The Right To Remain Silent (1996, directed by Hubert de La Bouillerie)


It’s one very busy night at a police station.  Everyone who is brought in from off the streets has the right to remain silent but no one exercises it.  Rookie cop Lea Thompson listens to everyone’s stories.  LL Cool J is the documentarian who thought it would be smart to put on Klan robes and a hood and try to infiltrate a demonstration undercover.  Patrick Dempsey is the drunk who killed a kid.  Carl Reiner comes in and confesses to mercy killing his wife.  Christopher Lloyd is homeless.  Fisher Stevens is a trans streetwalker.  Judge Reinhold, I don’t even know what he was supposed to be.  Reinhold actually plays two characters in this film and he’s miscast in both roles.  Amanda Plummer is a pizza delivery person who shoots someone in self-defense.  No one asks for a lawyer.  No one lies about what they did.  Instead, they just talk and talk and talk and talk some more.  Thompson listens while Robert Loggia, as the chief, growls about donuts.

The Right To Remain Silent is based on a play and that is its downfall.  Instead of being a story about a rookie cop and her first night on the job, it’s just a collection of rambling stage monologues.  Some of the actors, like Carl Reiner and Christopher Lloyd, do okay.  Most of them still seem to be acting for the folks sitting in the back row.  It ultimately doesn’t add up too much because the stories are too predictable to make much of an impression.  Everyone in this film had the right to remain silent and I wish they had exercised it.

The Final Cut (1995, directed by Roger Christian)


A mad bomber is blowing up large chunks of Seattle and seems to have a vendetta against the city’s bomb squad.  John Pierce (Sam Elliott), a burn-out who used to be the best of the best when it came to defusing bombs, comes out of retirement to help with the investigation.  The only problem is that all of the evidence seems to be pointing at Pierce.  Pierce does his best to prove his innocence while more and more members of the bomb squad get blown up.

The Final Cut has its moments.  The lengthy opening scene features Amanda Plummer and John Hannah as two cocky members of the bomb squad who discover that defusing their latest explosive isn’t going to be as simple as they think it is.  The final 20 minutes takes the film into Saw territory, with an underground lair and a woman who has been turned into a human explosive.  In-between, though, the movie is often slow and Sam Elliott sleepwalks through a role that really demanded the low-budget equivalent of a Lethal Weapon-era Mel Gibson.  (Wings Hauser comes to mind.)  The actual identity of the bomber will be easy for anyone to guess though the bomber’s final fate is actually executed pretty well.

Director Roger Christian is a long-time associate of George Lucas’s and also worked on Alien as a production designer.  That’s probably why the sets, especially that underground lair, look surprisingly good for what was obviously a direct-to-video B-movie.  Five years after The Final Cut, Christian would attain an infamous immortality when he was the director unfortunate enough to be credited as directing Battlefield Earth.  Compared to Battlefield Earth, The Final Cut is damn good movie.

Pulp Fiction, (Written & Dir. Quentin Tarantino) Review by Case Wright


“Pulp Fiction” was as peak 1990s as much as these two:

Or this Archie’s Comic live action show

While “X-Files” attracted big audiences 60-40% male and the reverse for “90210”, “Pulp Fiction” captured 1994: Jocks, Nerds, Guys, Women, Girls, Boys, Boomers, X-ers, Older Millennials, you name it – Everyone was into Pulp Fiction. Tarantino described this art as a number of cliches: the mobster attracted to the mob wife, the boxer who tricks the mobsters into giving him money and NOT throwing the fight, and the killer who finds God. The cliches dig into DNA. WHY? Because they have the same motivations as our caveman ancestors: the unobtainable mate, a sense of honor, and redemption. These themes are the basic building blocks of what make us human beings and why these stories echo through the millennia – our ancestors fears are the same as ours today. Some might claim that “Reservoir Dogs’ was better- they are incorrect– Pulp Fiction was WAY more entertaining.

Even though this was released and written in the 1990s, it had an older feel to it. First, everyone smoked indoors. I remember the 1990s, smoking was on the OUTS big time! Second, man did he like to use a certain racial slur. OOF. But then again, I’m not from Los Angeles. Maybe, it’s like Alabama there? I have no idea! I can say that the film did hold up as re-watched it today. It was still relevant and maybe that’s because it was difficult to pin down the time period; in fact, the music was mostly from the 1970s and the story time jumped- A LOT! The Miramax producer who worked on the show also jumps a lot, but mostly in the shower.

