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

“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

Oh Gabriel, come blow your horn!… uh, then again…

Turning Cities to Salt, and Movies to Shit.

Christopher Walken, former angel of death, returns in THE PROPHECY 3: THE ASCENT and does nothing, except walk around with a spectacular mullet, wearing his pants a little too high. Oh, and he’s the Angel Gabriel, mystically powerful villain of two previous films. He’s the guy who could “turn cities to salt” but could never quite work out how to kill a little girl (THE PROPHECY, 1995) and a fetus (THE PROPHECY II, 1998); now demoted to a bum, cursed to walk the Earth and learn how to drive.

Another angel of death, Zophael (Vincent Spano), has descended to Earth to kill the child that Gabriel couldn’t, because there’s a war in heaven and whatever-not-listening– The child is now a teen named Danyael (Dave Buzzotta), spawn of an angel pimpmaster and a human flashdancer, with the immortal powers of an angel and the generic talent of a TV actor.

But Billy Bibbit shoots Danyael first! Yes, Brad Dourif plays a blind zealot who hears voices and burns down Danyael in the first scene. But it doesn’t matter, firstly because Dourif unfortunately disappears completely from the film, having served his plot point; secondly because Danyael – like all angels – can’t be killed unless his heart is torn out. Kinda like THE HIGHLANDER rule that sez they can’t die unless beheaded. (Except in the first PROPHECY, Walken got his heart torn out by Viggo Mortensen (as Viggo does to oh so many women), yet was walking around boasting about cities-to-salt in the second film, so… who cares, right?)

Danyael’s girlfriend is Magdelena “Maggie” (Kayren Butler, hot enough to give a pass on her atrocious overacting). Moriah Shining Dove Snyder cameos as Mary (from the first film) – and boy! She’s gone from a frumpy little girl to a hot tamale.

Then there’s the doctor (Steve Hytner), who has appeared in all three PROPHECY films, his smugness growing to Tom Cruise levels and his sex appeal going in exactly the opposite direction. The most beige of any character actor ever to appear onscreen, he squeezes as much personality into his ten-minute cameo as smugly possible and still achieves a boredom quotient of drying paint. If there is a graph for compelling performances, this guy registers at just below zero. You’re looking at the only actor in the world who has probably never been laid…

Like TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY, the filmmakers have re-jiggered Gabriel’s character to be a “good guy,” protecting Danyael on his quest to blah-blah, with newly-arrived longcoat Zophael the bad guy. There’s a burned woman pretending to be Jennifer Beals, and her son Danyael fulfills the role of Edward Furlong, in that you want to bitchslap him as soon as he starts talking.

Why is Gabriel even here, except to pick up a paycheck for marquee strength? For a direct-to-video release, we wonder how small that paycheck was; was it even worth wearing that mullet wig – or was that really his hair by then because he couldn’t afford to style it? (Interesting that Gabriel tunes his car radio to the song Telstar, a tune that almost mimics the CHARIOTS OF THE GODS melody.)

So: two actors whom we care nothing for, chasing each other toward a destiny we care even less about. Danyael runs to some desert to kill Pyriel (Scott Cleverdon, who plays this prideful angel like an effeminate metal singer from the 80s), who wants to destroy mankind and become “the next god.” And Zophael is pursuing Danyael to – stop him? Help him? Wash his car? You lost me again at the corner of lackluster direction and 80’s hair band.

By the way, Zophael is being driven by Maggie because – like Gabriel before him – he “can’t drive.” What is it with these angels and driving? Why not FLY, nitwits?

Movie keeps recalling the best image from the series – the angel skeleton fused with the stony ground from the first film’s opening scene. It doesn’t help.

Why do these celestial beings bother stabbing each other when they cannot die that way? They shoot, stab, punch, throw, threaten hollowly, yet never directly go for the heart-pull until the producers run out of filmstock. And why is Danyael considered the only being that can stop Pyriel? He doesn’t invoke any sacred texts or utilize any angelic knowledge; from the looks of it, anyone with the skills of Jackie Chan to fat Steven Seagal could wipe the floor with this Next God, if that’s any indication of his krav maga skills.

