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Well...bite my head off everyone,but i thought it was a good horrormovie! I admit the acting was horrible,and the sleeping bag death was a little funny,but,just as the second reviewer said,this one gets you by surprise. The bear just pops out when your least expecting it! I bought it at a pawnshop for four bucks. Worth it to me.

Saw this movie a long time ago and I just about p**sed my pants when the kid was killed in the sleeping bag.  Truly one of the funniest death scenes in movie history.

That movie scared me to death.  I thought the sleeping bag scene was scary AND a little funny.  I also have the book.  I think this is one of the great horror movies.  Think about it, every other movie I know of you can tell when the monster is coming this one gets you by surprise every time.  Best watched at night during a storm.

The one thing that sets this film apart is that it
was directed by former Wunderkind John
Frankenheimer and truth be told, some of thye
visuals are memorable. In particular the seen in
the tunnel with close-ups of sweaty, fear striken
faces ( an obvious hommage to the 'Dawn of Man'
sequence in Kubrick's '2001').
Obviously the film is crap though, but crap of a
more enjoyable kind than we see the

Believe it or not, this movie is often listed as rated PG.  At the local video store, that's what the box says.  I suppose they had it reclasyified(ugh, bad spelling).  Oh yeah, and this movie, while bad, is moderately entertaning.  It was really to bad that one indian guy got smacked upside the head and flew 50 feet.  He was the best character, what with the chainsaw scene and all the arrows he smacked into the bear.  Oh yeah, and why did they keep those cubs?

Jesus...I choked over the sleeping bag scene it was so funny.  Kind of slow, but entertaining enough.  Was worth my rental.

This movie scared me so bad when I was a kid I was incapable of moving in my bed for hours!  Today I laugh my behind off at the rampant silliness.  My heart goes out to John Frankenheimer, the director.  He was so disappointed at this particular favor he was incapable of working for years!  Still this is one of my favorite bad movies.  In fact seeing this sight makes me want to watch it again!  Just one teeny-weeny complaint...the movie was shot in widescreen (2:35:1) when will Paramount get off of its buttocks and release a print of it letterboxed on DVD or video.  They have just done it to Friday the 13th Parts 1 and 2 so there is some hope.  Keep the faith folks and stay scared!

This was the first horror movie I ever saw. I was 8 years old, and me and my cousin saw it at countryside mall in Clearwater, FL.  It really freaked me out.  I have never forgotten the bear cub in the river scene, or the sleeping bag scene.  And I could never forget that nipple scene...that was a big deal for an 8 year old.

I did not see the movie when it came out in theaters although I remember being freaked out by the movie poster
picture when it was in the paper's show schedule. My parents
saw the movie telling me about it which sparked my interest
years later in renting it. I went camping in Montana/Colorado mountains after seeing this movie and it
did creep me out to think about the ugly creatures and what
if these bears could get that nasty looking. The sleeping
bag scene is one of the funniest horror movie death scenes.

Okay people the death scenes in PROPHECY are not funny! The death scenes in SCREAM or I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER were funny to a given extent. Of course, I remember seeing this scary as hell film on video when I was at the age of nine. And at that time, seeing a PG rated film with some gross violence was like a treasure to me. John Frankenheimer really did a good job creating some good scares in this film. And the mutated killer bear: truely terrifying. A horror/sci-fi classic. I still get the shivers when I watch this film.

  This film was memorable, not only for the sleeping bag scene, but also for the fact that the doctor was the dad from the Brady Bunch, boy did he go on to better things (snicker). The film had its moments and fora horror film from the early Friday the 13th era, it wasn't bad. Kind of think of it as a more extreme version of the crying native american antipollution commercial.

This movie was totally awesome. I first saw it when I was about 12 years old and it scared the eliving dog**** out of me! I had many sleepless nights thinking about that mutated grizzly bear crashing through my wall at night and eating me. The sleeping bag scene made a big impression, I used to sleep like that when camping out growing up, but after that movie, no more! It is still one of my favorites, and I highly recommend a widescreen re-release, you would be suprised what a big hit it would be. I mean, what more could you ask for: Vast wilderness, a mutated bear, 4 wheeling(at night, with a spotlight), hot 70's chicks with big boobs, disco music, and wild suspense! Thanks John Frankenheimer for a real classic.  

