"The Mothman Prophesies"

[Brown]

I just saw "The Mothman Prophesies" on HBO. What a load! It had a few good moments, but the premise of the movie made no sense to me at all. At one point, the movie even apologized for the lack of rationality of the story (from imdb.com):John Klein: I think we can assume that these entities are more advanced than us. Why don't they just come right out and tell us what's on their minds?
Alexander Leek: You're more advanced than a cockroach, have you ever tried explaining yourself to one of them? Oh, come on! "Mothman" Indrid Cold seemed to have no trouble communicating with Richard Gere's character, and even spoke his language. And yet, all this weird stuff happened with no apparent point to it.

The opening of the movie sugested that the story was true, but the credits said that the story was fictional. It certainly looked like fiction to me, and badly written fiction at that.

[tamiO]

Originally posted by Brown
The opening of the movie sugested that the story was true, but the credits said that the story was fictional. It certainly looked like fiction to me, and badly written fiction at that.

Hi Brown,

I was a bit disappointed in the movie, it was okay. Maybe Richard Gere starring in it didn't help. The movie was based on a real "event"...

For a thirteen month period from November 1966 until December 1967, the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, USA was seemingly tipped into a state of chaos (or, if you like, a 'state o' chassis!'[1]), overrun by UFOs, poltergeists, Men in Black in beyond-fashion-clothing driving impeccable old cars and fake service workers -- both groups had dark, sharp features, and wearing thick soled rubber shoes. If that wasn't bad enough, a surrealist abbatoirist left cattle cadavers strewn about the fields of Point Pleasant.

The appearance of all these phenomena appeared to revolve around regular sightings of the more fearsome visitor of all - a winged humanoid that quickly became known as the 'Mothman'.

http://www.blather.net/archives2/issue2no5.html

[arcticpenguin]

Originally posted by Brown

The opening of the movie sugested that the story was true, but the credits said that the story was fictional. It certainly looked like fiction to me, and badly written fiction at that.
Do you recall the specific wording? They probably said it was "based on" true events.

[tim]

Out of ten? -7.

[tygirwulf]

But the bridge collapsing at the end, that really happened, didn't it? I remember looking it up after I saw the movie. About the only thing in the movie that was real.

[arcticpenguin]

Originally posted by tygirwulf
But the bridge collapsing at the end, that really happened, didn't it? I remember looking it up after I saw the movie. About the only thing in the movie that was real.
Yes, a bridge actually collapsed. Here's a complete listing of evidence linking the bridge collapse to the nighttime sightings of an unknown critter:

Originally posted by tygirwulf
But the bridge collapsing at the end, that really happened, didn't it? I remember looking it up after I saw the movie. About the only thing in the movie that was real.

The earthquake in Ecuador was real too.

Thanks,
S&S

P.S.

Ciudad blanca?

[RonSceptic]

Sorry to come late to the party, but I saw the movie for the first (and last) time last night. Complete pants. As fiction it stank IMHO. But the crap at the beginning about 'real events' is about the least plausible thing seen on a movie screen since Criswell's intro to Plan 9 from Outer Space.

I see that the author of The Mothman Prophesies, John Keel, also penned those magnificent factual works 'The Complete Guide to Mystical Beings' and 'Our Haunted Planet'. All true obviously.:rolleyes:

[Yahweh]

Wow, my taste in movies must be terrible...

I dont really care about the historical accuracy of the movie, but it was an interesting psychological "thriller" (not really a thriller, the movie was pretty slowpaced). The movie scared the hellouttame (I have some kind of irrational fear of... I dont need to explain myself), I didnt sleep for days (if you know me in person, you are probably thinking to yourself "so what, you dont ever sleep"...). On a scale of 1 to 10, I give the movie a rating of "good".

I suppose yall are going to go ahead and tell me "The Ring" was a crappy movie also.

[UnrepentantSinner]

Good timing on the bump. I think it's getting close to time for the 2nd annual Mothman Festival.
http://sundaygazettemail.com/news/Valley+&+State/2002111622/

[RonSceptic]

Originally posted by UnrepentantSinner
Good timing on the bump. I think it's getting close to time for the 2nd annual Mothman Festival.
http://sundaygazettemail.com/news/Valley+&+State/2002111622/

I sense another 'Roswell' here. No doubt there will be a Mothman museum soon. Do they have the Mothman cafe or the Mothman burger bar yet?:rolleyes:

[tim]

Mothburgertm, fries and a diet coke, please! :roll:

[RonSceptic]

Originally posted by tim
Mothburgertm, fries and a diet coke, please! :roll:

You want to go large? Try our Butterfly Burger.;)

[Brown]

How long before we hear about Mothman fighting crime, with his dynamic sidekick, Gnat? SWAT! SLAP! SQUISH! Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, MOTHMAN!

