I recently sat down and watched all five of these things and put this little treatment together for you, you know, in case you ever felt like getting your biblical end of the world on one weekend.

THE PROPHECY (1995)

What do you think about Christopher Walken? Do you love him? I love him but it’s kind of difficult for me to take TOO MUCH of his schtick in one sitting. You know, with his constant inflections and his movements and his eye acting and all of that. Again – I dig the dude and even wrote the opening monologue to my newest under-wraps script with the idea of him reading / voicing it but it was kind of weird seeing him in this physically FIGHTING people and throwing Elias Koteas around and talking about killing kids in his unique voice and getting blown up and etc. etc. etc. He’ll always be the guy with the watch up his asshole to me.

Anyway – in my opinion everyone is free to believe in what they want to believe in and we’re not here to ever talk about religion. I’ve read The BIBBLE and I like The Old Testament but I’ve also read a lot of Alternative History during my studies and I like the way they all kind of say the same thing, it’s just how the individual perceives what’s written out there. If you’re ever in the mood for a brilliant take on how Angels and Demons came around you should check out FROM ASHES TO ANGELS by Andrew Collins. It’s excellent.

Back to the movie – a war between the angels over God’s love of Mankind has been going on forever and ever up in Heaven, led mostly by Walken as the angel Gabriel. As this movie takes place, he has determined that if he harvests the soul of the cruelest human to ever exist, he can turn the tide and kill all of the angels loyal to God and Man. Will he succeed?? Will Elias Koteas and curvy Virginia Madsen stop him??? Viggo Mortensen has about five minutes in here as Lucifer. Oh yeah, be careful, Amanda Plummer is in this too.

THE PROPHECY 2 (1998)

Without trying to spoil the first one, this time around the “good” angels have determined that if one of them mates with a human (Jennifer Beals in a sex scene, mind you) and makes a hybrid baby, that baby will end up saving mankind once for all, forever and ever and ever amen,.. Walken gets a lot more one liners in this one and there’s a lot more wire-flying fighting. Luckily this does NOT have Eric Stoltz, Amanda Plummer or Adam Goldberg in it but it DOES feature Glenn Danzig and Eric Roberts, so you’ve been warned.

This isn’t as good as the first, IMO but it’s not bad. The end, when they have the “Big Fight” in Goth-Industrial Eden was kind of off putting. Britanny Murphy has some time in here crying it up. If you’ve just seen the first one and seem leary about the second because of Walken’s hairdo – it’s better this time around. A good sequel.  The way the first one ended I was like “how can they make a sequel?” and I like how the writers got smart and segued into a second movie.

THE PROPHECY 3: THE ASCENT (2000)

Notice that snarling Gabriel on the movie poster? That’s real nice because his hair is really long and he’s a crazed old homeless fucker in this one. And he’s a good guy this time, so – sue for false advertising!! I saw this a long time ago, when it came out, and I always thought this also starred the guy who got his Pee Pee sucked on by Chloe Sevigny in The Brown Bunny, but I was wrong. This has Vincent SPANO, the guy from that lovely movie OSCAR.  The guy that got his Pee Pee sucked was Vincent GALLO! The egg is really on my face.

This ends the original trilogy and I thought the first hour of this was pretty lame but it ended up OK. Walken’s Gabriel, like I said is a crazy homeless fucker, so he gets to act more like himself. The baby from the second one is now a young man and he’s the savior of humanity. Apparently there’s an angel called The Whited Sepulchre who is coming to eradicate all life on Earth and he’s been made to stop him. Vincent Spano comes down from Heaven to seal the deal. Does he?? Is there a happy ending??? I won’t blab. This was a decent enough trilogy. I can’t complain except for they were made in the 90s so you have to deal with 90s fashion and hairdos… off we go into the two stand alone sequels!

King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.

P.S. Steve Hytner is in all three of these. That’s Kenny Bania from Seinfeld. Gold, Jerry!! Gold!!

THE PROPHECY: UPRISING (2005)

I didn’t even know this existed until I bought this DVD with all of the Hellraisers and Prophecies on them. I didn’t think this was too bad – assuming it went straight to DVD. I always like some Sean Pertwee and yummy Kari Wurher (even though she’s not so great of an actress). This one’s set over in Romania (I think), drops the Christopher Walken angle and deals with some angels trying to get ahold of a particular Bible that is writing itself. Well – writing the end of Revelations. Whoever gets this can stop The Apocalypse or let it happen and, as we have learned, angels hate humans. Well some of them. This also gets rid of the jumping around and fighting-in-the-air-angels and has a heavy dose of the devil. Some of the local talent is a little questionable but I didn’t find much wrong with this. Might be a little boring to some folks.

THE PROPHECY: FORSAKEN (2005)

I find it difficult to believe that this was made back-to-back by the same people that did the last one. This one was pretty flimsy and sucky at the same time with some dodgy special effects and pitiful acting. They also throw in some new angels called Thrones and a SHITLOAD of lightning sound effects. Nothing really worked for me in this one and it ended stupid. If you’re into this series, you should probably just save yourself some time and stop after number four.

ei over and out!