The Prey (1983) User Reviews

Gypsies, Tramps, and Cucumber Sandwiches

[tildagravette · 4/10 · 25 October 2019]

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.

The Prey: Second rate 80's slasher

[Platypuschow · 4/10 · 20 February 2018]

The Prey follows the tried and tested formula of a group of 20 somethings who venture into the forest to camp unaware that something lingers between the trees with evil intentions.

In this case we have a bit of a Wrong Turn (2003) vibe and absolutely no originality or standout moments at all.

One thing I can certainly say for The Prey is that certain elements are beautiful. The movie is full of what I can only assume is stock footage of forestry wildlife and though it seems like filler it really is quite exquisite.

As for the film itself it is full of mediocre deaths, generic characters and lackluster writing.

The Good:

Beautiful nature shots

Oddly dark finale

The Bad:

Paint by numbers stuff

Weak death scenes

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

I've seen enough of these films now to put me off camping for life

Slasher or nature documentary?

[BA_Harrison · 5/10 · 11 May 2020]

N.B. This review is of the 80 minute American theatrical cut.

Three young couples - Greg (Philip Wenckus) and Gail (Gayle Gannes), Skip (Robert Wald) and Bobbie (Lori Lethin), and Joel (Steve Bond) and Nancy (Debbie Thureson) - head into the hills for a camping weekend. Before you can say "Ki ki ki, ma ma ma", they're being offed by a deformed maniac (Carel Struycken) with virtually no backstory (at least in the version that I saw).

Hey, it's '80s slasher time again, which in this case means a dearth of originality, from the bare bones plot, to the cookie cutter characters, to the uninspired music, to the predictable direction (killer POV shots aplenty). That said, this one does have something rather special up its sleeve: it also serves as a wildlife documentary, depicting the many varieties of fauna indigenous to the San Jacinto Mountains in Riverside County, California. While the film's three young couples wait to be sliced and diced by the lunatic roaming the area, we're treated to footage of **deep breath** a millipede, a bear, a frog, a raccoon, a centipede, a woodpecker, a snake (eating a mouse), an eagle, a salamander, a tarantula, an owl, termites, and ants, with shots of a deer, a lizard, birds of prey and butterflies intercut with the slaughter. Great work, wildlife photographer Gary Gero!

As for the those staple slasher ingredients, nudity and violence, here's a quick rundown of what you can expect from The Prey when not admiring fowl and beast...

Nudity: brief toplessness from Gayle Gannes, side boob from the lovely Debbie Thureson while she sunbathes, and nada from Lori Lethin. A rather poor show overall.

Violence (gore courtesy of John Carl Buechler): a neck stump spurting blood, suffocation by sleeping bag, a bloody throat gouging, a head twisted backwards, a body plummeting down a cliff, death by booby trap (victim thrown against a tree, messing up the face and twisting a leg), and a crushed neck. Fun when it happens.

4.5/10, rounded up to 5 for the utterly pointless but strangely enjoyable musical interlude, park ranger Mark O'Brien (Jackson Bostwick) playing a tune on his banjo for no other reason than to show that Bostwick can play the banjo.

More wildlife documentary than slasher film

[Leofwine_draca · 2/10 · 16 October 2016]

An excruciatingly dull slasher yarn, one of the worst I've seen yet. This senseless, budget-free movie adheres to the familiar "teens go into the woods and are bumped off one at a time" plot which got severely overworked at around this period, when the slasher films were popular. The action, when it comes, is predictable and to make matters worse we get endless padding of wildlife scenes, repeated shots of trees (how interesting) and a flashback involving gypsies which lasts for over twenty minutes!

The silly opening consists of a pair of boring middle-aged campers getting offed by an unseen foe (we also get a gratuitous shot of the guy's neck stump bleeding profusely). These are the only murders in the first hour. Sure enough a group of six obnoxious teenagers (half girls, half boys) turn up to make a din in the woods and entertain us with their dumb dialogue and bad acting. Sitting around a campfire, one of the boys decides to tell of the legend of the woods...it seems that thirty years previously, a gang of gypsies living out in the sticks were burnt alive by enraged townsfolk after one of their number slept with a woman from the town, who later claimed it was rape. Yep, all of the gypsies here are portrayed as slimy sex-mad creeps; pretty tough generalisation huh? Well, in normal films this would last all of five minutes but with THE PREY, it goes all the way into becoming a short film in itself, and incredibly the flashback itself is padded out with endless sex scenes which help to create a lethargic pacing.

Once this is over, the film is halfway over already, although you may be forgiven for thinking that two hours have already passed. Night falls and the teenagers pass the time by making love - although somewhat bizarrely, the only two characters who didn't make it die later on in the film, which changes the rules of the genre somewhat (sex = death in most of these films). After more insufferable dialogue a hidden killer (whom we only see via p.o.v. shots - original huh?) emerges to suffocate the most obnoxious girl (thankfully) and messily rip the throat out of her boyfriend. Unconcerned, the rest of the group carry on into the mountains to take part in some swimming and abseiling activities.

