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.
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.