The story begins with two mobsters Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield murdering two guys to get a magical briefcase back to their boss Marsellus Wallace, which feeds into the next storyline of Butch an aging fighter who’s about to rip off the mob, which feeds into Mia Wallace – Marsellus Wallace’s wife overdosing on heroin, which feeds into Butch on a quest to retrieve his great-grandfather’s watch, which feeds into a pretty graphic man on man scene of sexual violence and revenge, which feeds into Jules finding God, which feeds into cleaning brains out of a car, and finally ending in a diner being robbed by Tim Roth. Yes, the film requires attention. It’s not “Dazed and Confused”. You gotta pay attention.

I recently watched a show with Lisa Marie that time jumped – oh no, were their Germans around who got too close at a family reunion off camera?!

I still believe this is Quentin’s Opus and you cannot convince me otherwise because it connected to everyone and launched and re-launched A LOT of careers. Pulp Fiction’s legacy was that it empowered a 1990s writers to work in humor with their grittiness like in Halloween H20, which I reviewed here

https://unobtainium13.com/2016/10/29/halloween-h20-alt-title-they-stab-baby-boomers-dont-they/
: Pulp Fiction, (Written & Dir. Quentin Tarantino) Review by Case Wright

I recommend to going on Hulu and checking Pulp Fiction out again.

Here Are The 2023 Nominations of The Film Independent Spirit Awards


The nominations of the Independent Spirit Awards were announced today.  While the Spirits are definitely an Oscar precursor, it’s important to remember that some of the year’s big contenders — Oppenheimer, Maestro, Rustin, Nyad, Barbie, Killers Of The Flower Moon – -are not eligible for the Spirits.

Of the film nominated for Best Feature, May December, Past Lives, and American Fiction seem to be the most likely to also show up when the Oscar nominations are announced next year.

Here are the nominees!  The winners will be announced on February 25th, 2024!

BEST FEATURE (Award given to the producer)
All of Us Strangers – Producers: Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, Sarah Harvey
American Fiction – Producers: Cord Jefferson, Jermaine Johnson, Nikos Karamigios, Ben LeClair
May December – Producers: Jessica Elbaum, Will Ferrell, Grant S. Johnson, Pamela Koffler, Tyler W. Konney, Sophie Mas, Natalie Portman, Christine Vachon
Passages – Producers: Michel Merkt, Saïd Ben Saïd
Past Lives – Producers: David Hinojosa, Pamela Koffler, Christine Vachon
We Grown Now – Producers: Minhal Baig, Joe Pirro

BEST FIRST FEATURE (Award given to director and producer)
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt – Director: Raven Jackson, Producers: Maria Altamirano, Mark Ceryak, Barry Jenkins, Adele Romanski
Chronicles of a Wandering Saint – Director: Tomás Gómez Bustillo, Producers: Gewan Brown, Amanda Freedman
Earth Mama – Director/Producer: Savanah Leaf, Producers: Sam Bisbee, Shirley O’Connor, Medb Riordan, Cody Ryder
A Thousand and One – Director: A.V. Rockwell, Producers: Julia Lebedev, Rishi Rajani, Eddie Vaisman, Lena Waithe, Brad Weston
Upon Entry – Directors: Alejandro Rojas, Juan Sebastián Vásquez, Producers: Sergio Adrià, Carlos Juárez, Alba Sotorra, Carles Torras, Xosé Zapata

JOHN CASSAVETES AWARD – Given to the best feature made for under $1,000,000 (Award given to the writer, director and producer)
The Artifice Girl – Director/Writer: Franklin Ritch, Producers: Aaron B. Koontz, Ashleigh Snead
Cadejo Blanco – Director/Writer/Producer: Justin Lerner, Producers: Mauricio Escobar, Ryan Friedkin, Jack Patrick Hurley
Fremont – Director/Writer: Babak Jalali, Writer: Carolina Cavalli, Producers: Rachael Fung, Chris Martin, Marjaneh Moghimi, George Rush, Sudnya Shroff, Laura Wagner
Rotting in the Sun – Director/Writer: Sebastián Silva, Writer: Pedro Peirano, Producer: Jacob Wasserman
The Unknown Country – Director/Writer/Producer: Morrisa Maltz, Writer: Lily Gladstone, Writers/Producers: Lainey Bearkiller Shangreaux, Vanara Taing, Producers: Katherine Harper, Laura Heberton, Tommy Heitkamp