Meanwhile, the local Sheriff (played by Jackie Coogan, Uncle Fester from the original ADDAMS FAMILY television series) notices the disappearance of the middle-aged campers from the beginning of the film, and sends his "hunky" park ranger out to investigate. Sadly the ranger doesn't do much apart from act really badly and get his throat crushed by the killer. Meanwhile, one of the teens has his neck broken, another falls to his death from a cliff and a third girl stupidly steps into a jungle (sorry, woodland... too many Italian movies) trap and gets her head smashed against a tree. The killer is finally revealed to be a hideously scarred survivor of the forest fire.

My synopsis above lists every moment of action in the movie, so be prepared for a slow-paced and very boring movie. The acting is pretty bad from the unknown cast, with the exception of the sandwich-eating Uncle Fester who appears to be slumming it. Somewhat coincidentally, the actor playing the killer, Carel Struycken, went on to play Lurch in the '90s ADDAMS FAMILY movies. Director Edwin Brown decides to film what little action there is in silly slow-motion which ruins credibility and excitement. The spooky soundtrack, which sometimes includes the sound of the killer's beating heart, is okay though. The gore effects are kept brief and are the work of John Carl Buechler, on one of his first assignments by the look of it. The killer's appearance is very similar to what Jason looks like in Friday the 13th Part 2 and may have been influenced by that film.

So, what we have is another no-budget no-hope slasher movie made on an amateur level with little or no redeeming features. I would only recommend this to nature lovers who love to watch bees, spiders, millipedes, frogs, raccoons, eagles, vultures, butterflies, lizards, cricket, and snakes go about their daily business, because that's about as exciting as this slasher/wildlife documentary hybrid gets.

Shoulda been called "National Geographic Presents 'The Prey'"

[BillyBC · 4 December 2002]

* 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.

Not human. Has an axe.

[BandSAboutMovies · 5/10 · 7 October 2019]

For some reason, old Hollywood actors often show up in slashers. Jackie Coogan, whose career stretched from silent films to playing Uncle Fester on The Addams Family to, well, The Prey appears in this, his last film. Coogan also was the reason for the California Child Actors Bill, the first known legal protection for the earnings of child performers, which is better known as the Coogan Act.

The Prey didn't play theaters until nearly four years after it was made. It was created by the husband and wife team of Edwin and Summer Brown, who had previously worked on the video nasty Human Experiments. This was their first non-adult movie.

Back in the late 1940's, a fire raged through the Rocky Mountains and wiped out a family of gypsies that all lived in a cave. Of course, one of them survived.

It all starts with two old people getting killed as they cook around a campfire. Then, the film alternates between an increasingly intense pace and long stretches of nature footage that was supposed to prove the difference between killer and his prey, but also padded the film so it had a decent run time.

Let's meet our teen couples. There's Nancy and Joel, played by Debbie Thureson and Steve Bond, who we all know better as Travis Abilene from Picasso Trigger. Here's Bobbie and Skip, played by Lori Lethin from Bloody Birthday and Robert Waid from Summer Camp. Finally, we have Greg and Gail, who are played by Philip Wenckus in his lone acting role and Gayle Gannes from Human Experiments.

They're helped on their camping trip by hunky ranger Mark O'Brien (Jackson Bostick, Shazam! himself!) and crusty older ranger Lester Tole (Coogan). Gail's convinced before too long that someone is watching them and before you can say Jason Vorhees, she's dead and so is Greg.

That burned up gypsy boy goes after everyone with a real vengeance, including a scene where he leaves Gail and Greg's bodies for the vultures, a moment that's poignantly intercut with the group's first meeting.

I love the ending of this film, where it feels like Ranger Mark has taken out the clawed and disfigured killing machine, only to have his neck snapped as if it were nothing. Then, the killer slowly approaches Nancy and caresses her hair.

After some nature footage - get ready for so much nature footage - we move several months into the future, where we see the cave where the killer's family died in the fire and hear the cries of a baby. Now that's dark.

The monster in this is played by Carel Struycken who would go on to play not just Lurch in the modern Addams Family movies, but also the Giant in Twin Peaks.

Seeing as how this was shot around the same time as Friday the 13th, it may have been seen as imitator when originally released, but it totally stands on its own. After all, what movie has a better tagline? "It's not human and it's got an axe!"

Oh...Was that a slasher?

[shuklavinash · 4/10 · 28 November 2012]

I watched this film in 1992 on the suggestion of one of my friends. Since I am a big fan of 'Backwoods Horror', I decided to give it a try. The film began and I thought I was about to witness another Friday the 13th. It was after 30 minutes, when I realized that they shouldn't have released it as a slasher. Here is what it's all about.