When Pyriel dies, he is accosted by what looks like a truckload of naked women– hang on! The 72 Virgins?! Oh, so this is the muslim religion!

Gabriel then ascends into heaven to comply with this movie’s title and to show off his nice pair of leather pants.

END

Bloody Hell!

There is one very provocative idea in DRACULA 2000 – all the rest is crap. The crap goes like this: In 2000, Dracula comes to New Orleans seeking the daughter of Van Helsing. Bland action movie ensues. Only redeeming factor is that every chick is groin-achingly hot.

The provocative idea is that Dracula is not a warrior impaler or a Count from Transylvania – he is the Apostle Judas Iscariot! More on this awesome audacity in a minute…

Gerard Butler is Dracula, Christopher Plummer is Van Helsing and Jonny Lee Miller is Van Helsing’s assistant, young action hero Simon.

Watching this movie in 2011 is confusing because we find ourselves rooting for the wrong stars, whose fortunes have seesawed since its release in 2000. Back then, Jonny Lee Miller was the hotboy, coming off the mind-scarring TRAINSPOTTING (1996) and the Victorian impertinence of PLUNKETT & MACLEANE (1999); while Gerard Butler was a handsome nobody with chiseled abs. Now Butler is the battle-worn Spartan, the Romantic Lead, the Man’s Man; while Miller has virtually abandoned the movie scene, slowly receding into TV wasteland, along with his hairline.

So when Miller pulls the action hero stunts here, snidely quips and turns up just in time to save damsels, we imagine Butler’s Dracula is going to make quick mincemeat of him and get down to the business of making women swoon with his Scottish brogue and chiseled abs. But Jonny gets the girl!

Van Helsing (Plummer) explains how he has tried for 100 years to kill “he who cannot be killed,” keeping himself alive by injecting himself with small doses of Dracula’s immortal blood. That’s why Dracula wants Van Helsing’s daughter, Mary (Justine Waddell) – she has vestiges of his blood in her. (Which makes us wonder, Why then, doesn’t he also want Van Helsing as another Teen Member of his Scooby Wagon? Sure, he wants to court Mary like a sensual lover, but both Mary and Van Helsing are equally repulsed by Dracula – why concentrate on bringing just the girl around? It’s probably easier to convince the old man to become a vampire, with promises of lustful tribades at his feet.)

To escape traps, Dracula can turn into a wolf, a bunch of tiny bats, or even liquid nitrogen fog. We are told how he detests all things Christian, like holy water, the crucifix and the Bible (Hey! *I* detest all things Christian too! Does that make me a vampire? How cool!), yet Simon cannot figure how silver – which kills vampires – figures into the equation.

Simon meets and vows to protect the perfect-featured Mary, who asks him, “Why are you doing this?” Oh, I dunno – maybe cos you’re hotter than a docker’s armpit! (Like any action hero, I sorely doubt he would be as protective of a 350-lb moose-face.)

When they confront him, Dracula fills in the Apostle backstory – and it’s the only interesting, original moment in the movie, as we see a flashback of Dracula as Judas at the Last Supper, then hanging himself, his 30 pieces of silver falling from his purse (SILVER!). As his body hangs in the noose – his eyes snap open.

Any Dracula aficionado will recognize familiar names and events at every turn, slightly tweaked to fit this bland reimagining; in lieu of storytelling, co-writers Joel Soisson and Patrick Lussier (also director) try to distract us with hotties at regular intervals, baring their fangs and promising to suck us dry – Jennifer Esposito‘s tousle of ass-length curls, Jeri Ryan‘s tight, voluptuous curves, Colleen Fitzpatrick‘s blond abandon, not to mention Justine Waddell’s innocent spinner schoolgirl smoothness. Does it work? What was the question again?

For someone who can’t be killed, Dracula is killed pretty easily, as he hangs by a cord from an arthouse crucifix, not dying, but not doing anything to escape either. Hey buddy, how about turning into those little bats or something? Nope – he just hangs there watching the sun rise, and dies flaming on like the Human Torch under its rays. It’s a long road to Sparta.

END