The Prey (1980 film)

The Prey
Original video artwork
Directed by Edwin Brown
Produced by Summer Brown[1]
Screenplay by
Edwin Brown
  • Summer Brown
Starring
Steve Bond
Music by Don Peake
Cinematography
Teru Hayashi
  • Gary Gero (wildlife photography)[2]
Edited by Michael Barnard
Production
company
Essex Productions[3]
Distributed by New World Pictures
Release date
  • September 1984 (1984-09) (Showtime television network)[4]
Running time
80 minutes[1]
  • 96 minutes (extended cut)[5]
Country United States
Language English

The Prey is a 1980[lower-roman 1] American slasher film directed by Edwin Brown, and starring Steve Bond, Lori Lethin, and Jackie Coogan. The film follows a group of campers in the Rocky Mountains who are stalked and murdered by a disfigured assailant. It was the final film credit of Jackie Coogan,[8] who died from cardiac arrest on March 1, 1984.

It is uncertain when the film was shot, though the production occurred some time between 1978 and 1980,[lower-roman 2] with filming taking place in Idyllwild, California. The Prey was acquired for distribution by New World Pictures, and screened on the American premium television network Showtime in September 1984. It was subsequently released on VHS by Thorn EMI in 1988.

Contemporary critical opinion of the film has varied, with its sparse dialogue and pacing being points of criticism; other film scholars, however, have praised the film for its languorous pacing, which accelerates considerably in the final act.[lower-roman 3]

Plot

An older couple, Frank and Mary Sylvester, are cooking food over a campfire. Unbeknownst to them, they are being watched by a mysterious figure in the shadows. While Mary is taking a walk in the woods, she hears her husband scream and returns to the campsite to find her husband's decapitated corpse. She is then killed by the killer wielding her husband's axe.

Several weeks later, three teenaged couples are hiking in the same remote forest high in the Colorado Rockies to enjoy the nature and to spend time together. As they progress deeper into the wilderness, it becomes clear that the killer is stalking them. During their first night in the woods, Gail hears a noise and sends her boyfriend Greg to check out the disturbance. While isolated, they are both murdered by the killer.

The next day, their friends find the couple's gear missing and assume that they have turned back and gone home. The boys decide to head for the infamous Suicide Peak to do some rock climbing while the girls suntan. Meanwhile, forest rangers Lester Tile and Mark O'Brien get a phone call about the missing Sylvester couple, and Mark heads into the forest to investigate. Before leaving, Lester tells Mark a story about a Gypsy boy he once saw during a forest fire years ago. The boy was covered in burns, horribly disfigured, and left for dead.

While exploring, Mark discovers Gail's decomposing body and sets off to find the killer. The killer attacks Skip and Joel while rock climbing, killing them both. Hearing the noise, Nancy and Bobbie rush to investigate, but are confronted by the killer. The killer is revealed to be the boy from Lester's story, who has survived in the wilderness, but has razor-sharp claws and is horribly deformed. The women run, but Bobbie stumbles into one of the killer's traps and is killed instantly. Cornered by the killer, Nancy faces him alone until Mark appears, shooting him with his tranquilizer gun and bashing him in the face with a large stick. Mark then comforts Nancy, but the killer awakens and kills him by crushing his throat. The killer smiles as he reaches softly towards Nancy.

Several months later, the crying of an infant child—ostensibly that of Nancy and the killer's—is heard emanating from a cave in the mountains.

Cast

Production

The Prey was directed by Edwin Scott Brown, who also co-wrote the film with his brother Summer Brown, who also served as the film's producer.[12] The film was produced during the height of the slasher film boom, which had become popular after the wake of John Carpenter's immensely profitable 1978 film Halloween.[13] The film was director-producer team's first non-pornographic feature, as they had previously worked making adult films.[9] It is unclear exactly when the film was made; some sources, such as The Mammoth Book of Slasher Movies, cite 1978 as the production year.[14] Actress Lori Lethin, however, said in a 2012 interview that she remembered filming "around 1980,"[9] while actor Carel Struycken recalled (also in a 2012 interview) filming it some time prior to 1979.[10] The film's closing credits list a copyright year of 1980;[lower-roman 4] this is corroborated by television guides published in various newspaper sources in 1984, which list the film as a 1980 production.[4][15][16] Former child star Jackie Coogan was cast as forest ranger Lester Tile. Coogan had previously starred in Charlie Chaplin's 1921 film The Kid[17] before later starring in the role of Uncle Fester in the 1964 television series The Addams Family.[18] The Prey would be Coogan's final film role before his death from cardiac arrest on March 1, 1984 at the age of 69.[19]

