Angels and Demons | Poffy's Movie Mania

THE PROPHECY: FORSAKEN

Poffy The Cucumber — Sun, 11 Oct 2015 04:52:26 +0000

Hells to the No.

Again with the boasting: “I could whisper a suggestion and have you step in front of a subway train, I could force a neighbor to hurl you down a flight of stairs. I can put a baby in your belly that would rip its way out of your womb in three days–” Okay, I wanna see that last one. An angel boasts vacuously to the woman he is hunting… then walks away like a big-mouth douchebag without doing ANY of it…

The PROPHECY series once again falls to Earth like Satan banished from heaven. The previous entry, UPRISING, was quite intriguing and well-made (for a PROPHECY movie), but now all the insensate problems that made the first three films such dungheaps are again brought to the fore in this fifth entry, THE PROPHECY: FORSAKEN.

Allison (Kari Wuhrer) returns, holding tight the Anti-Bible (which is really just the Bible with addenda), not letting it fall into the wrong hands. Those wrong hands belong to Angel Stark (Tony Todd, CANDYMAN). He’s the one with the big mouth and nothing to back it up except his love of Christ. He wants to know what God has dictated just on the very last page of Revelations – the name of the anti-christ, who will bring about Armageddon. He’s worried that all the humans who survive Armageddon will become the favorites of God, instead of the angels. Satan wants Armageddon to happen – to fill up his dance card, so helps Allison protect the Book. Meaning Allison is working with Satan to allow the anti-christ to live, so that Armageddon will happen and Bruce Willis will sacrifice himself for all our sins. So Stark wants to kill the anti-christ as a child, so that Armageddon won’t happen and the angels can remain the beloved of God…

This is the plot of PROPHECY: FORSAKEN. And we wonder why the bible makes utterly no sense.

Jason Scott Lee (SOLDIER) is wasted here as zealot Dylan, killed and brought back to life to serve Stark, but helps Allison escape Stark instead. He convinces curvy wet dream Wuhrer to get naked and change her clothes in an alley, to make her look like a hooker, because – he tells her – the angels hunting her won’t recognize her that way. Oh sure: we’ve ALL used that excuse to get a girl naked in an alley, right fellas?

John Light returns as Satan The Runway Model. (Is this not how they say the devil will come at you? Not as a monster, but as a dreamster. After numerous TV and video features, Light just doesn’t seem to have the agency clout to have landed the breaks that a guy with his stunning looks usually gets).

Stark acts like he’s sniffing out The Book, stashed within the wall; his eyes light up – he’s definitely smelled it! Punches a hole in the wall, drags out – a fake Book decoy! We ask ourselves: What the hell was he sniffing then? If he has the power to sniff out The Book, then that power should be telling him The Book is nowhere in this house! Joel Soisson is the numbnuts responsible for this debacle. (Producer on all three original PROPHECY films, and also writer of DRACULA 2000 and its sequels; strangely enough, Soisson also wrote and directed the previous PROPHECY: UPRISING, which was surprisingly good. Now even more of a surprise after noting his track record!

A homeless guy stabs Allison. She’s suddenly Black Widow and kicks his ass. Then she has to Act Her Stab Wound every so often and wince, so we don’t mistake the red dye on her sweater for red dye. When she shouts at Dylan, “All we have to do is believe!” I kicked over the TV and cancelled my Netflix account. You just DON’T say that line in a movie and expect to be taken seriously anymore.

And look – here’s the name of the anti-christ. Spoiler Alert: It’s the nicest member of Monty Python. See how the devil comes at us? As MICHAEL PALIN!

The last page of the Book Of Revelation: The Life Of Brian.

END

THE PROPHECY: FORSAKEN (Sep 2005) | R
aka: THE PROPHECY 5.
Director: Joel Soisson.
Writers: Gregory Widen, John Sullivan, Joel Soisson.
Starring: Kari Wuhrer, Jason Scott Lee, John Light, Jason London, Tony Todd, Boris Petroff, Daria Ciobanu.

imdb
Word Count: 750 No. 1,156

Unhallowed be thy name.