The film begins with the stock footage of 1948 Northpoint wildfire, then it cuts straight to 1980, where we see a couple Frank & Mary enjoying their camp out. Moments later, Mary is shocked to see Frank's decapitated body and is brutally killed too. Nobody knows who did it. Then we come across 6 teenage campers Nancy, Joel, Greg, Gail, Skip and Bobbie heading to the woods. On the way, they meet forest ranger Mark, who asks them to watch out for the bears. As the teenagers go deeper and deeper in the woods, they become more isolated from the outer world. Little do they know that something horrible is lurking at an arm's length. The police department is investigating the disappearances of Frank & Mary and seeks help of the forest department. The senior forest officer Lester Tile may have clues regarding the disappearances at The Northpoint.

So did you enjoy the story? You may have, because I never included a single wildlife footage in it. This could have made millions if it were shown on Animal Planet. The plot has no unique value and the actors are some of the worst and dumbest in the stock, who fail to develop themselves during the course of run. I mean you never get empathy for them, and even after spending around 81 minutes with you, they all die strangers. The film is full of unrelated and forcibly included stock footage, whose color scheme doesn't match with the actual film. The only good footage I remember is of a snake working hard to swallow a frog. This footage underlines the movie title 'The Prey'. Watch it only if you are big fan of backwoods horror, otherwise this has nothing new to promise.

bad jokes, stock footage, clichés, and cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches on oatmeal bread

[FieCrier · 2/10 · 16 August 2005]

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.

Mutual of Omaha Presents: THE PREY

[Bub_the_zombie · 4/10 · 14 May 2007]

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.

A Slasher with wildlife

[treakle_1978 · 6/10 · 10 August 2019]

The prey is a knockoff of Friday the 13th but for what it is it's not bad. The kills were decent and the third act was the best part. The ending was really good. Never really seen that before in a slasher film. It's 80 minutes of popcorn fun.

Just watch Friday 13th

[bowmanblue · 4/10 · 11 March 2021]

First of all let me say that I love eighties horror. I know it's cheesy, not that scary and particularly awful, but so many of the genre's best output falls under the 'so-bad-it's-good' category. Therefore I figured 'The Prey' would keep me entertained for an hour and a half. It was a long ninety minutes.

I hear the film was actually released at around eighty minutes and the missing extra footage was put in and is now more likely to be the version you watched. I wish I'd watched the shorter version. Often, when a film is good, I can't really think of too much to say about it - other than 'I enjoyed it!' However, with this one I feel I could probably write an essay reeling off everything that's wrong with it.

I know it's a low budget film and I probably shouldn't be too hard on it, but, seriously, it's a hard watch. I knew what I was in for in terms of story. Half my DVD collection is filled with masked serial killers murdering stupid teenagers. That brief plot synopsis is certainly applicable here; it's just this one doesn't work on any level.

It's about three young (overly-sexed, naturally!) couples who go camping in the mountains and fall victim to a killer. Nothing wrong with that premise, but, if you're hoping for gore - you won't find it here. It probably didn't have the budget. No matter if the characters are good, right? Wrong. They're not. I don't expect Oscar-worthy acting from a horror movie, but sometimes I figured I could probably read the actors' lines with more emotion and believability! What about the killer? Was he imaginative? Nope. Where as films like 'Friday 13th' had original and memorable killers, this one isn't even shown for 99% of the screen time. Perhaps worst (or weirdest?) of all was the fact that the film-makers felt the need to insert plenty of 'nature shots' in the film. Every scene is preceded by an unrelated shot of a deer, or racoon or something - either that or the mountain range. Then you get the wooden characters just walking. There's an old joke about the 'Lord of the Rings' movies that goes along the lines that the trilogy is just nine hours of people walking. But I don't think you've seen 'on screen walking' until you've watched 'The Prey.' There are a few pointless sub-plots which drag out for longer than they should and about a twenty minute segment roughly in the middle of the film which feels like a completely different movie of its own (it's supposed to be a sort of 'origin story' for the killer) and doesn't really add anything.

I only continued watching this movie just because I kept telling myself that it would pick up in the final act. I guess it did - if you class the 'final act' as the last five minutes of a film that clocks in at over an hour and a half. There are so many better slasher films out there. Pick one. Trust me, it'll be much more enjoyable.

I enjoyed it!

[rlawson-25464 · 10/10 · 9 April 2022]

There's many bad reviews on here, but some cool nature shots, simple slasher plot and some decent kills, what's not to love... good movie if you like Friday 13th with a dash of nature.

Enough to hold your interest

[meathookcinema · 6/10 · 31 October 2019]

Healthy horny idiots go camping in the woods (I know, an alien scenario for a slasher film!) The woods they go to were the location of a bloodbath decades earlier as someone from a gypsy camp was falsely accused of rape. The townsfolk burnt down the gypsy settlement but one of the younger members of the travellers escaped albeit with massive amounts of burns. The present day campers get the feeling that someone is watching them and then start to be dispatched by You Know Who.

