Customer Reviews

The Prey [VHS]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Ok so it's not as good as famous slashers like: Friday the 13th, The Burning, The Prowler and many well known others. I will tell you that it is a whole lot better than "Don't Go In The Woods...Alone!" and "The Forest"...maybe "Just Before Dawn" also! They put those three out on DVD so why not The Prey??? Don't let the nature scenes get to you! That's the only negative thing in this flick, in my opinion. When the death scenes start to show up, you won't be sorry! They may not be as gory as others but they are well done! I LOVE the 'tree scene' and when the park ranger gets his head smashed by the HUGE killers monsterous hands! Also, there's a cool scene where one of the boyfriends is rock climbing, you know what happens to him right? I always love watching freakish-looking killers anyway. It's cool that most of the kills take place during the day, therefore, you can clearly get to see how HUGE this ugly killer is compared to everyone else in this flick! Oh, and Carl Struychen plays the killer in this awesome slasher!

The killer looks great...if you like the way Madman Marz looked or the backwoods killer in "Rituals" looked, than you will like this movie. It needs to be on DVD. I own it on DVD-R along with it's cover art also artwork on disk too! Again, If your a fan of MADMAN, HUMONGOUS, RITUALS, or just cheesy slashers in general, than this should be a treat! I've always loved the idea of watching a movie about HUGE monsterous killers lurking in the woods! That's why I go nuts and take up for flicks like this haha.

Oh, and one more thing, John Carl Buechler, the make-up artist/director who did an awesome job with such films as: A Nightmare on Elm Street -4, Friday the 13th-7, Re-Animator, Ghoulies, DOLLS, Mausoleum, and so many other awesome horror titles! 'The PREY' is one of his early works as a make-up artist who worked on designing the killer in this film! So suck on that you so called horror fans who bash this film by putting such a low rating. Sorry, I'm just having fun...don't mean to get so personal haha.

I love this movie. Don't know why all the bad reviews. There isn't a whole lot of these woods/forest type films out there and this one is far better than "The Forest" and Don't Go In The Woods... Alone"! Those two films were really cheesy, had stupid background music, and supid plots. This one has a good plot, no cheesy music, and had cool nature things to look at unlike the other two. If you want a good forest type horror, this is the movie to get. Great ending too that will leave you speechless.

Good to see horror vet Lori Lethin in another good one. Even though she isn't the main girl in this movie she does do well with what she's got. Supposedly this movie was made in 1978 and not released until 1984. I find it hard to believe a movie could stay on the shelf that long - especially in the slasher boom era. But this is a really good slasher-in-the-woods horror movie. It's funny because on the VHS cover it says "It's Not Human, and It's Got An Axe" which is kind of not true because the monster was once human until that fire set him ablaze and now he has become one cool, calculated killer - and a horny one at that. This movie has plenty of replay value. I've seen it three times in the last year. I say it needs a DVD release badly. I'm surprised by seeing so few reviews on this movie. The kill scenes are just awesome. We see a true predator at work and at home in his neck of the woods. This is his domain and any who enter are the hunted. The main tagline of the movie should be: "It's Horny, and It Wants To Breed".

Dull Friday/Burning clone featuring a huge forest-fire-disfigured
killer gypsy(played by Struycken from ADDAMS FAMILY and WITCHES of
EASTWICK)murdering the usual bunch of overaged teens. A REAL yawwwwn!
With poor acting and lots and lots and LOTS of close-ups of bugs
crawling on rocks and branches...I found a blank T.V. screen
more entertaining!

All director/co-writer Edwin Brown and co-writer Summer Brown had was about ten minutes worth of story and a trunk load of stock footage nature video - but, by God, they were going to make a movie out of it. The result is The Prey, one of the worst horror films to ever see the light of day. I have to believe these guys actually attended film school at some point - they couldn't possibly have broken every rule in the book of good filmmaking without having learned what all of those rules were to begin with. This isn't just a bad film - it's bona fide torture. If we forced even a single terrorist in Gitmo to watch this film, you would have liberals protesting such cruel and unusual punishment all up and down California within hours. We're lucky this piece of cinematic sewage didn't bring the slasher film industry crashing down around it.

Six young couples go camping in the woods, only to have their dreams of fun and fornication cut short by some unknown man or monster. That's pretty much the whole story; aside from the lousy ending, this is all follow-the-numbers stuff you've seen time and time again. With more padding than the sum total of all flat-chested teenaged girls on prom night, the filmmakers manage to string the ordeal out for over an hour and fifteen minutes. Every few minutes, a video slideshow of animals in the wild breaks out - bears, centipedes, snakes, you name it. There's so much of it that I kept expecting to hear a voiceover from Marlon Perkins. Still, that doesn't extend the film nearly long enough on its own. What now, then? I know - let's cut to a POV shot from the killer's perspective every few seconds, and throw in plenty of shots of his shoes as he walks. Still not enough? OK, campers have to relieve themselves, don't they? Whenever an actor needs to do his business, let's include that in the story. We'll call it realism; it'll be great. What? We need how many more minutes? OK, let's show a couple of minutes of the forest ranger tuning a banjo. Hey, it's either that or more stock footage of animals. And how about we give that same park ranger one of the dumbest stories any of us can think of and have him tell that story to - how about you just surprise me, OK?

Now we get to the parts of this film that had me wanting to gouge my eyes out with a rusty spoon. Cue the night-time campfire scene. All six characters are talking a mile a minute, but you can't hear most of it - and that's actually by design. Unfortunately, the part we are allowed to hear involves the telling of the world's worst adaptation of The Monkey's Paw story. I could also make out a little bit of another character's mindless chatter, though - and lo and behold if I didn't hear it twice. Yes, folks, they actually recycled part of the same scene in an effort to further pad the film. I should have stopped watching at that point.

Don't count on any blood and gore to make the film any more palatable, either - there ain't none. That's doubly unfortunate because you will desperately want to see every one of these annoying characters killed off as soon as possible. One of the actors is named Steve Bond, but I would swear he has a close familial link to the awful Timothy Van Patten. You have to feel sorry for Jackie Coogan, though; I admit his acting is horrible, but it's sad to see "Uncle Fester" go out like this - I'm pretty sure The Prey was his last film. At least he has some company in his misery, as he's joined by fellow The Addams Family alum Carel Struycken - I'll let you guess which part "Lurch" played.

Bottom line: avoid The Prey like the plague - unless you're a bad horror movie masochist like me.