ANGEL STARK: Yes, the blessed Angel Stark, from Holy Scripture, who appeared to the virgin Robert Downey Jr., and bad him build a suit of titanium-alloy armor 240 cubits wide and 600 cubits long. This Downey did, and the Lord looketh upon Downey’s work and behold, it was good, and lo, it doth maketh 650 million domestic box office.

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THE PROPHECY: UPRISING

Poffy The Cucumber — Sat, 10 Oct 2015 17:47:18 +0000

“Oh, Angel Special Effect, I’m too cute to have to read a BOOK!”

My gorge is up rising.

There’s this “anti-bible,” see? And the Big Man Himself is narrating it even at this moment, burning the ancient Aramaic into the pages. He’s putting the finishing touches on The Book of Revelations because it went to the printer too early the first time, apparently. And – like all three previous PROPHECY movies – it’s going to start another war in heaven. (Heaven’s getting to be the Middle East of Space…)

THE PROPHECY: UPRISING is a surprising revelation [oh, somebody slap me!], as it reboots the PROPHECY legacy with better ideas, better actors, better production values and better not let Jesus know.

Joel Soisson (producer on PROPHECY 3) screenplays and directs this straight-to-video release, which retains a gritty realism, even though it’s ultimately just a silly movie about angel wars that can’t possibly make sense, but Soisson keeps a lot of the contradictions and stupidities out of the dialogue, so that the story can make nominal sense. In the previous three movies, Christopher Walken as evil Angel Gabriel would spout inane jibber-jabber about having powers to turn kings into cripples and rivers into blood and then a girl would push him and he’d fall over. Here, the angels and devils play everything closer to the vest.

Sean Pertwee (Alfred on GOTHAM) is detective Dani Simionescu, investigating bizarre murders where people are getting their hearts ripped out through their ribcage. He is joined by mysterious Interpol agent Riegert (John Light, with a three-day growth to die for) who never makes the mistake of revealing too much too soon. He appears here, then there, with no explanation and with an agenda that is revealed piecemeal. Is he an angel? Or something else?

Prophecy: the new fragrance by Bijan.
Smell like an Angel!

Set in an Eastern European country that is even grimier and danker than London [I kid the British, of course – there’s no place grimier and danker than London], angel forces are after the anti-bible, led by Belial, who is a serial possessor, meaning he inhabits people as required, then discards them by killing them with the next person he inhabits.

And Kari Wuhrer (the spectacular gypsy hottie in THINNER) is Allison, entrusted with The Unholy Book, to… uh, deliver it to God? return it to the library? keep it safe in her panty drawer? I’m not quite sure. Anyway, dark forces from heaven and hell are pursuing the Book for very surprising reasons, that make no sense. Because they’re angels, see?

Pertwee is especially commendable, in a role that I’m sure is hard to retain a straight face in, yet he is very believable as the damaged detective.

Movie actually swerves to moral ambiguity as the Prince of Perdition makes himself known to Pertwee’s detective and correctly assesses, “Right now, I am the lesser of two evils.”

UPRISING puts an interesting twist on angels and devils, with some resourceful moviemaking and solid characters to prop it up, although, as usual, if we probe too deeply into the motivations of the two classes of heavenly beings, there’s no reason for them to potter around Earthly climes at all. Is heaven that boring? No wonder they keep starting wars…

END

THE PROPHECY: UPRISING (Jun 2005) | R
aka: THE PROPHECY 4.
Director: Joel Soisson.
Writers: Gregory Widen, John Sullivan, Joel Soisson.
Starring: John Light, Sean Pertwee, Kari Wuhrer, Jason London, Doug Bradley, Georgina Rylance, Stephen Billington, Dan Chiriac, Boris Petroff.

imdb
Word Count: 600 No. 1,155

Unhallowed be thy names…

BELIAL is an angel appearing in many arcane texts, from the New Testament to the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls. So I know him well as a “real” evil angel (the name translates generally to “worthless”), rather than a figment of some Hollywood writer’s imagination (all of whose names translate to “worthless”). But I always thought his name was pronounced “Beh-LIE-el” (and it sounds stronger that way), rather than the way they pronounce it in the movie, “BEE-lee-el.”

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