Stellar Cast Made ‘The Prophecy’ a Home Video Franchise

Gregory Widen’s “The Prophecy” (1995) is one of those genre sleepers that was dismissed by most critics, quickly found an appreciative audience as a rental option and garnered a cult following that led that a slew of sequels.

Widen, one of the creators of “Highlander” (1986), shapes “The Prophecy” as a more spiritual, good vs. evil spin on his Connor McCloud/“There Can Only Be One” formula. The results are both goofy and riveting.

Elias Koteas plays Thomas Dagget, a would-be man of the cloth turned police officer who finds his caseload is suddenly mirroring the theology and lessons he carried from his days as a seminary student dropout. Meanwhile, the angel Simon (Eric Stoltz) begins appearing, followed by the ruthless Gabriel (Christopher Walken), who leaves destruction wherever he goes.

Viggo Mortensen plays the Devil for good measure.

It’s all very “Highlander”-esque, in that the moments which are pretty awesome counter bits where the filmmakers may not have been aware how unintentionally funny some of this is.

Imagine John Travolta’s  “Michael” (1996) as a horror film, and it would play like this.

“The Prophecy” epitomizes a B-movie, in that it’s a bad movie with enough great scenes and go-for-broke performances to counter its shortcomings. I liked the angle that Dagget loses his faith because he sees too much and initially can’t handle the theological truth he faces.

FAST FACT: “The Prophecy” wasn’t a box office hit ($16 million global), but it still sparked four direct-to-video sequels: “The Prophecy II” (1998), “The Ascent” (2000), “Uprising” (2005) and “Forsaken” (2005).

The wacky finale includes a Wile E. Coyote-worthy truck crash, Native American rituals, Walken smashing through a door and, much later, exploding into a flock of doves.

Most importantly, we get a Viggo vs. Walken showdown.

Walken’s typically wild and stylish performance is one of the best reasons to see this. He has a Hall of Fame bit where he walks past a corpse, stops in front of the camera, makes a dramatic gesture and the body in the background bursts into flames.

The way Walken plays it, with the showmanship of his gesture and joy in his eyes, it’s like watching an evil circus ringleader.

Walken, like Nicolas Cage, has lots of B-movie gold in the midst of a respectable body of work on stage and film. In terms of finding his most enjoyably subtlety-free and unhinged, this is up there with the best of the lot.

Stoltz has scenes where he converses with a small child alone, and it’s creepy. Yes, we know he’s an angel, but it doesn’t make those bits any easier to watch. I wish Stoltz’s natural warmth as an actor was enough to sell those scenes but, whether intentional or not, I wanted his spooky, soft voiced intruder to exit the film quicker than he does.

In his last scene, Stoltz is once again covered head to toe in elaborate make-up, his third time after “Mask” (1985) and “The Fly II” (1989).

What a trooper.

Virginia Madsen, during her “Highlander II: The Quickening” (1991) and “Candyman” (1992) career period, is really good in this. So is Adam Goldberg, Amanda Plummer and especially Mortensen, chilling and fascinating in his take on the devil.

For a film with a limited budget, the entertainment value is generous.

The weekend “The Prophecy” opened in my local theater, the owners hedged their bets and made it the second bill on a double feature with the forgotten Tom Berenger drama, “Last of the Dogmen.”

What a bizarre double feature!

Overall, “The Prophecy” is an ambitious B-movie. It’s often stupid but man, does it deliver.

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