The Prey was made in 1980 but not released in the States until 1983. Edwin Brown was directing porn movies before he decided to branch out into horror. And it shows! The sex scenes in this movie are a lot more raunchy than in other slasher movies. Theres a longer version of this film called the 'Gypsy Cut' which contains a full prologue regarding the gypsy characters. This sequence is VERY sexual and feels like the funny parts of porn movies that you see before sexual organs get an airing. This includes the kind of flat acting that you could only see in pornography.

The film feels like it wants to establish the fact that it's a Hillbillies vs City Folk movie and even has a character playing a banjo!

But whilst this is a blatant Friday the 13th rip-off theres enough here to hold your interest. The kills are very effective (courtesy of special effects guru John Carl Buechler), the cinematography is stunning (even if scenes shot in a forest are pretty hard not to portray as beautiful. Check out the scale of some of the shots and how the humans are sometimes shown as minuscule in comparison to the woods. Also, check out the abseiling scene). Theres also a very unexpected ending that shows that Ol' Scarface has other plans for the Final Girl rather than killing her. This reminded me of the backstory to the mutant family in the masterpiece, The Hills Have Eyes. The kill of the Final Girl's friend before this is also very left-field and takes the audience by surprise (no, I'm not going to disclose what it is!)

Check out the Arrow Films Blu ray. Both cuts are on there along with a gorgeous transfer and plenty of extras.

Amusing early slasher that despite lacklustre pacing, has its moments...

[LuisitoJoaquinGonzalez · 5/10 · 11 February 2008]

If imitation is truly a form of admiration, then Friday the 13th was entitled to carry an ego the size of a Brazilian rain forest during the early eighties. The success of Sean Cunningham's opus led to an invasion of almost identically themed titles, which ranged from the good (Just Before Dawn) to the rancid (Don't go in the Woods). Interestingly enough, The Prey was generally thought of as yet another bandwagon jumper, but recent cast-member reports have suggested that actually it was shot in 1978, two years earlier than Friday, but was shelved for two years whilst finding a distributor. I find this hard to believe as it is CLEARLY borrowing from Halloween, which was released in October of that year. If I had to guess I would say early 1979. But that still pre-dates Sean Cunnigham's opus, so with a little better marketing and a quicker post-production this could have been the one with ten sequels and a remake under its belt. No, seriously!

After a muted release it rapidly disappeared under the landslide of negative media coverage that engulfed the genre during its heyday. Despite some impressive gore, Edwin Brown's effort didn't even manage to garner the cult status of an appearance on the UK's notorious video nasty list, which added vitality to many of its undeserving cousins. Still awaiting a second shot at recognition on DVD, it looks as if Brown's slasher has long since been forgotten and scrapped to the video graveyard.

The released version of the feature was missing huge chunks of footage that had been filmed from the original script but failed to make it to the final cut. This included a background story for the bogeyman's motives and some gratuitous extensions to the gore scenes. The reason for their exclusion remains unclear and I would be interested to see a director's cut.

After a murderous and appealing opening, we meet a van full of platitudes that are heading into the forest for a relaxing vacation. They are welcomed by the Park Sheriff who becomes a key player in the plot and a memorable figure in the film's poor reputation (more on that later). As they head deeper into the woodland, we are aware that they are not alone due to the constant heavy breathed point of view shots from the stalking maniac. After what seems like a lifetime, the killer finally gets to work on the youngsters and it's up to the lethargic sheriff to come to their rescue.

The Prey is among the most widely panned of the early eighties slashers, which is arguably the key reason why it hasn't yet been offered a stab at secondary acknowledgement on DVD. The first factor that the film's many critics set-upon is the unnecessary and bizarre use of wildlife stock footage, which digresses somewhat from the 'horror' structure of the plot. Although over emphasised, I actually felt that the footage worked well to build the backwoods surroundings of the storyline and I never found it as irritating as many viewers describe.

I said in my description that I would return to the Park Sheriff and rightly so, because he has become something of a cult figure in slasher cinema – unfortunately for all the wrong reasons. His self-confessed 'phoned-in' performance creates bad movie hysterics in a number of scenes, but he is most fondly remembered for three exceptional slices of rancid cinema. One bizarre piece of script writing sees him telling a rubbish joke to a faun in the midst of the forest, whilst another equally peculiar sequence has him playing a four-minute solo on an ukulele, which offers absolutely *nothing* to the storyline! The third and most bizarre of the trio allows him to share the spotlight with an elderly colleague as they discuss the benefits of his miniature sandwiches! I was left wondering whether the script-writer was hoping to get noticed for a career in comedy.

The inadvertent humour doesn't end there and the laughable slow-mo chase scene during the climax is pure slapstick that is all the more amusing as it was supposed to look rather creepy. And while we're talking of the climax, I cannot forget to mention final girl Nancy (Debbie Thureson)'s unforgettable contribution. The Prey, just like many of its brethren, boasts performances that would shame a nursery musical, but Thureson's portrayal of a woman awaiting her fate from the maniacal assassin sinks to new depths of banal dramatics.

