Truly Dreadful Film

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

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 Prey" is a less-than-decent backwoods slasher with some good moments.**SPOILERS**Driving out to the wilderness, Nancy, (Debbie Thureson) Joel, (Steve Bond) Bobbie, (Lori Lethin) Skip, (Robert Wald) Gail, (Gayle Gannes) and Greg, (Phillip Wenckus) run into camp worker Mark O'Brien, (Jackson Bostwick) while they wait for a camping spot to open. Hiking out to their spot, some begin to feel as though they are being watched which the others laugh off as the natural outdoors. Awaking one morning to find their numbers down, they search through the woods for them only to run into a deranged serial killer stalking the woods. Determined to get out of the woods alive, they try to survive the killer's attempts to pick them off.The Good News: This one does have some half-way decent moments in when it tries. The fact that this one really takes advantage of it's forest setting like very few others gives it a great atmosphere. The fact that it's disorienting in nature, continually features areas that look identical to other areas already past, and in general have a creepy vibe to them allows for some great moments to come from there. There's some really good deaths in here as well, some of which are creative while others are brutal and gory. The more inventive ones include using a sleeping bag to strangle, being caught in a foot-trap and flung into a nearby tree face-first and having their throat ripped out with bare hands, which also makes it into the other category of the gory kills here, namely a really wicked decapitation, twisting the head completely around and breaking neck and having the throat crushed with bare hands, making this one a pretty gory one at times. The only other part that works is that the finale is pretty good. It's not an oversimplified version of events, since it leaves with a big enigma and actually does something really clever with it, a rarity at times. These here are the film's best qualities.The Bad News: There isn't a whole lot of flaws in the film, but they are there. The fact that this one takes up a fairly healthy segment of time with a whole host of scenes showing the wildlife supposedly in the area. This takes up an insane amount of time, and very rarely are they used for anything other than a brief glimpse that has nothing to do with what's going on. It just switches over to a random shot of an animal scurrying around in an underbrush that could vaguely be close to the setting around them. It's noticeable, distracting and has nothing to do with the film. The fact that the killer is kept off-screen until a few shots at the end are a wise idea, since there's almost nothing about him that screams terrifying. It's all too ludicrous to be anything other than unintentional hilarity. The design is decent, and it's intended to look really great, but all it really does is just look like a ridiculous plastic attempt at being creepy. There's no way that it looks anything other than this, and won't really put any scares into anybody. 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 in order to maintain an aura of mystery, but this one has 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. All in all, it's watchable without too much going wrong for it.The Final Verdict: A few good moments here and there allow this one to be watchable at worst, but this is still a below-average slasher. Check it out for fans of the hardcore backwoods-slasher style, while those who aren't big on those or of slashers in general will find very little in here to get excited over.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Language and Brief Nudity

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.

Alright - I like this because , #1. It was an all-night movie .... #2. It's supposed-to-be 80's horror and #3. It is really quirky. Not like this movie was really good or anything - but it was...different. Kinda boring at times , but even more so when u realize that anything sort-of interesting is really not going to come until the end. No stars , and - on that note - id really like to see a promotional poster of this film - cant find one anywhere! It had to at least played at the drive-in!?? Rare stuff...