Although billed as a ‘creature feature’, Prophecy is really the story of two mothers. One is the character played by Talia Shire who, we find out at the start of the film, is pregnant. The other is nature.

A dispute about land between Native Americans and a logging company (sacred to some, profitable to others) see’s environmentalist Rob (Robert Foxworth) and his musician wife Maggie (Shire) head to the forests of Maine to provide a report on the area’s ecology. There, he discovers that chemicals used by the logging company’s paper mill have been mutating the river’s fish. But the fish have been eaten by all manner of creatures, and they’ve mutated too…

Prophecy was released at the very end of the 1970s, a decade in which the horror genre had become somewhat more respected, and profitable than it had previously been. There’d been The Exorcist, Dawn of the Dead, and The Omen, written by this film’s author, David Seltzer. As both a horror film and a commercial product, Prophecy was an undoubted failure, its fate sealed by the opening of Alien just before the film’s release. Contemporary reviews often made unflattering comparisons. Even this film’s poster tried to emulate that of the Ridley Scott masterpiece.

And yet, with the benefit of distance, it’s easy to see how underrated Prophecy is.

Sure, it’s not a great horror film and the monster is pretty hokey. But as a well-acted eco-thriller, Prophecy is very good indeed. It gracefully weaves the corruption of big business and its impact on indigenous people and the environment into a compelling narrative that sometimes feels very modern (you forget that the word ‘biodegradable’ isn’t new).

Director John Frankenheimer was an unusual choice but generally handles the material with respect, his interest in creating suspense over horror evident throughout (the great scene in the underground tunnel with no dialogue and shots of the character’s terrified eyes is a case in point).

And the film’s message remains hugely pertinent. As mentioned at the start of this review, the film is about two mothers. Shire (often referred to as ‘the wife’ but the fantastic Oscar-nominated actor is actually the film’s star and gets top billing over Foxworth), knows she’s pregnant but hasn’t told her idealistic husband who doesn’t want children, only revealing the truth once she realises that she may be carrying a monster thanks to the polluted fish she’s been eating. Nature, bountiful and generous as described by the native community, is a mother who should not be messed with, as her mangled and vengeful offspring shows.

That we mess with Mother Nature at our peril and it’s our own children who will pay the price seems more relevant now than ever.

This crisp Blu-ray edition features two wonderful commentaries, unusually not from the filmmakers but from essayists who talk fascinatingly about cinema in general and the film’s context. There are a couple of interviews and the usual stills and trailers, making Prophecy a disc worth a look.

Prophecy is released on Blu-ray on August 16th.