[fhios]

Originally posted by Brown
The opening of the movie sugested that the story was true, but the credits said that the story was fictional. It certainly looked like fiction to me, and badly written fiction at that.

I just want to point out that, according to The Fortean Times, John Keel, the suppossed contactee of Indrid Cold, was an alchoholic, and said that the people of Cold's planet, that being Venus, did not face a boiling, high-pressure atmosphere of corrosives, but instead lived in the nude, playing a game much like baseball and drinking decaffeinated coffee. All of these things ignored even the scientific data of Keel's own time, and now they're just laughable.

By the way, I really thought the flick was very well-written, if nothing else. The scene where Indrid Cold kept calling and calling; in a cheapie flick, people would've assumed it was genius.

[JamesM]

Originally posted by fhios

I just want to point out that, according to The Fortean Times, John Keel, the suppossed contactee of Indrid Cold, was an alchoholic, and said that the people of Cold's planet, that being Venus, did not face a boiling, high-pressure atmosphere of corrosives, but instead lived in the nude, playing a game much like baseball and drinking decaffeinated coffee. All of these things ignored even the scientific data of Keel's own time, and now they're just laughable.
Keel himself recognised the absurdities and lies that both he and others caught up in the madness of Mothman were being fed. He did not believe himself that Cold came from Venus. He came to believe that someone or something was messing around with him, hence his conception of 'ultraterrestrials'. I wouldn't say this is necessarily a more useful or probable explanation, but it is a lot more interesting.

That's the pleasure of 'The Mothman Prophecies', it's one big cavalcade of bad craziness. It can't be pigeonholed into the usual categories of the supernatural (apart from that of BS, but that misses the fun) - it's the quintessential 'high strangeness' case. You leave your skepticism at the door and just soak it up. Great stuff.

[RonSceptic]

Originally posted by JamesM
You leave your skepticism at the door and just soak it up. Great stuff.

The trouble is that presenting a movie as 'based on true events' just adds to the perception of the general public that there really is something to the paranormal, when reality tells us otherwise.

[UnrepentantSinner]

Originally posted by Brown
How long before we hear about Mothman fighting crime, with his dynamic sidekick, Gnat? SWAT! SLAP! SQUISH! Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, MOTHMAN!

Actually, this idea has already been done.
http://www.cs.rose-hulman.edu/~stinerkt/tickdocs/sharth.html

[Bluegill]

I finally was this on cable a few weeks ago. I was hoping for a good creepy movie, but I ended up getting a bit bored and frustrated with it, and never finished watching it.

One thing I didn't like was the quick-flashing scenes where people catch site of the Mothman, then solemnly told about their experiences later. It just didn't work for me. It had too much of an engineered quality, like it was some Hollywood person's idea of how to convey the idea of "scariness" without actually scaring the audience.

By the way, Yahweh, I thought "The Ring" was miles better.

[Checkmite]

The "true" event Prophecies was based on was the collapse of the Silver Bridge in the Ohio River at Point Pleasant in 1967. A number of people were killed. The Bride collapse had been preceeded by alleged sightings of the "Mothman", which (judging by peoples' descriptions) should've been more aptly called "Rugman". Imagine a guy walking around with a carpet draped over himself - that's what he supposedly looked like. He showed up in peoples' driveways just as they pulled in at night, scaring them off, or flew out of the sky at people as they were driving along in the dark. There were reports of bizarre phone malfunctions and harassing calls which consisted of gibberish, or a string of words that didn't fit together. This went on for about 8 months - the sightings, that is - and culminated in the bridge collapse, after which the Mothman was never seen again in Point Pleasant or anywhere else. Insert post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy here and it becomes "obvious" that the Mothman was either responsible for or trying to warn people about the bridge collapse. That's the totality of the legend.

All Keel's additions about "men in black", UFOs, poltergeists, "contactees", coherent messages from the Mothman, the movie's end card speaking of Mothman "continuing to be sighted around the world", and other such drivel are all fictional (I use the word "fictional" relatively - they weren't part of the original legend).

As for the movie, I was rather disappointed in it as well. It did have its interesting parts, of course; my favorite is when Richard Gere's character is in the hospital collecting his wife's things after her death. An orderly appears and tells him "She knew (she was going to die), she was drawing angels." Richard Gere looks through his wife's notebook and finds sketches of the Mothman...simple at first, but then becoming more detailed and disturbing with each turn of the page. That's atmospheric horror, and it is absolute gold. Some of the witness descriptions are creepy as well - but the movie doesn't have enough of anything between the creepy parts to make it worthwhile. I wouldn't recommend it to anybody.

I have my problems with The Ring, but they're off topic here so I won't spend any time on that movie.