Director Edwin Brown attempts to emulate Joe D'Amato's method of feature pacing, which to be fair is about as beneficial as a playboy using Eddie Murphy's methods of contraception. The film drags along at the speed of an eighty-year old Zimmer framed wing-back and if it weren't for the odd inter-cut shot of the heavy-breathed psycho you could be forgiven for forgetting that this is a horror film. The score is a jumbled mix of ear piercing keyboard jaunts that sounds like a 2 year old child discovering a Casio keyboard for the first time.

To be fair when the murders do occur they do provide some decent suspense and John Carl Buechler's gore effects outshine the minuscule budget. But with that aside, I guess that whether you like The Prey or not really depends on what you're looking for from a slasher movie. If you want to be scared, then cross this off your shopping list. However if you're looking for some of that laughable retro nostalgia that only these types of feature can provide, then The Prey could be right up your street. It's not as bad as its reputation would have you believe

I give it a zero, with a bullet.

[Backlash007 · 6 February 2003]

~Spoiler~

I know what you're thinking, another burnt backwoods gypsy mongoloid-on-a-killing spree movie. Okay, maybe it's the only one, but it's still awful. Under normal circumstances, I can find something I like about the most reviled horror film. Not this time. The Prey is a horrible bore. "It isn't human and its got an axe." That's the most misleading tagline ever because it IS human and it DOESN'T have an axe. I sincerely hope the music guy didn't get paid because I would have randomly hit keys on a piano for free. And then there's plenty of weird nature shots with bugs and snakes crawling around that's most likely stock footage used to make the movie feature length (even then it's only 80 minutes). In case you didn't read me the first time, this movie is a crappy borefest. I'd rather watch a man pointlessly tune and play a banjo for five minutes...oh wait, that was in the movie.

Come for the Sandwich, stay for the banjo!

[fumanpoochfilms · 1/10 · 1 March 2021]

What a thrill ride this picture was. These were the highlights,

1. Man tells "scary" story by fire, ending with the protagonist wishing for a good night's sleep. 2. Man eats a cucumber sandwich... then some more cucumber sandwich.... and then... to end on a crescendo... He FINISHES THE SANDWICH, but wait! There's more! 3. Man tunes a banjo, drinks some beer, plays banjo, then retunes banjo. Oh boy! If that's not enough for you... 4. Same man tells a story about a frog, which... has an ending.... I guess? 5. People call out their friends' names and walk up a hill for about five minutes. 6. The credits roll.

AVOID

[Lucianivision · 1/10 · 29 March 2001]

The best thing about "The Prey" is the tag line..."It's not human and it's got an axe"! The movie itself is a padded stinkaroo....endless insect and wildlife shots make the viewer wanna die! No slasher fan will like this garbage.....Watch "Friday the 13th" again and burn any copy of this film you find!

It also rates as one of the 25 worst films ever made!

Just run like hell you idiots!

[Nightman85 · 3/10 · 25 October 2004]

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 ****

The stock footage murders

[Tikkin · 3/10 · 24 June 2006]

I think that would have been a more appropriate title for this film, since it is padded to hell and back with stock footage of various bugs and animals. I recently found The Prey in its original VHS 'big box' form and was very excited. I just LOVE finding old slasher films on VHS because the cover artwork is fantastic. Usually though, it turns out that the film itself is less than fantastic. The Prey is one of those films.

To be fair, it started off OK, with the killer stalking the cliché teenagers in the woods. The heartbeat sounds used are a great effect that make you tense as you watch. This film is basically a big fat cliché, and when the "campfire stories" section rolls in, the film takes a new direction and spends almost half of the running time on the back-story of the killer. I actually thought this was quite an original idea. However, the back-story ends abruptly and shows us some stock-footage of a burning woodland (the lack of budget really starts to show now). After this, we are returned to the dumb teenagers being picked off in the woods. The killer himself isn't shown until the end, which is a shame because he actually makes an effective looking killer. Sort of like Cropsy from The Burning, but better. As for gore, there isn't too much, although there's an OK face squishing moment at the end.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend this film to anyone other than slasher completists - it really is a big mess.

Yawn...

[Kazoo-2 · 1/10 · 21 August 1999]

Even by the lowered standards of '80s slasher movies, this one stinks. The usual gaggle of oversexed teens heads for a "forbidden" part of forest, which burned in the 1940s and apparently left a sole angry survivor. Fast forward (actually, you'll want to fast-forward through much of this mess) to the present day, where a couple of campers are butchered; the teens follow in their wake, while a semi-concerned park ranger (a sleepwalking Jackie Coogan) and his healthier cohort (who spins a lot of time tuning his banjo) succeed partially in steering our attention from yards of run-of-the-mill nature-footage padding. Finally, more killings--but nothing you haven't seen a zillion times before. If you want to see the kids butchered, opt for SLEEPAWAY CAMP or the first FRIDAY THE 13TH over this

CAMPFIRE STORY

[kirbylee70-599-526179 · 6/10 · 24 September 2019]

Released and shot somewhere between 1979 and 1983 depending on which source you choose THE PREY was one of those movies that had a limited theatrical release and soon found its way onto the shelves of video stores everywhere. The cover art at the time featured an axe piercing what appears to be a body. That was enough to get horror fans ready to rent. What they found was familiar and different at the same time.