BEST DIRECTOR
Andrew Haigh – All of Us Strangers
Todd Haynes – May December
William Oldroyd – Eileen
Ira Sachs – Passages
Celine Song – Past Lives

BEST SCREENPLAY
David Hemingson – The Holdovers
Cord Jefferson – American Fiction
Laura Moss & Brendan J. O’Brien – Birth/Rebirth
Emma Seligman & Rachel Sennott – Bottoms
Celine Song – Past Lives

BEST FIRST SCREENPLAY
Samy Burch; Story by Samy Burch & Alex Mechanik – May December
Noah Galvin, Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman & Ben Platt – Theater Camp
Tomás Gómez Bustillo – Chronicles of a Wandering Saint
Laurel Parmet – The Starling Girl
Alejandro Rojas & Juan Sebastián Vásquez – Upon Entry

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE
Jessica Chastain – Memory
Greta Lee – Past Lives
Trace Lysette – Monica
Natalie Portman – May December
Judy Reyes – Birth/Rebirth
Franz Rogowski – Passages
Andrew Scott – All of Us Strangers
Teyana Taylor – A Thousand and One
Jeffrey Wright – American Fiction
Teo Yoo – Past Lives

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE
Erika Alexander – American Fiction
Sterling K. Brown – American Fiction
Noah Galvin – Theater Camp
Anne Hathaway – Eileen
Glenn Howerton – BlackBerry
Marin Ireland – Eileen
Charles Melton – May December
Da’Vine Joy Randolph – The Holdovers
Catalina Saavedra – Rotting in the Sun
Ben Whishaw – Passages

BEST BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE
Marshawn Lynch – Bottoms
Atibon Nazaire – Mountains
Tia Nomore – Earth Mama
Dominic Sessa – The Holdovers
Anaita Wali Zada – Fremont

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Katelin Arizmendi – Monica
Eigil Bryld – The Holdovers
Jomo Fray – All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
Pablo Lozano – Chronicles of a Wandering Saint
Pat Scola – We Grown Now

BEST EDITING
Santiago Cendejas, Gabriel Díaz, Sofía Subercaseaux – Rotting in the Sun
Stephanie Filo – We Grown Now
Daniel Garber – How to Blow Up a Pipeline
Jon Philpot – Theater Camp
Emanuele Tiziani – Upon Entry

ROBERT ALTMAN AWARD – Given to one film’s director, casting director and ensemble cast
Showing Up
Director: Kelly Reichardt
Casting Director: Gayle Keller
Ensemble Cast: André Benjamin, Hong Chau, Judd Hirsch, Heather Lawless, James Le Gros, John Magaro, Matt Malloy, Amanda Plummer, Maryann Plunkett, Denzel Rodriguez, Michelle Williams

BEST DOCUMENTARY (Award given to the director and producer)
Bye Bye Tiberias – Director: Lina Soualem, Producer: Jean-Marie Nizan
Four Daughters – Director: Kaouther Ben Hania, Producer: Nadim Cheikhrouha
Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project – Directors/Producers: Joe Brewster, Michèle Stephenson, Producer: Tommy Oliver
Kokomo City – Director: D. Smith, Producers: Bill Butler, Harris Doran
The Mother of All Lies – Director/Producer: Asmae El Moudir

BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM (Award given to the director)
Anatomy of a Fall (France) – Director: Justine Triet
Godland (Denmark/Iceland) – Director: Hlynur Pálmason
Mami Wata (Nigeria) – Director: C.J. ‘Fiery’ Obasi
Tótem (Mexico) – Director: Lila Avilés
The Zone of Interest (United Kingdom, Poland, USA) – Director: Jonathan Glazer

PRODUCERS AWARD
 Presented by Bulleit Frontier Whiskey – The Producers Award, now in its 27th year, honors emerging producers who, despite highly limited resources, demonstrate the creativity, tenacity and vision required to produce quality independent films.

Rachael Fung
Graham Swon
Monique Walton

SOMEONE TO WATCH AWARD
The Someone to Watch Award, now in its 30th year, recognizes a talented filmmaker of singular vision who has not yet received appropriate recognition.