Ah, such a wonderful film.  The creature effects were surprisingly good.  It does give you a good insight into the behavioral patterns of the rare Maine Grizzly.  They never go down to all fours, unlike other bears, they run on their hind legs EVERYWHERE!  The only objection I have is that they blow up a perfectly good FJ40.  What a crime.

I saw this movie when I was ten.  It was the first horror movie I ever saw.  I had nightmares for years afterwards.  I was so tramatized by it that it took me a long time to get over those horrible looking mutant bears.  I am 33 years old now and just the thought of that movie makes me cringe.  However, they always show it around halloween every year, and of course I have to watch it.  It still creeps me out. I think that it is by far one of the most frightening movies ever made.  I remember a baby mutant bear sucking on Talia's nipple, trying to nurse and it bit her.  But I haven't seen that part in the current showing of the movie.  Was it deleted because it was so graphic or am I just imagining it????(My mom remembers it too.)  

Hey, for those who liked the "sleeping bag" scene in Propecy, did you ever see "Friday the 13th part 7, where good ole Jason drags the woman in the sleeping bag out of the tent and WHACKS it against the tree?! LOL Cool stuff bubbah!

BTW, I originally saw Prophecy on a network channel when I was 12, and they actually cut out the part where the kid flies through the air and the string supported sleeping bag bops into the boulder. So the scene I saw was just the kid screaming, the bear paw whistling through the air, a loud POWWW! sound, and the shot of the holofil wafting through the air. THAT scared the ca-ca-poo-poo out of me!!! I did not even see the cheezey-ness of the orignal scene until much later. Ya know, with a little judicious editing, this movie is pretty frightening... LOL

Questions posed by this movie:
- Why were there grizzly bears in Maine?
- Why was Kataden / cubs the only horribly disfigured animals?
- Why did Kataden constantly run on two legs?
- Why didn't Kataden / cubs freeze in the winter? [No fur / Moist skin]
- Why was Kataden able to walk underwater?
- Why did the house / sleeping bag explode when Kataden smacked it?
- Why did Rob say that fetuses follow every stage of evolution during development?
- Why didn't the shotgun shell to the face kill Kataden?
- Why was there shameless shock value added to the end of the film in the form of another bear?

Obviously the filmmakers didn't do their homework for this movie. Grizzly bears do not live in Maine, and they do not run on their hind legs. Where they got the idea that a fetus developes into every stage of evolution while in the womb is beyond me. Also, the whole idea that something like mercury poisoning will mutate an animal into a grotesque super predator is a complete fabrication, too. Genetic deformities do not make an animal bigger, faster, and meaner. They make the animal sickly and weak, and are usually abandoned by the mother. I'll admit the idea of a melted, giant grizzly is scary, but it's ridiculous nonetheless.. and the sleeping bag scene doesn't help either. =P

I love this movie!!!!!!Saw it the day it came out, and bought the book when it first came out too. The bear in the book had membrane-like wings stretched between the front and rear limbs(ala Varan). The orignal bear for the movie was much more horrific that what wound up on screen. Frankenhiemer saw it, and made the special effects crew change it to look more "bear-like", at the last minute of course! The original was close to the poster art. What a shame. I like the monster so much, I sculpted it as a bust! Pretty nasty, my wife keeps moving it out of the living room. After seeing that movie, it makes you have a new respect for the great outdoors!-Jeff

Folks! The storyline has some interesting points to it... like the legends of the Indians. I always begin wondering when I hear those: the great spirit & everything, ya' know?