The story takes place in the Keen Wild national forest in the Colorado where in 1948 a wildfire burned down much of the North Point area. Now 6 college age students are on a camping trip in the area. Before heading up they meet Ranger Mark O'Brien (Jackson Bostwick) who catches the girl's eyes and leaves tells them to be safe.

The group heads out with one of the girls more interested in her looks than carrying a backpack loaded with supplies. Along the way we get a point of view shot of someone or something watching them. They eventually make camp and settle in for the night. While sitting around the campfire one of the guys tells them a story about what took place all those years ago.

This takes up a large portion of screen time as he tells them a camp of gypsies used to camp nearby. One of the heads of the group was having an affair with a woman from town. When her husband finds out she claims she was raped. He and a few other townsfolk track down the gypsies and kill them with the exception of one, a boy who was born physically challenged and much larger than his age. Now folks talk of him haunting the woods.

Of course the group laughs at him and, of course again, he does indeed exists and begins killing off the kids one by one. We've seen this story before and little is added to it for this movie. That is with the exception of a twist at the end.

The movie moves along at a meandering pace which some praise and others condemn. For myself I found it added nothing. The "creature" we're presented with at the end is also a major let down looking more like a man in a mask than Michael Myers did in HALLOWEEN. I was stunned to read that John Carl Buechler was responsible for this makeup. Then again he did give us the effects for GHOULIES.

There are no performance here worthy of note and the fact that among the 6 actors portraying the students they have less than 100 performances between them says something. Some in fact have only this film to their credit. Smart move.

Here's the thing. For such a poorly received movie that made its way to video quickly Arrow Video is giving it a major overhaul. Fans of the film will rejoice, slasher fans will be glad to add another film to their collection and the less discerning horror fan will pick it up to make it part of their shelf as well. Making it worth that is the fact that Arrow, as is always the case, are treating this film like a major event and their decision to do so makes it worth picking up, in particular for all of the extras they've added.

I mean come on, look at this list of extras! It includes 3 different versions of the film: the original US theatrical cut, the international cut and the composite cut. They're all 2k restorations of the film giving fans the ultimate quality for the film. The International cut features the gypsy flashback footage that was added later by the producers without the approval of the original filmmakers. The 2 disc set features an original slipcover with the original UK home video artwork, a reversible sleeve with new artwork by Justin Osbourn, a limited edition booklet featuring new writing on the film by Ewan Cant, a new audio commentary track with producer Summer Brown, a new audio commentary track with director Edwin Scott Brown, an audio interview with Edwin Scott Brown, a new on-camera interview with actress Debbie Thureson, a new on-camera interview with actress Lori Lethin, a new on-camera interview with actor Carel Stuycken, a new on-camera interview with actor Jackson Bostwick (who some may remembers as TV's Saturday morning hero Shazam from long ago), "In Search of The Prey" where actors Cant and Thureson revisit the original shooting locations in Idyllwild, CA, a Q&A session at Texas Frightmare Weekend in 2019, the VHS trailer and TV spot, the original script on BD-ROM content and an extended outtakes reel with 45 minutes of never before seen outtakes. If that wasn't enough that composite version features the combined efforts of both the US and International prints to make the most complete version of the film available.

Arrow is doing this movie right like they always do. But changing things up they are limiting it to just 3000 copies so if you're inclined to want this one in your collection make sure you order yours right away. With so few copies they won't last long.

I couldn't believe this movie wasn't available on DVD... But then I watched it, and now that makes total sense

[happyendingrocks · 3/10 · 22 April 2011]

The Prey is a predominantly useless and often tedious film that can only be considered mandatory viewing for horror fans who absolutely must see every slasher film that came out in the '80s. Though it supplies all of the ingredients we rightfully expect from any offering hatched during the golden age of splatter, the amount of patience it requires to for the viewer to see any of these elements come into play sort of makes the juicier portion of the film an anti-climax once it arrives. The Prey probably isn't the worst entry in the '80s slasher canon, but if often tries very hard to be, and since it doesn't even achieve that rather dubious distinction, I find myself having a really hard time thinking of any reasons to recommend it.

The story basically writes itself: six campers embark on an excursion into a secluded woodland for a little sex, drugs, and rock and roll and find themselves unwittingly entering the hunting ground of a deformed killer. Many enjoyable slasher offerings have been constructed on this core concept, but the pace of the The Prey is frustratingly slow, and it takes half of the running time for the meat of plot to get underway.

Apparently a lengthy 15-minute expository sequence set in 1948 was excised from the film, and all that remains of that deleted introduction is the very first frames of the movie, which show us the forest fire that climaxes the back-story. As it stands here, the fire occupies no significance within the scope of the plot, and while 15 more minutes would have made this yawn-fest an even more lugubrious trial to sit through, the vague nature of the opening pretty much bodes poorly for The Prey right of the bat.