Joanna Arnow – Director of The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed
Laura Moss – Director of Birth/Rebirth
Monica Sorelle – Director of Mountains

TRUER THAN FICTION AWARD 
The Truer Than Fiction Award, now in its 29th year, is presented to an emerging director of non-fiction features who has not yet received significant recognition.

Set Hernandez – Director of unseen
Jesse Short Bull, Laura Tomaselli – Director of Lakota Nation vs. United States
Sierra Urich – Director of Joonam

BEST NEW NON-SCRIPTED OR DOCUMENTARY SERIES (Award given to the Creator, Executive Producer, Co-Executive Producer)
Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court
Executive Producers: Vinnie Malhotra, Aaron Saidman, Eli Holzman, Dawn Porter
Dear Mama
Executive Producers: Lasse Järvi, Quincy ‘QD3’ Jones III, Staci Robinson, Nelson George, Charles D. King, Peter Nelson, Adel ‘Future’ Nur, Jamal Joseph, Ted Skillman, Allen Hughes, Steve Berman, Marc Cimino, Jody Gerson, John Janick, Nicholas Ferrall, Nigel Sinclair
Murder in Big Horn
Executive Producers: Matthew Galkin, Vinnie Malhotra
Co-Executive Producers: Lisa Kalikow, Joshua Levine
Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence
Executive Producers: Mindy Goldberg, Dan Cogan, Liz Garbus, Jon Bardin, Zach Heinzerling, Krista Parris, Daniel Barban Levin, Felicia Rosario
Co-Executive Producer: Julie Gaither
Wrestlers
Executive Producers: Greg Whiteley, Ryan O’Dowd
Co-Executive Producers: Alejandro Melendez, Adam Leibowitz

BEST NEW SCRIPTED SERIES (Award given to the Creator, Executive Producer, Co-Executive Producer)
Beef
Creator/Executive Producer: Lee Sung Jin
Executive Producers: Steven Yeun, Ali Wong, Jake Schreier, Ravi Nandan, Alli Reich
Co-Executive Producers: Alice Ju, Carrie Kemper
Dreaming Whilst Black
Creator/Executive Producer: Adjani Salmon
Creators: Maximilian Evans, Natasha Jatania, Laura Seixas
Executive Producers: Tanya Qureshi, Dhanny Joshi, Bal Samra, Thomas Stogdon
I’m a Virgo
Creator/Executive Producer: Boots Riley
Executive Producers: Tze Chun, Michael Ellenberg, Lindsey Springer, Jharrel Jerome, Rebecca Rivo
Co-Executive Producers: Marcus Gardley, Carver Karaszewski
Jury Duty
Creators/Executive Producers: Lee Eisenberg, Gene Stupnitsky
Executive Producers: David Bernad, Ruben Fleischer, Nicholas Hatton, Cody Heller, Todd Schulman, Jake Szymanski, Andrew Weinberg
Slip
Creator/Executive Producer: Zoe Lister-Jones
Executive Producers: Ro Donnelly, Dakota Johnson, Katie O’Connell Marsh, David Fortier, Ivan Schneeberg

BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE IN A NEW SCRIPTED SERIES
Emma Corrin – A Murder at the End of the World
Dominique Fishback – Swarm
Betty Gilpin – Mrs. Davis
Jharrel Jerome – I’m a Virgo
Zoe Lister-Jones – Slip
Bel Powley – A Small Light
Bella Ramsey – The Last of Us
Ramón Rodríguez – Will Trent
Ali Wong – Beef
Steven Yeun – Beef

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE IN A NEW SCRIPTED SERIES
Murray Bartlett – The Last of Us
Billie Eilish – Swarm
Jack Farthing – Rain Dogs
Nick Offerman – The Last of Us
Adina Porter – The Changeling
Lewis Pullman – Lessons in Chemistry
Benny Safdie – The Curse
Luke Tennie – Shrinking
Olivia Washington – I’m a Virgo
Jessica Williams – Shrinking

BEST BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE IN A NEW SCRIPTED SERIES
Clark Backo – The Changeling
Aria Mia Loberti – All the Light We Cannot See
Adjani Salmon – Dreaming Whilst Black
Keivonn Montreal Woodard – The Last of Us
Kara Young – I’m a Virgo

