Dimension
Home Video | Review by Dan Taylor
I didn't figure the original
PROPHECY was enough of a hit to require
a video sequel, but who knows these days.
If TCM: THE NEXT GENERATION can get released,
anything's possible.
For those that don't recall
it, the first flick was an average outing
that featured Christopher Walken, Eric Stoltz,
Elias Kotias and Viggo Mortensen in a story
of angels warring on Earth. Eh.
P2's got all the pieces in
place, right from the typically creepy voiceover
(complete with lines like "Heaven's
war has come to Earth"), chanting monks
and shots of that crinkly parchment paper.
From there it's all sorta downhill as Jennifer
Beals runs her car into Russell Wong (from
tv's VANISHING SON movies) and they end
up doing the funky monkey after he asks
her, "Do you accept me?" Wow,
I gotta try that line some time...it seems
to really make Beals' fur fly. And with
Wong on board I set my sights on some kung-fu
angels!
Walken shows up again, sporting
the same dye job and black trenchcoat from
the first flick, so it's a good thing the
wardrobe lady held on to them! He visits
Bruce Abbott in a monastery only to get
him out of this lousy movie by torching
the joint. Which led to the question...wow,
what happened to Bruce Abbott's career?
You end up playing the Elias Kotias role
in a straight-to-video flick and
they kill you off in the first 20 minutes?
Somebody needs to change agencies!
The rest of the flick is the
old "good angel vs. bad angel in a
tug-of-war," but with all those trenchcoats
and bad wigs flying around it's hard to
tell who's good, who's bad and whether or
not I've accidentally stumbled onto a WWF
telecast! And I was even trying to pay attention,
'cause Glenn Danzig — that tiny little
teapot of a metal singer — gets credited
as one of the angels. I'll give somebody
$5 if they can tell me which one.
The big climax — after
much wacky comic relief centered around
Walken's inability to work a computer —
comes when Walken goes after Beals in an
industrial complex where Eric Roberts (another
angel) is hanging out. Oh yeah, and look
for Tom Towles (HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL
KILLER, PIT & THE PENDULUM) in a ponderously
generic cop role.
Thoroughly unmemorable, you
can file PROPHECY 2 under "For Walken
completists only." Then again, that's
exactly how they got me to rent it, so...
