The Prey

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source: The Prey

Last night, I was going to take a pill to get to sleep, but it turns out that The Prey works a thousand times better than any Advil PM. Obviously made to cash in on the Friday the 13th hysteria, The Prey features an admittedly attractive cast of 20-somethings who wander off into the woods and are picked off one by one by a charred gypsy. There's not much rhyme or reason for anything that happens in this movie and good luck trying to remember any character names. Gail is the only memorable character simply because she has the annoying habit of checking and re-applying her makeup in pretty much every one of her scenes. There's a fairly useless side character of a forest ranger who talks in baby voices to deer and eats cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches whenever we're not going on hikes with our leads. To make matters worse, every scene transitions to the next via overlong sequences of nature that go on forever. I'm convinced that, if you took these shots out, the movie would be 15 minutes long. I could almost believe that they ran out of money midway through and, when they got more funds, the original cast wasn't available so they decided to beef up the forest ranger scenes and nature footage just to make the film feature length (it barely qualifies at just under 80 minutes). That said, there are some decent effects here and the music score isn't too bad. It's just a shame that, right as the film starts to take off, it ends.

Everything everyone has said already pretty much rings true when it comes to 'The Prey'. Endless nature footage, bad acting - Aside from these elements, this is a watchable film for slasher fans that in some cases, is considered a cult classic. Jackson Bostwick and Jackie Coogan play pretty well off each other. There's also a three minute banjo solo that shows off Bostwick's skill behind the instrument. Not too bad if I do say so myself. The last ten minutes of the 'film' are its saving grace. The ending still haunts me to this day. This can also sport a short lived plus in that an early John Carl Bucheler does the special effects. Some may know him from films like 'Troll' and 'Friday the 13th part 7 - He directed both these films) All in all, this isn't a movie everyone will find something redeeming in. In fact, on a Hollywood level, this can rank right up there with one of the businesses most amateurish efforts, but for that handful (yet very loyal) of slasher movie fans in the world, even the bad acting and atrocious nature footage can be forgiven.

* out of ***** The full title for this movie should be "National Geographic Presents ‘The Prey,'" because, with all the shots of lizards, centipedes, snakes, spiders, frogs, etc., this could be shown on the Discovery channel. Talk about filler! This has a running time of barely 80 minutes, but if you take away the prolonged scenes of insects and reptiles and dull kids chatting idly around the campfire and forest rangers eating sandwiches and telling jokes to animals, you're left with maybe five or ten minutes of actual story (and I use that term loosely.) It's so damn boring! Carel Struycken (`Lurch' from the Adams Family movies) is a giant, badly burned killer who lives in the mountains, but he isn't even shown until the last five minutes or so. Some boring kids go camping and -- yawn -- Lurch picks them off one by one. There are long, awkward scenes of former MGM, classic film star Jackie Coogan, as forest ranger Lester Tile, making silly faces as he eats a cucumber and cream cheese sandwich. Some of the more notable lines in the `script' are, `Good chow' and `Tell me something -- do people really eat those things?' (referring to the cucumber sandwich). There's minimal violence, minimal suspense, minimal naked horseplay and minimal excitement. The tag line on the video box reads: `It's not human, and it's got an ax!' but, it probably shoulda read: `It's not good, and it got made!' Lowlight: In a cinematic first, the other forest ranger (Mark O'Brien, I think) tells a (long) joke about a wide-mouth frog to a deer. Actually, this is one of the best scenes in the movie -- the punchline made me laugh.

