add Drive Angry to your list of silly Satanic films.

"Did I ever tell you this here skin jacket is a symbol of my individuality 

and my belief in personal freedom?"

Apparently, portraying a truly frightening Satanic cult isn’t quite as easy as we might think; the results are often times unintentionally funny. On Drive Angry we get the most pathetic group of Satanists ever! Some dance around naked, others don’t, I guess some are more into Satanism then others. The Satanists in Drive Angry are so pussy, that when they actually have a chance to sacrifice a baby and bring forth hell on earth, they think about it. Oh come on! You have the magical dagger, the moon is full and you have the baby in your hands, what are you waiting for?? Jeez. The most satanic thing they do is sit around drinking beers on the night hell is supposed to come to earth! But yeah, this movie is hilarious. I guess maybe in that way it can be enjoyed. To watch it and make fun of it with your buddies, at least thats what I did with my buddies. It does have on good thing going for it. The dialog made me laugh a couple of times. An example: “You know what this batch means? It means Federal Bureau of get the FUCK out of my way!” That’s right my friends, making a film about Satanist, and having it be good or frightening isn’t something that happens very often. I can count with the fingers on my hand how many films have achieved that. I just remembered another good thing that the film has going for it: it gave a small role to Tom Atkins doing what he does best: playing a tough as nails cop! 

Since the film is called Drive Angry, I was expecting it to at least have one memorable car chase sequence, something that really stands out. I was expecting something along the lines of a Fast and the Furious film but with a supernatural angle, or even better Mad Max with a supernatural angle.  And you know what? I bet if done correctly, this kind of film could actually work too. Unfortunately, the chase sequences are bland and filled with bad cgi, which proves to us two things: this movie not only got its supernatural/horror elements all wrong, it got it's car movie angle all wrong as well. Where were the good car chase sequences in this film? This proves my theory about putting guys who are on the technical side of filmmaking to direct, it doesn’t always work. Check out films like Virus (1999), Spawn (1997) and Blade Trinity (2004). All directed by writers, editors, and special effects technicians who thought they were directors. The results with those films where no less disastrous than Drive Angry a film directed by one Patrick Lussier, a guy who made a career out of editing Wes Craven films. In my book he isn’t a good storyteller or filmmaker, he might be a good editor which is what he’s supposed to be good at, but directing and telling a story with a film? Not his forte. You know what? Even his editing sucked on this one, some scenes just didn't match up; if you dont believe me check out this horrible sequence that takes place while The Accountant is chasing Cage down a bridge. Wow, logic, pacing, editing and everything else where entirely forsaken during that scene! If you ask me, My Bloody Valentine (2009) was as good as this director got. Surprisingly, Lussier will be directing yet again! Let’s see if he makes a worthy Halloween flick with his upcoming Halloween III slated for 2012. Buttom line with Drive Angry? This is yet another crap fest to add to Nicolas Cage’s ever declining filmography. Will Cage ever recover from this downward spiral in his career? Will he ever make a good film again? Or will the name Nicolas Cage continue being synonymous with bad films? Only time will tell with these questions. Let’s hope Cage will someday try to regain his dignity as an actor and do something that really cooks, instead of something like Drive Angry which fizzled. 

Rating: 1 out of 5