BEST ENSEMBLE CAST IN A NEW SCRIPTED SERIES
Jury Duty
Ensemble Cast: Alan Barinholtz, Susan Berger, Cassandra Blair, David Brown, Kirk Fox, Ross Kimball, Pramode Kumar, Trisha LaFache, Mekki Leeper, James Marsden, Edy Modica, Kerry O’Neill, Rashida Olayiwola, Whitney Rice, Maria Russell, Ishmel Sahid, Ben Seaward, Ron Song, Evan Williams

Little Red Riding Hood On Acid: Freeway (1996, directed by Matthew Bright)


Vanessa Lutz (Reese Witherspoon) may not be able to read but she ain’t dumb.

When her mother (Amanda Plummer) gets arrested for prostitution and her stepfather (Michael T. Weiss) goes to jail for meth possession, Vanessa knows that it’s time to leave South Los Angeles and go to her grandmother in Stockton.  She puts on her red jacket, packs her possession in a picnic basket, and heads for the freeway.  Vanessa is determined to get to grandmother’s house and she’s not going to let anyone stop her.  Not the police.  Not the gangbangers who murdered her boyfriend, Chopper (Bookeem Woodbine).  And certainly not Bob Wolverton (Kiefer Sutherland), the psychiatrist who moonlights as the I-5 killer.

An audaciously wild take on the story of Little Red Riding Hood, Freeway used to be a HBO mainstay, where it developed the cult following that it retains to this very day.  The violence is graphic and the humor is often viscous but Reese Witherspoon has never been better than she was in the role of the loud and unapologetically profane Vanessa Lutz.  Whether she’s cussing up a storm or shooting a pervert in the face or plotting her escape from jail, Vanessa is a whirlwind of nonstop energy and it is impossible not to get swept up with her.  Witherspoon has since won an Oscar and appeared in all sorts of “prestige” pictures but she’s never had a better role than she did in Freeway.

Witherspoon is such a force of a nature that she dominates the film but the rest of the cast is interesting as well, with several familiar faces in small roles.  Sutherland has played so many psychos that it is not a surprise when Bob turns out to be one but he still throws himself into the role.  (Like a cartoon character, it doesn’t matter how badly injured or disfigured Bob gets.  He just keeps on going.)  Dan Hedaya and Wolfgang Bodison play detectives.  Alanna Urbach and Brittany Murphy play two inmates who Witherspoon meets in prison.  Brooke Shields has a small role as Bob’s unsuspecting wife and is convincingly clueless.

Ultimately, though, the movie belongs to Reese Witherspoon.  Vanessa might not always be pleasant to be around but she’s so determined to make it to grandmother’s house but you can’t help but be on her side.  She’s the Little Red Riding Hood that we all deserve.

Trailer: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Exclusive Teaser)


CatchingFire

The next installment in The Hunger Games series, Catching Fire, looks to return later this year with a new director taking over the reins. Gary Ross began the series as director of the first film and the film enjoyed massive success and very positive reception from the critics-at-large. So, it was surprising news that Ross wouldn’t be returning to continue the series and instead Lionsgate replacing him with Francis Lawrence (Constantine, I Am Legend).

This sequel brings back everyone who survived the first film and adds some new faces in the cast such as Philip Seymour Hoffman, Toby Jones, Jena Malone and Jeffrey Wright.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is set for a November 22, 2013 release date.

Film Review: The Prophecy (dir. by Gregory Widen)


I first found out about this little cult film starring the very awesome Christopher Walken around 1993 or so when I was at the local Waldenbooks (yes there used to be bookstores not named Barnes & Noble or Borders back in the day) looking at the latest issue of Fangoria. Inside the magazine they were doing a brief feature on an upcoming horror film tentatively called God’s Army. All I saw was that it was to star Christopher Walken and it had gore and angels in it. That alone peaked my interest and I was looking forward to seeing it in the theaters. Almost two years passed and nothing about it was ever heard again until I visited the video rental place near my house and saw a VHS tape (yeah, those big videocassette thingies) with the title of The Prophecy and starring Christopher Walken.

This was the film I was so hyped to seeing in the theaters. The title had changed from it’s earlier (and much cooler) one of God’s Army. It would seem that it’s film distributor had little to no faith in the box-office potential of the film and just delayed it’s release to the point that when it did come out no one knew about it barely anyone saw it. It was a real damn shame since filmmaker Gregory Widen made such a good film that was able to mash-up horror, angels and a detective story all in one without creating a mess of things.