All the criticisms of this movie are quite valid! It is pretty boring, and filled with all kinds of pointless ridiculous stuff. A couple exchanging nods over their "good grub." A medium shot of a desk as a phone rings until someone finally comes, sits down, and answers it at a pretty leisurely pace. Quadruple-takes or more when people look at things. Solitary banjo-tuning and playing, taking a break for a beer. Telling a joke to a fawn, about a big-mouthed frog trying to learn what to feed its babies, complete with many big-mouthed expressions (which are needed for the weak punchline). The sharing of cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches on oatmeal bread, which to the squeamish become unpalatable when there's talk of people burned in a fire. Lots of seemingly stock-footage close-up shots of animals, birds, insects, and spiders in the woods. The movie starts with a forest fire, then at least a couple decades later some people in those same woods get killed by an axe. The killer evidently wasn't too satisfied by the axe he stole, and kills other people with other weapons of opportunity or his bare hands. If it's true that the movie in the version available on the out-of-print videotape is cut, perhaps if there's a lot of footage that was cut, it deserves another look on DVD. Otherwise, it's simply not very interesting, and would probably try the patience of even the most hardcore outdoors-slasher fan.

Foolish hikers go camping in the Utah mountains only to run into a murderous, disfigured gypsy. The Prey is a pretty run of the mill slasher film, that mostly suffers from a lack of imagination. The victim characters are all-too-familiar idiot teens which means one doesn't really care about them, we just wonder when they will die! Not to mention it has one too many cheesy moments and is padded with endless, unnecessary nature footage. However it does have a few moments of interest to slasher fans, the occasional touch of spooky atmosphere, and a decent music score by Don Peake. Still, it's business as usual for dead-camper movies. There are much better films in this vein, but over all The Prey may be watchable enough for die-hard slasher fans. Although one might be more rewarded to watch Just Before Dawn (1981), Wrong Turn (2003), or even The Final Terror (1983) again. * 1/2 out of ****

Horror film makers had it right in the 80's. Maybe they weren't the most talented directors and they probably had one movie to their credit, but what they did, they did a pretty good job of. The Prey is a typical 80's effort for horror films. But what makes films like this so fun and actually quite scary is the location. The forest is a perfect setting for horror films. It is actually too bad that more films don't utilize the forest more. But if you think of some of the good scary films from the early 80's, they utilized a forest in some way. Think of Evil Dead, Friday the 13th's and even films like Sleep Away Camp. There is something sinister and mysterious about a dark forest, late at night. You never want to walk alone in the woods. Even now later in life, no one wants to. What is good about this film is some of the mystery and the gore is great. You can tell this film wasn't blessed with a huge budget, but what it had it did quite well with. I'm not saying that this is classic cinema, even in a horror genre, but it is scary and it is effective with what it wants to be. And if you can ever find this on the shelf at any video store, rent it. You just might have some fun. If you are one of the people that think Urban Legend and I Know... are scary films, then check out a real film that knows how to frighten you. This is one of those films.

This is truly, without exaggerating, one of the worst Slasher movies ever made. I know, it came out in the 80's following a tendency started by "Friday the 13th". "The Prey" copies the fore-mentioned movie in many aspects. The woods setting, the killer, the dumb teens, the gore, etc. But "The Prey" is as bad as you might expect. I didn't even remember about it if it wasn't for coincidence. Well, the killer is in fact human so don't expect a supernatural killer in the likes of Jason. The situations rather boring and lack of tension, gore, violence, etc. It just does not works for a slasher flick. The acting is simply horrid. The score is horrible! a combination of boring instruments with cheesy 80's tunes?! I won't even mention the technical aspects of the movie because believe me, it seems that it cost only 20 dollars. Please avoid this one like the plague. It's one of the worst movies I've ever seen, and that's something to say. Thank God it seems to have vanished from earth.

In "The Prey" six young and irresponsible campers Nancy,Joel,Skip,Gail and Greg hike into the thick woods at North Point,oblivious to the fact that a nice married couple was recently axe-murdered there while camping by monstrous butcher.Before long the young adults are the prey of an unseen stalker,a deformed gypsy."The Prey" is actually better than its reputation suggests.Our mountain man is a pretty creepy killer and the death scenes are quite gory.The stock nature footage includes long views of centipedes,frogs,spiders,snakes,bugs and more.There is even awesome banjo solo played by a lonely forest ranger.The killings include axe decapitation,ripping out the throat,a sleeping bag suffocation and so on.The final ten minutes are excellent revealing the inevitable killer and displaying his intelligence.The ending is pessimistic and quite disturbing.6 out of 10.