WOW, This movie and "Tourist Trap"(with Chuck Connors) were the two SCARIEST movies I had EVER seen when I was a kid! I had nightmares about that big, Freddy-Krueger-bear chasing me through a moonlit forest for quite sometime after. Even now, in my 30's I still get a shiver because of the scare it gave me then. That's the key with these things: Sure they look cheesey now, but hey they were made a a while back - who would have imagined "Jurassic Parrk" dinosaurs in 1978? The thing that is scary is not how clumsy they look if you stare hard enough at the screen, its to imagine, like a kid would, what it would be like if this WAS real! Leave your disbelief at the door, ignore much of the dialogue ("Its drowned! It's drowned!) and just pretend - (but still, the sleeping bag scene is kinda funny ;->  Enjoy the rampage of Kataden!  Peace, out.

I don't remember of the actual movies scared me that much, but I had nightmares for quite a while of a hideous creature walking on the lake bottom only to rise up and get me.  Yow!  The only other movie that scared me worse was "the Omega Man", which my dad took me and my brothers to when we were only 10.  

Caught this little "Gem" at the local theater as a teen. Afternoon showing had very few patrons adding to the spooky "things go(((CRACK!))) in the deep dark woods"nature of this flick.I will not rate it based on J Frankenheimers other films as some have,instead just treating as a stand alone flick being rooted in sci-fi or horror.Check your preconceptions at the door and watch this movie at night(better on a windy,stormy ,just before camping trip planned night)with the lights low and volume high.From the opening scene this flick had me on edge,the dogs trailing "some scent" of "something" and several grisly(~:^)scares.Don't get caught up in the dialogue pertaining to warnings of eco' horrors just go with the flow of frights.Many ,very effective scenes that made me jump.This movie got under my skin in 79' and still remains there. Surfing channels recently I came accross it at the opening scene and instantly remembered it,I watched the start with the tracking hounds and had to switch channels because it was late and my wife had gone to bed.Middle aged man still frightened by this movie how pathetic.Prophecy is a classic good "B" horror movie with some "A" filming and pacing.

Despite the fact that most people I know feel differently, this movie still scares me whenever I watch it (and I'm 19 now).  The concept really is scary...an angry, horribly-deformed mutant bear that mauls people while they're camping?  Yeah, it's far from being realistic, and the F/X definitely needed improvement, but it's so grotesque that it frightens me just thinking about it.  

However, some of the attack scenes could have been better.  The scene where Kataden kills the camping family would have been more terrifying if they hadn't put in the "exploding sleeping bag" bit, although it was certainly scary enough as-is.  Also, the end was pretty bad (mostly because it becomes too obvious that the creature is a man in a suit).  However, the scene where the monster tears apart the camp was scary, especially when they were in the tunnel and listening to the screams of other people being mauled.  I also thought it was pretty scary when the corporate guy (the fat one) got caught by the bear while trying to slide under the fence.  

Overall, this movie still works as a scary monster film.  I don't think I'll ever be going camping again, and if I do, I'll bring along a personal armory of weaponry (including assault rifles and grenades).  

One of the dumbests looking monsters ever and why only idians should play idians and how about the homicical racoon and the salmon the size of flipper what kind of mess is this?

I actually thought that Prophecy had awesome potenial, it just wasn't executed properly. It probably could of been more then just a bad 70s movie and become a good horror classic. John Frankenhiemer did the Manchurian Candidate and it was good, Prophecy was not, but's still a movie I watch with friends, I do like it!

Around our house we call that Grizzly "Fishbear"...and he has been a favorite "Junk" movie monster for a long time!

  we really do get a kick out of watching the movie every now and then.  If you go into it chearing for Fishbear it isn't so bad.

First of all I like to say to everyone stop complaining about Kataden running on Its hind legs and remember that Its a MUTANT BEAR.And thats just part of its mutation.One of the best horror movies from the 70s.I seen it when I was a kid and it scared the hell out of me.I give it six stars .

I'll never forget the sleeping bag scene.  That shot of the mutant baby still haunts me.

I saw this movie last night.  I unfortunatly missed the sleeping bag scene but I thought the scenes with the melted bear that I saw were hysterical.  I would have given this three slimes myself for laught value.

Some people have mentioned that "fetal evolution" thing.  The way the present it in the movie is BS but it bears (heehee) similarity to the actual early stages of fetal delevopment.  We never go through a "feline stage" though.