Both Lethin and Struycken stated in separate interviews that filming took in Idyllwild, California.[9][10] According to Lethin, the shoot was very quick, occurring over a period of only ten days.[9] Struycken recalled undergoing an elaborate latex makeup application to achieve his character's deformed appearance.[10] John Carl Buechler served as a special effects designer on the film.[1]

Release

An official theatrical release date for The Prey is unknown; however, contemporaneous newspaper sources confirm it screened on the Showtime television network throughout September 1984.[4][15][16] New World Pictures owned distribution rights to the film.[20][3]

Thorn EMI Video released it on VHS in 1988.[6] As of 2016, the film remained available to the public only on VHS.[21]

Alternate versions

The cut of the film released on VHS by Thorn EMI runs approximately 80 minutes.[1][6] However, an extended alternate cut of the film—which runs an approximately 96 minutes—incorporates an expository prologue and eliminates the majority of the nature footage present in the 80-minute cut.[22][6] The prologue sequence, set in 1948, explains the origins of the film's killer, who was raised in a gypsy commune maimed in a forest fire caused by arson.[22] This prologue is present on the Japanese VHS release of the film, which has an allotted running time of 96 minutes,[5] as opposed to the 80-minute Thorn EMI release.

Alternately, the British Board of Film Classification reviewed the film for home video release in 1986, and it was passed "uncut"; their catalogue lists the runtime of this reviewed cut as 91 minutes.[23]

Critical reception

TV Guide awarded the film one out of five stars, writing: "The killer in this standard mad-slasher-in-the-woods effort is a crazed gypsy mutant horribly burned in a fire that occurred 30 years before. Still angry and wielding an ax, he lumbers off after a bunch of camping youths. There is not one iota of creativity here."[24] Ron Castell in the Blockbuster Video Guide called the film a "tiresome shocker, which contains the absolute minimum of plot and dialogue required to make a horror film."[25]

Charles Tatum from eFilmCritic.com awarded the film one of five stars, stating, "There is not one minute of suspense here." Tatum summarized by saying, "Sure, most of the slasher films of the 1980s were not worth the celluloid they were filmed on, but this video nightmare may well be the dullest produced."[26] The slasher film website Hysteria Lives! gave the film an unfavorable review, stating, "THE PREY is dumb, boring (I had to push needles into my legs just to stop from slipping into a catatonic state), and pitifully indulgent."[27]

Dread Central gave the film a favorable review, calling it "an effective little backwoods slasher offering some vicious kills and a memorable, downbeat shock ending".[22] Film scholar John Kenneth Muir praised the film, writing: "For horror aficionados, The Prey remains a superior (and vastly underrated) film of its genre because it reaches a fever pitch of terror near the climax."[11] Muir also notes the recurrent "man vs. nature" theme in the film, accentuated by the repeated sequences of wildlife interspersed throughout the narrative.[11]

Film scholar Thomas Sipos, however, characterized the film as "basically a travelogue" due to its ubiquitous nature footage.[28] In his book The Gorehound’s Guide to Splatter Films of the 1980s, Scott Aaron Stine echoes a similar sentiment, writing: "The highlights (be as they may) are some impressive National Geographic-style nature photography. In fact, there's so much stock footage (did I just hear someone shout "padding"?) that the person responsible was given co-cinematographer's, and deserved it."[29] Stine also commented on the film's gore, calling it "standard," and noted the monster makeup as "shoddy."[29]