After this now-meaningless flashback, we leap forward to the present, where a pair of clumsily staged murders are tacked on to get things cooking. However, the following 35 minutes are filled with endless scenes of the campers hiking through the woods and a proliferation of stock nature footage that includes bugs, birds, and raccoons, all of whom get as much screen time throughout the film as the actors do. There's also a heroic park ranger thrown into the mix, but his presence is sort of an afterthought for the first half of the film, and the most significant scene he has is a lengthy sequence in which he plays a banjo. In keeping with the needless nature of most of the film's exposition, a full two minutes of the movie is devoted to him tuning the banjo before he plays it.

There are some classic unintentionally funny moments during this spell, including a great scene where an amorous camper tries to convince his frigid girlfriend to have sex with him by offering the uber-seductive line, "come on, everyone else is doing it." There's also a pretty humorous dad-joke proffered by the park ranger, and when the camera pans out we discover that he's actually telling the joke to a deer.

If you stick with the numbingly stale opening, rest assured, you will eventually be rewarded with a bit of diverting bloodshed. Since we already know that the campers aren't on hand just to have banal conversations around a campfire, the initial casualties seem to signal the moment that The Prey gets itself on track. Admittedly, the first gory bit in the film is pretty nifty, and at that point we are led to expect a satisfying payoff for the endless introduction we have endured up to that point. However, directly afterward the pace screeches to a crawl again, and one of the very next scenes features two park rangers debating the tastiness of cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches (You know I'm not kidding... how could I possibly make that up?).

It takes a full 20 minutes of more critter footage and hiking montages before anything noteworthy happens again, at which point the climax sort of comes and goes and the film ends. Though the action in the denouement is peppered with a few more deaths, they are all so awkwardly set up and filmed that no suspense or thrills are generated along the way. The kills are also nearly bloodless, so aside from the single scene I mentioned earlier, The Prey doesn't really fit into the category of "splatter movie." The park ranger's ultimate contribution to the film is simply being killed, which happens so abruptly and pointlessly that we're forced to wonder why we spent half the movie following him around. The final fade-to-black is a fairly fun little twist, and serves to somewhat explain the motive for the killer's non-bloodbath, but like the rest of the film the hurried conclusion doesn't really have much impact.

The monstrous murderer's reveal happens in broad daylight, so we do get a nice look at him, and since the make-up is fairly decent this ends up being one of the film's only high-points. The credit for this goes to John Carl Buechler, and since The Prey is one of the first films on his resume, devoted gore-fans may consider this a worthy reason to sit through this thoroughly miserable offering. Sadly, his talent is wasted here since he isn't really given much to do, and it's safe to guess that Buechler wouldn't consider this teeth cutting exercise one of the high points of his career (perhaps notably, The Prey isn't listed on his IMDb filmography).

Though there are many enjoyable '80s horror cheapies currently languishing in VHS obscurity and in desperate need of a digital re-release, The Prey is one relic from the era that is probably better off staying right where it is.

Cult slasher classic 'The Prey' got dramatic locomotion like a peyote-crazed prairie centipede!

[Weirdling_Wolf · 9/10 · 20 November 2019]

After owning the dubious-looking Bootleg of 'The Prey'for many years, it was with tremendously acute, 'pre-entering the Gladiatorial ring excitement' that I watched the immaculately insane Blu-ray presentation of Edwin Brown's fitfully sanguineous, generously stock footage slathered, sinfully slept on slasher freakshow. Directed with a rare heartfelt, wide-brained finesse, colourfully suggestive of a William Girdler or fellow free-thinking, outdoorsy, independent celluloid centurion Don Dohler. Including the outstandingly impecunious visuals, it is the films multifarious confabulations of the envelope thrustingly twisted screenplay wherein 'The Prey' begins to teasingly tear away, eyes slavering, lips blathering into the uncharted realms of becoming a terrifically transcendent, terror taunting, trouser-tentingly tawdry triumph! The winsome dénouement is as elusive as Jayne Mansfield's bust in 'The Girl Can't help it' (1958), the boisterously unfiltered ensemble acting is no less refined than Nick Zedd's infamously sedate 'They eat Scum (1979), and the uniquely perpendicular plot hares through all three unprecedentedly singular acts like a deadly Martian virus!

The Prey's outlandish originality is a blisteringly boundless, nipple-twistingly exquisite delight, so exhilarating is the luminously lunatic premise I am led, quite literally, with madly-staring brain to think that SF grand master Philip Jose Farmer had a filigree hand in the scintillatingly inspired scripting! It's so frequently fearless, so deliberately demented, 'The Prey' got deadly dramatic locomotion like a peyote-crazed prairie centipede. Windswept, and wickedly wonky, 80s slashers are rarely so exhilaratingly eccentric as this mayhemic mountaintop massacre! So, outside the wildly subjective rantings of a forlorn mentalist such as I, is the galdarn fright-flick any good? Any Good? Can honey-voiced Bobbie Gentry sing a sad, sad song? Did Philip K Dick dream of electric screams? Did long-forgotten riff-mongers Muzza Chunka make the very best decision by calling their groovy album 'Fishy Pants'? Hellz Indeedy Yes!!!!! Stalwart Horror avatars Arrow Video certainly did our ceaselessly thirsty 80s slasher glands a most righteous, Dudley Do-Right with this, their gore-iously glistering, full-spec Blu-ray release of 'The Prey' (1979) And that's about all the insane speaking you'll ever need on this all too rarely celebrated, cinematically chronic Slasher disasterpiece!