Saw this one last night . What a stinker!  Wife and I laughed hard when the sleeping bag blew up though.  We were slightly inebriated and even that didnt keep us from watching most of it on fast forward.  This is one of the worst movies I have ever seen.

They haven't shown this on TV here in a long time, but I just read some stuff about it in this Steven King book that someone here mentioned (Danse Macabre). "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogony" or the other way around maybe. I think that mainly means that an early stage of embryonic development in mammals is very superficially fish-like.

I just love bad movies and I do live in Maine so this was particularly enjoyable.  I've decided if I ever come across one of Katahdins babies I'll keep it for a pet and name it 'Chicken Giblets' cause all it's insides were out and it made me think of .....chicken giblets !

Well I think i watched this when I was like 7 or 8 and it scared me to death.  WAtched it a 2nd time now and laughed.  I don't know what scared me so much, I mean what a cheesey movie this is- ?  I guess the idea of being chased by a big juicy stuffed bear throughout the woods unarmed just scares me- ?  But overall, no, no just avoid this movie.  
 
 BTW the sleeping bag scene IS funny. (I think the Kataden backhanded the kid)

I keep getting this one confused with THE PROPHECY, the movie starring Christopher Walken as an evil Archangel. That movie should definitely be here as well, or at least one of its lame sequels.

 i remember when the full page add appeared in rolling stone when i was a kid. that summmer while traveling with my dad, i begged him into taking me to a drive-in somewhere in arizona to see it. since then i have thought about it often and have considered buying it online. last night while at walmart i was shocked to see the dvd in the impulse buyer section. i couldn't believe it still existed let alone in walmart. i bought it without even checking the price.

   I just bought PROPHECY and I Loved it. They used the same fetus/evolution thing in the original Island of Dr. Marowe so that must have bin a 70's thing. The scene with the exploding sleeping bag was almost as funny as the giant plastic BLUE salmon jumping out of the lake. The Mutant bears were scary in that they were so vicious and so hard to look at without gaging. I highly recommend this movie to anyone who loves horror/sci-fi movies like Friday the 13th and so forth . It did have ultra bad acting and I did find it to be slow but the part with the mutant bear attack surly revives the plot.

Why did they keep the mutant cubs?

Why was there constant national geographic nostalgia instead of death scenes?

How dose a little arrow kill an 18 foot bipedal bear mutant when a bullet fails?

If they know there are mutant monsters why don’t they have gun’s?

It is obvious the writers wrote themselves into many corners. Regardless it is still a good movie in a cheesy way. Still love it myself. All I know is Im never going camping without a shotgun or something.

I haven't seen the film but I did read David Seltzer's novelization of it, and I answer both of those questions, at least within the confines of the story as told in the book:

1. They kept the cubs for evidence of the mercury poisoning. Their reasoning seemed to be that mutated bears would provoke a much stronger reaction than mutated fish or frogs. (And, in that same vein, Rob keeps the one cub alive because he figures a living mutated bear cub is not something the lumber company can cover up, or, as he puts it, "just stick in a jar of formaldahyde and forget about." He also wanted to dissect the dead one.)

2. By the time they learn of the existence of the monster(s), they're already stranded due to the helicopter being unable to take off. All Rob wanted to do was investigate the site where the Nelson family got killed, after all. (Now that answers the question of why they lacked guns to begin with. I'm unsure about the film, but in the novel, they do gets guns eventually because Sheriff Pilgrim and some deputies show up at M'Rai's campsite just before "Katahdin" attacks; when they're killed, Rob and the others get their guns, but the guns wind up not being very useful.)

EDIT: I just noticed how old that post was....  :bluesad:

In any event, as long as we're talking about the novelization, I've noticed a lot of different reviews of the movie can't seem to make up their minds just how "Katahdin" is spelled. But considering the novelization was written by the same guy who wrote the script for the film, methinks that its spelling (Katahdin) should be considered the "official" one.