Notes

  1. ↑ The end credits of The Prey list a copyright year of 1980, per the version of the film present on the Thorn EMI VHS.[6] Additionally, various sources such as Moviefone,[7] the British Film Institute,[3] and other bibliographic sources[1] classify the film as a 1980 production.
  2. ↑ Accounts of when the production took place vary, with cast and crew recalling 1979 and 1980,[9][10] while other bibliographic sources cite the production year as 1978.
  3. ↑ John Kenneth Muir lauds the film for its "fever pitch" climax, and deems the film "vastly underrated" in his book Horror Films of the 1980s (2011).[11]
  4. ↑ The end credits list a copyright year of 1980, per the Thorn EMI Video release.[6]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Stine 2003, p. 232.
  2. ↑ Brown, Edwin (dir.) (1988) [1980]. The Prey (End credits)|format= requires |url= (help). New World Pictures.
  3. 1 2 3 "The Prey (1980)". British Film Institute. Retrieved March 18, 2018.
  4. 1 2 3 "The Prey (1980)". Detroit Free Press. Movies. Detroit. September 9, 1984 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. 1 2 The Prey (VHS). Japan: Cinema-Ya. 148H3006.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 The Prey (VHS)|format= requires |url= (help). Thorn EMI Home Video. 1988 [1984]. ASIN 6301934547.
  7. ↑ "The Prey (1980)". Moviefone. Retrieved March 19, 2018.
  8. ↑ Bawden & Miller 2016, p. 9.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 Lethin, Lori (June 3, 2012). "The Prey (1984)" (Podcast). The Hysteria Continues (Interview). Interviewed by Nathan Johnson. Begins at 1:03:35. Retrieved March 19, 2018 – via Stitcher.
  10. 1 2 3 4 Struycken, Carel. "JA Kerswell talks to Carel Struycken - the killer from THE PREY (1980)". Hysteria Lives (Interview). Interviewed by Justin Kerswell. Archived from the original on October 26, 2012. Retrieved March 18, 2018.
  11. 1 2 3 Muir 2011, p. 410.
  12. ↑ "The Prey (1980) - Rotten Tomatoes". Rotten Tomatoes.com. Flixer. Retrieved 28 June 2018.
  13. ↑ Carol Clover, Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (Princetom: Princeton University Press, 1993), 24.
  14. ↑ Normanton, Peter (2012-10-18). The Mammoth Book of Slasher Movies. London: Little, Brown Book Group. n.p.; "Prey, The" (paragraph). ISBN 978-1-780-33041-9.
  15. 1 2 "The Prey (1980)". Arizona Republic. Movies. Phoenix, Arizona. September 16, 1984. p. 289 – via Newspapers.com.
  16. 1 2 "The Prey (1980)". Clarion-Ledger. TV Schedule. Jackson, Mississippi. September 16, 1984. p. 151 – via Newspapers.com.
  17. ↑ Miller 2016, p. 7.
  18. ↑ Miller 2016, p. 9.
  19. ↑ Barron, James. "JACKIE COOGAN, CHILD STAR OF FILMS, DIES AT 69 - The New York Times". New York Times.com. James Barron. Retrieved 28 June 2018.
  20. ↑ "Top 10 Axe Murdering Maniacs". Dread Central. April 20, 2010. Archived from the original on July 7, 2012. Retrieved March 18, 2018.
  21. ↑ Doupe, Tyler (October 29, 2016). "13 Horror Movies You Can Only See on VHS". Syfy. Retrieved December 23, 2017.
  22. 1 2 3 Serafini, Matt. "Saturday Nightmares: The Prey (1984)". Dread Central. Retrieved September 23, 2015.
  23. ↑ "The Prey". British Board of Film Classification. August 21, 1986. Retrieved March 19, 2018.
  24. ↑ "The Prey (1984)". TV Guide. Retrieved March 19, 2018.
  25. ↑ Castell 1995, p. 927.
  26. ↑ Tatum, Charles. "Movie Review - Prey, The (1984)". eFilmCritic. Retrieved October 10, 2014.
  27. ↑ Kerswell, J.A. "THE PREY". Hysteria Lives.co. Hysteria Lives.co. Retrieved October 10, 2014.
  28. ↑ Sipos 2010, p. 50.
  29. 1 2 Stine 2003, p. 233.

Works cited

  • Bawden, James; Miller, Ron (2016). Conversations with Classic Film Stars: Interviews from Hollywood's Golden Era. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-813-16712-1. OCLC 1023312847.
  • Castell, Ron (ed.) (1995). Blockbuster Video Guide to Movies and Videos, 1996. Dell. ISBN 978-0-440-22114-2. OCLC 733804349.
  • Muir, John Kenneth (2011). Horror Films of the 1980s. 1. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. ISBN 978-0-786-45501-0. OCLC 830347241.
  • Sipos, Thomas M. (2010). Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of Fear. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. ISBN 978-0-786-45834-9. OCLC 607320273.
  • Stine, Scott Aaron (2003). The Gorehound’s Guide to Splatter Films of the 1980s. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. ISBN 978-1-476-61132-7. OCLC 475125956.
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