The Prey

Sure, most of the slasher films of the 1980's were not worth the celluloid they were filmed on, but this video nightmare may well be one of the dullest produced. Six horny, pot-smoking students decide to go camping. Of course, and you know this already, they begin getting killed one by one by a mysterious stranger. The climax has a hunky forest ranger trying to get to the teens in time before the last cute girl becomes buzzard bait.

John Carl Buechler did the lousy makeup effects. The cast features Carel Struycken, of "The Witches of Eastwick" and the live-action Addams Family movies. He does not pop up until the very end of the film, and is covered in burn makeup, rendering him unrecognizable. Steve Bond has an early role as a victim. Brown's direction, and the script he co-wrote, both smell like the presents brown bears leave in the woods. He pads the film with so much stock wilderness footage, I thought I accidentally rented an episode of "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom". The cast sit around the campfire and eat, then walk, and sit and eat again. The forest ranger is involved in the strangest scene ever put in a slasher film: he tells a joke about a wide mouthed frog to a baby deer. Jackie Coogan, who must have forgot he once worked with the legends of silent cinema, has two scenes, and is involved in the second strangest scene ever put in a slasher film: he and the hunky forest ranger have a conversation about cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches on oatmeal bread...yeah. There is not one minute of suspense. The killer watches the students from behind trees. We know it is the killer because the film makers have dubbed in a heart beat sound effect that serves to wake the viewer up every few minutes. Skip this pile of pine sap and watch "Halloween," instead.

Meh slasher in the woods of SoCal

Three couples intend to enjoy a weekend in the wilds of California, but become prey to someone, or something, that doesn’t want them there.

Shot around 1980 but not released until 1983, “The Prey” is a backwoods slasher inspired by “Friday the 13th” and similar to the contemporaneous "The Final Terror” in that it was also filmed in the sticks of California and delivers a similar viewing experience. By that I mean decent-but-nothing-great (or even good). Yet both are significantly superior to the lousy "Don't Go in the Woods" (1981).

There’s nothing wrong with the filmmaking; the sylvan cinematography features lots of nature footage and is a highlight. Also, the ‘monster’ (Carel Struycken) is effective, but he doesn’t appear until the very end. This leaves the bulk of the runtime involving the activities of the campers and a couple of rangers, but their story just isn’t compellingly told. In other words, the heart of the movie is dull. It doesn’t help that two of the three females are second rate, physically speaking. Blonde Gayle Gannes is fine as Gail, but the director evidently didn’t know how to shoot women (no pun intended).

The film runs 1 hour, 21 minutes. I suggest avoiding the longer version that runs an additional 15 minutes, which is burdened by the unnecessary backstory on the antagonist along with some tame sex frolics of camping Gypsies. The flick was shot at AstroCamp campus in Idyllwild, SoCal, which is just west of Palm Springs. It looks like second unit work was done at Half Dome in Yosemite, which is 380 miles north of there.

GRADE: C