Welp, my copy of this on DVD finally came in the mail the day before yesterday and I got around to watching it. Talk about wasted potential! The movie starts out relatively strong but as soon as it gets to Rob's bulls**t explanation about how the human fetus goes through "different evolutionary stages" it all falls apart and just goes downhill from there. What p**sed me off the most was the ending, or should I say the non-ending. After all the character development and the buildup with Maggie's pregnancy, the movie just stops as soon as Rob kills the monster and they're flying home all hunky-dory. WTF?

The novelization at least had an epilogue wherein Victor Shusette (Rob's EPA friend from the beginning of the movie) comes and sees Rob and Maggie at the hospital in Portland and there's some more about whether or not Maggie's baby will be all right, and the revelation of there being another mutated bear is also handled better, too.

In fact, here's a list of all the differences in the novelization that I did for Wikipedia's entry for the film:

1. There is an epilogue, set during the winter, in which an ordinary bear is stalking a deer but is ultimately itself attacked and killed by the mutant one. The deer, injured by the regular bear, later reappears in the story too and is seen by Rob and Maggie.

2. The scene involving the three men out searching for the lumberjacks actually occurs as the third chapter after the prologue, rather than the opener. The party members also die differently than they do in the movie: rather than rappelling down to retrieve the fallen bloodhound, they are all yanked off the cliff at once by the unseen monster at the opposite end of the leash.

3. Instead of being introduced at the orchestra and discussing being pregnant with her friend, Maggie is introduced going to see gynocologist Peter Hamlisch, a character who does not appear in the film.

4. The tenament woman is very hostile towards Rob, rather than grateful, and instead of running into Victor Shusette outside the slum as in the movie, Rob rides with the sick infant to the hospital, where it ultimately succumbs to its fever and dies. Shusette then arrives and they have their conversation about Rob needing to find a new line of work there in the hospital hallway.

5. Shusette does not suggest Rob take Maggie with him to Maine. Rather, he and Maggie make this decision by themselves at their apartment prior to Rob leaving. Maggie comes because she hopes the calm country setting will make it easier for her to tell her husband about her pregnancy.

6. The Nelson family out camping also includes Jeannine Nelson, wife of Travis and mother of Paul and Kathleen, unlike in the film where it's only the father and two children. It is also revealed that Travis is employed as a history teacher.

7. Sheriff Pilgrim dies differently. Instead of surviving Katahdin's attack long enough to make it into the underground tunnels with the others, and perishing later, he is killed during the initial attack when Katahdin steps on his head. (Also, Rob and the others collect the guns of Pilgrim and his deputy after the attack, and use them against the monster later, to no effect.)

8. Katahdin's attack on the carrier vehicle is longer and more drawn out. She pursues the truck for some length before finally tipping it over. Hawks falls behind not because he tries to assist Huntoon, the pilot, but because he becomes trapped in the cab of the truck, but manages to get away while Huntoon is being killed. (This works better in my opinion, as I disliked the way Hawks just gives up trying to untie him and runs away leaving him to die.)

9. M'Rai dies differently, and his reason for remaining behind to confront Katahdin is actually given. He is crushed instead of picked up and thrown, and the reason he remains behind is because he believes he can reason with what he believes to be his people's protector.

10. The revelation of another monster bear is revealed through the eyes of an alcoholic forest ranger, suffering the effects of mercury poisoning just as M'Rai had been (this character was introduced earlier in the novel shortly after the incident with the raccoon). The second bear is also described as having more cubs.

We also learn a lot more about the various main characters, especially John Hawks, who is half-white, and lived as a white man for several years, in fact, after the Pitneys (the founders of the lumber company) paid for him to have an education. He returned to assist his people in their struggle against the lumber company after several years abroad. Also Ramona ("Romona" in the book) is given the last name of Peters and is an old girlfriend of John Hawks', rather than his wife or even his sister (as some reviews for the film have suggested).

Now, as I mentioned in my previous post, the novelization was done by David Seltzer who also wrote the script for the film, so a few of the problems (like Rob's idiotic explanation for the Katahdin thing) remain, but a lot of the other problems in the movie are fixed. It's also worth noting that despite being a novelization written after the release of the film, the actual movie is not mentioned anywhere in the book or on it. So I have this amusing theory that Seltzer disliked what Frankenheimer did with his script and so stuck it to him by turning the script into a book (which reads like an actual original novel as opposed to just a film novelization, btw) and avoid mentioning the movie anywhere.