'The Burning', 'Friday the 13th' and 'Howard The Duck' all came many years after Edwin Scott Brown's trail-mixing, backwoods sick-making classic, 'The Hills Have eyes' and 'Von Ryan's Express' came long before 'The Prey', and, that, amigos, is something I will have to deal with in my own sweet time. There are myriad salient epiphanies in a young chap's life, the melancholy moment he puts down his Airfix Focke-Wulf Fw 191, turns to regard the temptingly sticky Evo Stick, and takes his very first life-altering huff of that mind-cloaking chemical puff, and, in a no less evangelical manner, 'The Prey' may well enrapture your sedentary life for the 97 mins you expose your think-matrix to the calamitous circuitous celluloid confection that is 'The Prey', shot in 1979, released theatrically in 1984 and remastered in 2019, I genuinely feel that this extended maturation process can be appreciated in much the same way as a sublime 18-year-old single malt whiskey, or a three-day-old Garibaldi biscuit!

Watchable, but offers nothing new

[kannibalcorpsegrinder · 7/10 · 18 October 2019]

Driving out to the wilderness, a group of friends runs into a camp worker while they wait for a spot to open and decide to hike out together, but when they notice their numbers are down they realize a deranged serial killer is stalking the woods and try to get out of the woods alive.

This one does have some half-way decent moments in when it tries. One of it's best aspects is the fact that this one takes advantage of its forest setting like very few others gives it a great atmosphere. The forest setting is disorienting in nature, continually features areas that look identical to other areas they've already past, and in general have a creepy vibe to them allows for some great moments to come from there. The early scenes of the group hiking and complaining in the wilderness carries a nice vibe while clearly showing that they're being watched as they pass through the gorgeous scenery and mountain locales on the way to camp. There's also a lot to like here when it uses that set-up to bring about the interactions with the killer. The first encounter striking the couple in the campground offers up some fantastic stalking scenes as the killer strikes out of the darkness of the woods, leading into a nice extended search through the woods the next morning to look for them only to find splattered blood left behind. Likewise, the scenes of the ranger tracking the teens through the woods have much to like about it slowly dawning on him what's going on, and the finale is pretty good since it leaves with a big enigma and does something clever with it. The only other part that works is that there are some really good deaths as well, as these here are the film's best qualities. There isn't a whole lot of flaws in the film, but they are there. The main issue here is the fact that the killer is kept off-screen until a few shots at the end which is a wise idea since there's almost nothing about him that screams terrifying. The design is decent, and it's intended to look great, but all it does is just look like a ridiculous plastic surgery gone wrong and is a lame attempt at being creepy. There's no way that it looks anything other than this, and is all too ludicrous to be anything other than unintentional hilarity. The last one has to deal with the motive of the killer. This is never spelled out, his back-story is a brief blurb that is never mentioned by or to anyone who comes into contact with them, and it makes him seem like too much of an enigma. Granted, there's a limit to what a killer should be like to maintain an aura of mystery, but this one was just too much mystery. Nothing is given as to why they're on the rampage, and it would've helped out the fear factor a little more. Along with a fairly healthy segment of time with a whole host of scenes showing the wildlife supposedly in the area that takes up an insane amount of time, it's watchable without too much going wrong for it.

Rated R: Graphic Violence, Language and Brief Nudity.

Dumb, Boring and Pointless Wildlife Footage

[acidburn-10 · 4/10 · 7 May 2007]

1980 was certainly a year for bad backwoods slasher movies. "Friday The 13th" and "The Burning" may have been the best ones but there were like always a couple of stinkers not far behind like "Don't Go Into The Woods Alone" and this one. But in all fairness "The Prey" is nowhere near as bad as "Don't Go Into The Woods" but it's still not great either. One thing is that it's just boring and acting isn't very good but much better than "DGITW" and this movie actually has some attractive looking females to look at, all three of the female leads were stunning. One thing what is up with all that pointless wildlife footage it just seemed pointless and it looked as the director used that to just used that to fill up some time space.

So, what was there to like about this movie? Well, there were a few laugh out loud cheese moments- I couldn't contain a fit of giggles when the final girl did a bizarre type of backwards moon-walk to get away from the kille and there were a few good kill scenes- my favourites being the girl suffocated to death with the sleeping bag; and the phoney looking.

All in all The Prey is dumb, boring and the killer I didn't find scary at all, this movie could have been a whole lot better.