The Prey
**
The Prey (1984) isn’t the kind of slasher the genre’s ardent
fans will be expecting or perhaps liking, mainly because its intentions are a
little different than something like Friday the 13th which establishes
a formula sort-of started in Carpenter’s Halloween. Admittedly, I grow tired of
going back to this when talking
slashers, but I just always feel inclined to reiterate that certain films weren’t
concerned with copying or mimicking the formula Friday the 13th
would utilize and inspire countless knock-offs and imitators. The Prey
have young adults in their early 20s (I would say around 20 or 21 is what we are
led to believe they are aged) camping in the wilderness nearby where an older
couple were ax murdered (the man is beheaded with squirting blood from the neck
where the head used to be, while her death is hinted but not shown); the man’s
pipe had been dropped during the attack and the group use to it to pass around
weed-smoking! Still, the sex is tame and there's zero nudity despite a subtle hint of tit during a bikini top removal while one of the girls sunbathes. But this is very much a wilderness camping trip disrupted by a killer. More closer to something like The Forest (absent the ghost kids), where location is very important, The Prey isn't a total formula slasher.
Meanwhile, we are provided a ton of “critters footage”, heart
beats on the soundtrack, and a first-perspective view from the eyes of someone
looking at them from a distance. So we know that someone dangerous is in the
woods and prior to the campers arriving to the wilderness this killer is for
some reason egged on by a past traumatic event involving a large fire. At about
80 minutes, the basics of the plot would make up a short film so the added
footage of spiders, bears, insects and the like makes sense as padding and as a
way to orchestrate the environment the characters inhabit. The people in the
film aren’t the only ones in the woods…this is, after all, a refuge and home to
those critters and animals not the characters we are introduced to (besides the
park ranger). What we do know is that those together around a campfire learning
about the scary story of The Monkey’s Paw will be visited upon by a psychopath
they have no inkling is among them.
One of the obvious choices to bite the dust first is the
long-blond haired, blue-eyed princess applying make-up and concerned about her
looks in the middle of the woods with five other buds who could care less
(besides her boyfriend, certain to be the heir to a fortune). The use of a
sleeping bag and eerie silence as she fights and perishes while her beau is off
looking for what caused the very noise now murdering her is equal parts odd and
unsettling. Then her boyfriend has his throat mangled by some type of gloved
claw as the camera focuses on an owl just in the area on a tree limb (the only
party to what has happened besides killer and prey). The “warning beacon” goes
off as the second murder happens as a type of awakening to the immediate kill.
All that accompanied the silence as his girl was suffocated was the sound of
crickets as her legs kicked and arms flailed. Not the most go-for-the-jugular
kills but I have to say I found them somewhat effective.
In Just Before Dawn, the ranger is played by George Kennedy
who describes “the mountain” as dangerous and evil. In fact he warns the young
adults in this film to remain out of the mountain, warning that the mountain
should be stayed off of because a deed won’t keep it from harming them and
doesn’t adhere to a written document giving them ownership. They don’t heed his
advice and most suffer because of it. Similarly, The Prey has a killer living
within the wilderness unstable and dangerous. Young adults are entering his domain
unaware of his trauma and psychopathy. Like the “mountain” of Just Before Dawn,
The Prey offers an evil living within its idyll, a danger that isn’t
necessarily a bear or snake, but a human animal that is just as primal and able
to strike violently uninvited. We receive a backstory regarding a group of
gypsies burned alive and how one of their number barely survived, a young boy
himself horribly bodily damaged by the fire. It is enough to give us a killer
and the resulting trauma of this event that sparks the homicidal impulses that
encourage his psychopathy.
To me, the film’s best scene involves the heroic park ranger
who discovers the decomposing body of the princess as the carcass is being
gnawed on by buzzards. He is tormented by this as flashbacks of the dead girl
alive and quite pretty alternating in his mind with what he now sees, as the
buzzards look on from above on a tree branch waiting for him to leave so they
can continue their feast. It lays out to us what "the evil" does to those intruding upon its home, the effects left behind after "the evil" is through with its victims, and how mother nature feeds from them once "the evil" leaves them to rot.
As the final minutes (the climax where we see the deformed
human beast) erupt, the terror scenario kicks into high gear. The mountain-climbing
buddies—deciding their missing members perhaps took a hike—have no idea that on
top of the mountain they plan to descend is the killer. While their girls
sunbath in bikinis, the climbers suffer a neck twist to the first victim
(looking down as his pal scales down the peak) and cut rope causing the second
victim to fall to his doom. Then the girlfriends (one who is Lori Lethin from
Bloody Birthday (1980)) realize what happened to the guys and run for their
lives. Lethin catches her foot in a rope trap that hurls her upside down and
face-first into a tree. Our hero, the ranger, shoots the killer with a
tranquilizer dart and yet it incapacitates him merely briefly. This bit of
implausibility (as well as how fast the killer gets down the mountain) does
take away from the ending, but it is still unnerving considering what we are
told happens to the final girl alive.
Even at 80 minutes, The Prey may test the patience of
slasher fans who want the pace and the kills to locomotive along so they don’t
get bored. That simply isn’t the case here. The film is glacial almost and
particularly cares about putting over the location. Its beauty is
unquestionable—at times quite tranquil and serene—full of sun that often
radiates, green, blue clouds, peaks that reach great distances, and waterfall
that gushes as the group take this all in happily. Then this very place yields
its horror and all are polluted by the killer that lives within it. I’m not of
that critique that considers The Prey one of the worst slashers of the 80s, but
I consider it a middle-of-the-pack, forgettable effort that just doesn’t have
enough to brush aside the best the genre has to offer. Still, I think it is
fair and not all that bad. This could have been a lot worse. The make-up is
suspect, the violence quite lo-fi, and the killer a bit laughable; but, the
place and how the killer surprises his victims are positives to take away from
The Prey.
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