I'm not saying the novel is perfect. Practically every white character in the story except for Rob and Maggie is depicted as being horrifically racist, including ones who did not come across as racists in the movie (namely Sheriff Pilgrim and Huntoon the pilot). Talk about stacking the deck against the Establishment! Also, although the novel's ending is better than the movie because of the added epilogue in which we catch up with Rob and Maggie and see how they're doing after the incident, it still suffers from some pacing problems. It get the distinct feeling that Seltzer wanted to end the book as quickly as possible, so the last couple of chapters do actually read like they were copied from a screenplay, especially the attack on M'Rai's camp, with its broad and vague descriptions of carnage like "body parts flying everywhere." This last half of the book immediately prior to the epilogue in Portland really does reek of sensational Hollywood screenwriting.

Probibly one of the most rediclous looking monsters ever i mean if it ever saw its face ina mirror it would lught itself to death :bouncegiggle:

To address the "evolution" issue... I actually studied this in high school.

When an fetus develops, at different stages of development it actually resembles the fetuses of different animals.  I don't remember the exact order, but I know fish and bird are both in there, as well as a couple others.  This was believed to be evidence for evolution, that all animals evolved from fish and thus would look like fish in early stages of development.   

"To address the "evolution" issue... I actually studied this in high school.

When an fetus develops, at different stages of development it actually resembles the fetuses of different animals.  I don't remember the exact order, but I know fish and bird are both in there, as well as a couple others.  This was believed to be evidence for evolution, that all animals evolved from fish and thus would look like fish in early stages of development. "

The sketch used in nearly all high school and college textbooks to back this claim is derived from the works of a late 19th century evolutionist named Haeckel (sp?).  However, his claims of a fetus going through all the "evolutionary stages" in utero are grossly exaggerated.  The famous "gill slits" on the side of the neck of a mammalian fetus are, in fact, simply wrinkles in the skin caused by the downward tilt of the head in a fetal position - decades of autopsies performed on fetuses in different stages of development have yet to show actual openings in the skin of the neck, or any link to the respiratory system from these "gills" - one case where an early, convincing fraud has been allowed to persist!
 
 
 

My friends and I saw The Prophecy in a theatre when it was first released.

When the infamous "sleeping bag scene" came on, it left the entire audience in stitches. The theatre was filled with laughter for a good two or three minutes afterwards.

Since "slapstick comedy" was obviously not the directors' intention, you have to wonder if they ever screened it for any test audience...

We called the monster "Meat Bear" and that became the nickname/insult of choice in my circle of friends for months.

You see this movie and you wonder WHAT WERE THEY TAKING WHEN THEY MADE  IT I mean its got to be one of the worse of those eco-wack movies even as bad as FROGS

Someone probably already mentioned this, but the saying for that evolutionary/embryology thing is "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny". That's pretty fun to say.

To bring up an earlier post, Dr Robert Verne was played by Robert Foxworth, while Robert Reed played the kindly, likewise frazzie-headed Mike Brady in The Brady Bunch--it was the decade of bad dad hair, I guess.
Anyway, this is one of my favorite guilty pleasures--certainly not one of Armand Assante's shining moments as John Hawk, and Talia Shire is pathetic.  Richard Dysart has the most fun with the script, it seems--I love his death sequence, trapped beneath the fencing and wailing as the mutant bear decends.  The whole of it is served up as seriously as a heart attack, which makes it all the more enjoyable.  This is one of the best of the worst of the best, iffyaknowwhaddahmean.

Isley's death scene is one of the funniest things in bad movie history, for two reasons:

1. When he's shrieking you can see all of Richard Dysart's silver fillings.

2. It's quite obvious where the bear bites 'im.

This is movie is quite perplexing yet funny, in that it makes no sense at all. The simple fact that a medical doctor, whos goal is saving the starving people in the poor quarters, gets dragged away from his noble cause to investigate a case about pollution in a forest beset by seemingly drunk indians sounds like a plot for a movie shown only after midnight on "The B-Movie Channel". Yet I've grown to like this film to some extent based on that fact that for all the weirdness and randomness thrown in, it IS funny. I literally laughed for most of the time when watching this s**tacular piece of cinematogrophy because of the stupid things it throws at the viewer with a perfectly serious manner.