The Prophecy was about the war in heaven we were never taught about in Sunday school. We all know about the war in heaven where Lucifer and the rebel angels who followed him tried to overthrow God. That didn’t go over so well for Lucifer and he and his band of fallen angels were cast out into Hell by God and his right-hand man the Archangel Michael. This film talks about the second war in heaven soon thereafter which no one outside those who wrote little-known apocryphal texts about it (and being apocryphal they never were included in the Bible). This war now had a new group of angels led by the Archangel Gabriel rebelling against God for choosing humans (talking monkeys as these new rebels called them) above all living creatures including the angels themselves for God’s love. This war was now in a state of stalemate after countless millenia, but a prophecy about a soul so dark and evil was to be the tipping point for either side. This particular soul was to be found on Earth and whoever acquires it would break the stalemate and finally bring this second war to an end.

With this in mind we have Walken as the Archangel Gabriel coming down to Earth to look for this soul so he can finally win the war for his side (which also means the end of mankind). It’s the angel Simon (played by Eric Stoltz) who comes down to stop him from getting this soul or, at the very least, hide it from Gabriel. With these two factions of angels vying to acquire this soul we have a Detective Thomas Daggett smack in the middle of the case investigating all the weird happenings and deaths surrounding the battle between these two factions. The dead bodies of angels begin to appear on morgue slabs looking like eyeless, hermaphroditic specimens and angelic script found in crime scenes brings Daggett back to his time studying to be a priest before images of angels warring amongst themselves breaks him down and he quits the seminary to become a cop instead.

It would come down to these three factions racing against time to acquire this dark soul.

The film is not as gory as it’s feature in Fangoria made it out to be, but it is quite violent and bloody that I understand why it got the horror label attached to it. It’s more a dark fantasy thriller more than horror. It’s rare in today’s film that we see angels portrayed as the bloodthirsty beings that the really are. The film even points out this oft-ignored detail of God’s messengers. Angels are always the ones God sends to punish or send a very serious message to his chosen beings that is Man. The Prophecy shows this aspect of angels in full light and how their attitudes about humanity might lead some of them to hate God for raising Man above even them.

Christopher Walker does a great job conveying Gabriel’s hate and contempt for humans. His Gabriel is like one of those pundits always on tv (both liberal and consevative) who are so into their sides’ message that they never see the other side as anything but the enemy. One could almost say that Walken’s Gabriel is like then apocalypse-hungry version of Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann in one body. This is not to say that Walken goes over-the-top with his performance. In fact, he’s quite subdued in how he uses those many tics and voice mannerisms a whole cottage industry has grown around in.

Walken’s portrayal of Gabriel infuses what could’ve become a one-note villain with lots of layers and complexities that the rest of the cast were able to play off from. His character would be terrifying one moment then smoothly switch over to being funny and charming then back to terror. It’s due to his great performance that the other cast members like Stoltz as the weary, loyal angel Simon and Koteas as the fallen religious cop Daggett were able to bring their own performance to another level. This is quite a feat since the dialogue in the film was a mixed bag of horror cliches and interesting Biblical-speak about secret wars, apocryphal books and prophecies. The film even has a nice appearance of the first fallen angel himself and none other than Viggo Mortensen plays Lucifer.

The Prophecy does have a feeling that it was always one misstep away from becoming an awful film. This had happened with 2010’s Legion and did that film about angels and the apocalypse turn out to be a huge steaming pile of shit-turd. But while Dimension Film saw the film fall over on the side of bad for myself and those who have come to admire and love this cult classic the film stayed balance between good and bad. Widen’s film never went over to the side of becoming a truly great film, but it also never fell on the side that Legion ended up on. What Prophecy ended up becoming was a film that was almost grindhouse in nature, but even then it still looked too good with too many good performances to be given that label. The fact that it contains one of Christopher Walken’s best performances speaks well of a film that many critics during it’s early days had dismissed as just another bad horror film.

In the end, this film became just one of the many little-gems that got lost in film studio money politics. I definitely would recommend this cult film to people who haven’t seen it, but I would tell them to stop at just this film and not even go near the four sequels which came after it.