Definetely worth a watch if you are bored and want a good laugh; but only if don't have anything better to do. Like brushing your teeth or something.

I'm proud to have been scared s**tless by this movie.  I was 9 years old when I saw it and like the first post, I too lay frozen, sweaty and terrified in my bed for hours later that night.  In fact, I refused to be alone in a room for close to 2 years afterward.  As for camping?  Forget it about it!  True, as an adult, the movie is easy to mock - the finale strains credulity and some of the technical aspects are dated.  Setting that aside, it's undeniably entertaining and does have its moments  - the premise is fantastic and the opening death scene/montage, juxtaposed by Brahm's 4th symphony, is eerie and skillfully conceived.

Even though it traumatized my youth, I wouldn't change a thing for it sparked my imagination.  I've since gotten into creature design for film and PROPHECY is one of the reasons why.  Bless fx guys Tom and Ellis Burman, the late Stan Winston and sculptor James Kagel for creating a truly memorable, albeit flawed (At least it's not CG), movie monster!

Filmakers take note:  The book is great!  For those unsatisfied by this cinematic adaptation, there is still one helluva a monster movie that has yet to be made from the source material.

What source material? Seltzer's book is a novelization of the movie.  :twirl:

This has got to be one of the most stupid movie ever made and one of the most rediculous loking monsters ever made have you seen KILLER GRIZZLY? where CHRISTOPHER GEORGE blows a bear to smitherinies with a motar

I saw this in the theater in Junior high. I loved it then and I love it now.

Kooshmeister,

You're right.  There IS a novelization, but it differs greatly from the movie... so much so, I'm baffled as to why they settled for what they did.  Example:  In the book, the murder of the camping family is totally different, and more effective, requiring equal to less special effects than what ended up on screen, which seemed lazy in comparison.  John Frankenheimer admits to not being 100% (due to his alcoholism) during the making of the film.

The book is a fun read.  Check it out.

To Kooshmeister,

Going over some of the past posts, I see you DID read the book.  Good for you.  My point is:  What made it to the screen suffers in comparison to what is available in print and is worthy of a remake.  Since David Seltzer wrote both the screenplay and the novelization, he is "the source" of the idea, which only degraded in the collaborative hands of other party members - Frankenheimer, Paramount, etc.  Hell, Seltzer himself could direct the remake and retain what was lost.  He's directed his stuff before and could do it again (assuming he's still with us).

In addition, John Frankenheimer, the director, is qoted as saying after the fact, "It looked good on page."  He's admitting it was a lost translation.  So, let it be re-translated.  That way, in the future, we are given a viewers choice between a potentially good horror movie and another "SAW" sequel.

 

Wow, what a great movie for it's day. This movie was filmed mainly in my home town of Squamish, BC, Canada on the west coast ( not even close to Maine ) when I was a little kid. My neighbor was a mechanic and had that great old truck ( that rolled with the guy strapped on top ) in his driveway for about three weeks. We played in it and thought it was cool. Later I saw the movie and was done for. I was so freaked out at the thought of this thing being local and waiting in the bushes for me, I didn't sleep right for days. Damn funny looking back but not so funny at the time. I was traumatized for years because of this movie. I bug my kids about it now because their school gym was used to film some of the scenes in and they think that's funny. A horror movie filmed in their gym. They'll soon see this movie and that funny will turn to fear....ha ha haaa

 This was the first horror movie I ever saw... My parents were really strict about what sorts of things we could watch but it came on HBO one summer afternoon.. Loved it, those mutated baby bears freaked me out for weeks.. Though it's lost much of it's punch (and the eco-righteousness is just laughable now) I still dig this movie from my youth..

 *begins searching netflix*

How on earth did I miss these?  :bouncegiggle: :bouncegiggle: :bouncegiggle: