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Last night, I was going to take a pill to get to sleep, but it turns out that The Prey works a thousand times better than any Advil PM. Obviously made to cash in on the Friday the 13th hysteria, The Prey features an admittedly attractive cast of 20-somethings who wander off into the woods and are picked off one by one by a charred gypsy.

There's not much rhyme or reason for anything that happens in this movie and good luck trying to remember any character names. Gail is the only memorable character simply because she has the annoying habit of checking and re-applying her makeup in pretty much every one of her scenes.

There's a fairly useless side character of a forest ranger who talks in baby voices to deer and eats cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches whenever we're not going on hikes with our leads. To make matters worse, every scene transitions to the next via overlong sequences of nature that go on forever. I'm convinced that, if you took these shots out, the movie would be 15 minutes long. I could almost believe that they ran out of money midway through and, when they got more funds, the original cast wasn't available so they decided to beef up the forest ranger scenes and nature footage just to make the film feature length (it barely qualifies at just under 80 minutes).

That said, there are some decent effects here and the music score isn't too bad. It's just a shame that, right as the film starts to take off, it ends.

N.B. This review is of the 80 minute American theatrical cut.

Three young couples - Greg (Philip Wenckus) and Gail (Gayle Gannes), Skip (Robert Wald) and Bobbie (Lori Lethin), and Joel (Steve Bond) and Nancy (Debbie Thureson) - head into the hills for a camping weekend. Before you can say "Ki ki ki, ma ma ma", they're being offed by a deformed maniac (Carel Struycken) with virtually no backstory (at least in the version that I saw).

Hey, it's '80s slasher time again, which in this case means a dearth of originality, from the bare bones plot, to the cookie cutter characters, to the uninspired music, to the predictable direction (killer POV shots aplenty). That said, this one does have something rather special up its sleeve: it also serves as a wildlife documentary, depicting the many varieties of fauna indigenous to the San Jacinto Mountains in Riverside County, California. While the film's three young couples wait to be sliced and diced by the lunatic roaming the area, we're treated to footage of **deep breath** a millipede, a bear, a frog, a raccoon, a centipede, a woodpecker, a snake (eating a mouse), an eagle, a salamander, a tarantula, an owl, termites, and ants, with shots of a deer, a lizard, birds of prey and butterflies intercut with the slaughter. Great work, wildlife photographer Gary Gero!

As for the those staple slasher ingredients, nudity and violence, here's a quick rundown of what you can expect from The Prey when not admiring fowl and beast...

Nudity: brief toplessness from Gayle Gannes, side boob from the lovely Debbie Thureson while she sunbathes, and nada from Lori Lethin. A rather poor show overall.

Violence (gore courtesy of John Carl Buechler): a neck stump spurting blood, suffocation by sleeping bag, a bloody throat gouging, a head twisted backwards, a body plummeting down a cliff, death by booby trap (victim thrown against a tree, messing up the face and twisting a leg), and a crushed neck. Fun when it happens.

4.5/10, rounded up to 5 for the utterly pointless but strangely enjoyable musical interlude, park ranger Mark O'Brien (Jackson Bostwick) playing a tune on his banjo for no other reason than to show that Bostwick can play the banjo.

The Prey follows the tried and tested formula of a group of 20 somethings who venture into the forest to camp unaware that something lingers between the trees with evil intentions.

In this case we have a bit of a Wrong Turn (2003) vibe and absolutely no originality or standout moments at all.

One thing I can certainly say for The Prey is that certain elements are beautiful. The movie is full of what I can only assume is stock footage of forestry wildlife and though it seems like filler it really is quite exquisite.

As for the film itself it is full of mediocre deaths, generic characters and lackluster writing.

The Good:

Beautiful nature shots

Oddly dark finale

The Bad:

Paint by numbers stuff

Weak death scenes

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

I've seen enough of these films now to put me off camping for life

First of all let me say that I love eighties horror. I know it's cheesy, not that scary and particularly awful, but so many of the genre's best output falls under the 'so-bad-it's-good' category. Therefore I figured 'The Prey' would keep me entertained for an hour and a half. It was a long ninety minutes.

I hear the film was actually released at around eighty minutes and the missing extra footage was put in and is now more likely to be the version you watched. I wish I'd watched the shorter version. Often, when a film is good, I can't really think of too much to say about it - other than 'I enjoyed it!' However, with this one I feel I could probably write an essay reeling off everything that's wrong with it.

I know it's a low budget film and I probably shouldn't be too hard on it, but, seriously, it's a hard watch. I knew what I was in for in terms of story. Half my DVD collection is filled with masked serial killers murdering stupid teenagers. That brief plot synopsis is certainly applicable here; it's just this one doesn't work on any level.

It's about three young (overly-sexed, naturally!) couples who go camping in the mountains and fall victim to a killer. Nothing wrong with that premise, but, if you're hoping for gore - you won't find it here. It probably didn't have the budget. No matter if the characters are good, right? Wrong. They're not. I don't expect Oscar-worthy acting from a horror movie, but sometimes I figured I could probably read the actors' lines with more emotion and believability! What about the killer? Was he imaginative? Nope. Where as films like 'Friday 13th' had original and memorable killers, this one isn't even shown for 99% of the screen time. Perhaps worst (or weirdest?) of all was the fact that the film-makers felt the need to insert plenty of 'nature shots' in the film. Every scene is preceded by an unrelated shot of a deer, or racoon or something - either that or the mountain range. Then you get the wooden characters just walking. There's an old joke about the 'Lord of the Rings' movies that goes along the lines that the trilogy is just nine hours of people walking. But I don't think you've seen 'on screen walking' until you've watched 'The Prey.' There are a few pointless sub-plots which drag out for longer than they should and about a twenty minute segment roughly in the middle of the film which feels like a completely different movie of its own (it's supposed to be a sort of 'origin story' for the killer) and doesn't really add anything.

I only continued watching this movie just because I kept telling myself that it would pick up in the final act. I guess it did - if you class the 'final act' as the last five minutes of a film that clocks in at over an hour and a half. There are so many better slasher films out there. Pick one. Trust me, it'll be much more enjoyable.

* out of ***** The full title for this movie should be "National Geographic Presents ‘The Prey,'" because, with all the shots of lizards, centipedes, snakes, spiders, frogs, etc., this could be shown on the Discovery channel. Talk about filler! This has a running time of barely 80 minutes, but if you take away the prolonged scenes of insects and reptiles and dull kids chatting idly around the campfire and forest rangers eating sandwiches and telling jokes to animals, you're left with maybe five or ten minutes of actual story (and I use that term loosely.) It's so damn boring! Carel Struycken (`Lurch' from the Adams Family movies) is a giant, badly burned killer who lives in the mountains, but he isn't even shown until the last five minutes or so. Some boring kids go camping and -- yawn -- Lurch picks them off one by one. There are long, awkward scenes of former MGM, classic film star Jackie Coogan, as forest ranger Lester Tile, making silly faces as he eats a cucumber and cream cheese sandwich. Some of the more notable lines in the `script' are, `Good chow' and `Tell me something -- do people really eat those things?' (referring to the cucumber sandwich). There's minimal violence, minimal suspense, minimal naked horseplay and minimal excitement. The tag line on the video box reads: `It's not human, and it's got an ax!' but, it probably shoulda read: `It's not good, and it got made!'

Lowlight: In a cinematic first, the other forest ranger (Mark O'Brien, I think) tells a (long) joke about a wide-mouth frog to a deer. Actually, this is one of the best scenes in the movie -- the punchline made me laugh.

I watched this film in 1992 on the suggestion of one of my friends. Since I am a big fan of 'Backwoods Horror', I decided to give it a try. The film began and I thought I was about to witness another Friday the 13th. It was after 30 minutes, when I realized that they shouldn't have released it as a slasher. Here is what it's all about.

The film begins with the stock footage of 1948 Northpoint wildfire, then it cuts straight to 1980, where we see a couple Frank & Mary enjoying their camp out. Moments later, Mary is shocked to see Frank's decapitated body and is brutally killed too. Nobody knows who did it. Then we come across 6 teenage campers Nancy, Joel, Greg, Gail, Skip and Bobbie heading to the woods. On the way, they meet forest ranger Mark, who asks them to watch out for the bears. As the teenagers go deeper and deeper in the woods, they become more isolated from the outer world. Little do they know that something horrible is lurking at an arm's length. The police department is investigating the disappearances of Frank & Mary and seeks help of the forest department. The senior forest officer Lester Tile may have clues regarding the disappearances at The Northpoint.

So did you enjoy the story? You may have, because I never included a single wildlife footage in it. This could have made millions if it were shown on Animal Planet. The plot has no unique value and the actors are some of the worst and dumbest in the stock, who fail to develop themselves during the course of run. I mean you never get empathy for them, and even after spending around 81 minutes with you, they all die strangers. The film is full of unrelated and forcibly included stock footage, whose color scheme doesn't match with the actual film. The only good footage I remember is of a snake working hard to swallow a frog. This footage underlines the movie title 'The Prey'. Watch it only if you are big fan of backwoods horror, otherwise this has nothing new to promise.

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.

The prey is a knockoff of Friday the 13th but for what it is it's not bad. The kills were decent and the third act was the best part. The ending was really good. Never really seen that before in a slasher film. It's 80 minutes of popcorn fun.

Everything everyone has said already pretty much rings true when it comes to 'The Prey'. Endless nature footage, bad acting - Aside from these elements, this is a watchable film for slasher fans that in some cases, is considered a cult classic.

Jackson Bostwick and Jackie Coogan play pretty well off each other. There's also a three minute banjo solo that shows off Bostwick's skill behind the instrument. Not too bad if I do say so myself.

The last ten minutes of the 'film' are its saving grace. The ending still haunts me to this day. This can also sport a short lived plus in that an early John Carl Bucheler does the special effects. Some may know him from films like 'Troll' and 'Friday the 13th part 7 - He directed both these films) All in all, this isn't a movie everyone will find something redeeming in. In fact, on a Hollywood level, this can rank right up there with one of the businesses most amateurish efforts, but for that handful (yet very loyal) of slasher movie fans in the world, even the bad acting and atrocious nature footage can be forgiven.

There's many bad reviews on here, but some cool nature shots, simple slasher plot and some decent kills, what's not to love... good movie if you like Friday 13th with a dash of nature.

Healthy horny idiots go camping in the woods (I know, an alien scenario for a slasher film!) The woods they go to were the location of a bloodbath decades earlier as someone from a gypsy camp was falsely accused of rape. The townsfolk burnt down the gypsy settlement but one of the younger members of the travellers escaped albeit with massive amounts of burns. The present day campers get the feeling that someone is watching them and then start to be dispatched by You Know Who.

The Prey was made in 1980 but not released in the States until 1983. Edwin Brown was directing porn movies before he decided to branch out into horror. And it shows! The sex scenes in this movie are a lot more raunchy than in other slasher movies. Theres a longer version of this film called the 'Gypsy Cut' which contains a full prologue regarding the gypsy characters. This sequence is VERY sexual and feels like the funny parts of porn movies that you see before sexual organs get an airing. This includes the kind of flat acting that you could only see in pornography.

The film feels like it wants to establish the fact that it's a Hillbillies vs City Folk movie and even has a character playing a banjo!

But whilst this is a blatant Friday the 13th rip-off theres enough here to hold your interest. The kills are very effective (courtesy of special effects guru John Carl Buechler), the cinematography is stunning (even if scenes shot in a forest are pretty hard not to portray as beautiful. Check out the scale of some of the shots and how the humans are sometimes shown as minuscule in comparison to the woods. Also, check out the abseiling scene). Theres also a very unexpected ending that shows that Ol' Scarface has other plans for the Final Girl rather than killing her. This reminded me of the backstory to the mutant family in the masterpiece, The Hills Have Eyes. The kill of the Final Girl's friend before this is also very left-field and takes the audience by surprise (no, I'm not going to disclose what it is!)

Check out the Arrow Films Blu ray. Both cuts are on there along with a gorgeous transfer and plenty of extras.

What a thrill ride this picture was. These were the highlights,

1. Man tells "scary" story by fire, ending with the protagonist wishing for a good night's sleep. 2. Man eats a cucumber sandwich... then some more cucumber sandwich.... and then... to end on a crescendo... He FINISHES THE SANDWICH, but wait! There's more! 3. Man tunes a banjo, drinks some beer, plays banjo, then retunes banjo. Oh boy! If that's not enough for you... 4. Same man tells a story about a frog, which... has an ending.... I guess? 5. People call out their friends' names and walk up a hill for about five minutes. 6. The credits roll.

The best thing about "The Prey" is the tag line..."It's not human and it's got an axe"! The movie itself is a padded stinkaroo....endless insect and wildlife shots make the viewer wanna die! No slasher fan will like this garbage.....Watch "Friday the 13th" again and burn any copy of this film you find!

It also rates as one of the 25 worst films ever made!

I think that would have been a more appropriate title for this film, since it is padded to hell and back with stock footage of various bugs and animals. I recently found The Prey in its original VHS 'big box' form and was very excited. I just LOVE finding old slasher films on VHS because the cover artwork is fantastic. Usually though, it turns out that the film itself is less than fantastic. The Prey is one of those films.

To be fair, it started off OK, with the killer stalking the cliché teenagers in the woods. The heartbeat sounds used are a great effect that make you tense as you watch. This film is basically a big fat cliché, and when the "campfire stories" section rolls in, the film takes a new direction and spends almost half of the running time on the back-story of the killer. I actually thought this was quite an original idea. However, the back-story ends abruptly and shows us some stock-footage of a burning woodland (the lack of budget really starts to show now). After this, we are returned to the dumb teenagers being picked off in the woods. The killer himself isn't shown until the end, which is a shame because he actually makes an effective looking killer. Sort of like Cropsy from The Burning, but better. As for gore, there isn't too much, although there's an OK face squishing moment at the end.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend this film to anyone other than slasher completists - it really is a big mess.

Foolish hikers go camping in the Utah mountains only to run into a murderous, disfigured gypsy.

The Prey is a pretty run of the mill slasher film, that mostly suffers from a lack of imagination. The victim characters are all-too-familiar idiot teens which means one doesn't really care about them, we just wonder when they will die! Not to mention it has one too many cheesy moments and is padded with endless, unnecessary nature footage. However it does have a few moments of interest to slasher fans, the occasional touch of spooky atmosphere, and a decent music score by Don Peake. Still, it's business as usual for dead-camper movies.

There are much better films in this vein, but over all The Prey may be watchable enough for die-hard slasher fans. Although one might be more rewarded to watch Just Before Dawn (1981), Wrong Turn (2003), or even The Final Terror (1983) again.

* 1/2 out of ****

Slow paced wannabe slasher that had potential to be a stronger movie. Will disappoint the slasher crowd, who will want more excitement and gore. Not awful but not noteworthy either. However, the scene just before the credits is exquisite. It's truly a shame the rest of the movie doesn't live up to it.

THE PREY is a bad slasher, but not because of poor acting or direction. The acting is on par with other competent slashers of the era. The characters are generic in a way that would be fine in a slasher. The problem is, this is not a slasher film, even though it wants to be. A slasher emphasizes gore and kills. Typically, you don't care enough about the characters in a slasher to get too upset when they get whacked, because that would ruin the fun of these movies.

What we actually have here is a suspense thriller that doesn't know what it is. I say this because the essence of this movie is killer's pursuit of the teenage campers, and, in turn, the Ranger's investigation/pursuit of the mysterious killer. Given the film's slow pacing and its emphasis on scenes of the Ranger tracking the teens and the teens hiking in the woods, it's evident that it wanted to create suspense. Again, because we don't care about the characters, it's hard for the movie to create suspense. I believe that if the characters were stronger and the background score weren't so indicative of the era's slashers, the movie would have been stronger. Essentially, had a director with a sensibility for suspense helmed this movie, I think it would have been a much more compelling film. That said, what we do get is serviceable. As a slasher fan, it disappointed me because I think it had the raw materials to be a better flick.

Finally: ironically, the scenes with the Ranger alone in the woods, doing his ranger things, were the most compelling parts of the movie. I could have watched more of that.

After owning the dubious-looking Bootleg of 'The Prey'for many years, it was with tremendously acute, 'pre-entering the Gladiatorial ring excitement' that I watched the immaculately insane Blu-ray presentation of Edwin Brown's fitfully sanguineous, generously stock footage slathered, sinfully slept on slasher freakshow. Directed with a rare heartfelt, wide-brained finesse, colourfully suggestive of a William Girdler or fellow free-thinking, outdoorsy, independent celluloid centurion Don Dohler. Including the outstandingly impecunious visuals, it is the films multifarious confabulations of the envelope thrustingly twisted screenplay wherein 'The Prey' begins to teasingly tear away, eyes slavering, lips blathering into the uncharted realms of becoming a terrifically transcendent, terror taunting, trouser-tentingly tawdry triumph! The winsome dénouement is as elusive as Jayne Mansfield's bust in 'The Girl Can't help it' (1958), the boisterously unfiltered ensemble acting is no less refined than Nick Zedd's infamously sedate 'They eat Scum (1979), and the uniquely perpendicular plot hares through all three unprecedentedly singular acts like a deadly Martian virus!

The Prey's outlandish originality is a blisteringly boundless, nipple-twistingly exquisite delight, so exhilarating is the luminously lunatic premise I am led, quite literally, with madly-staring brain to think that SF grand master Philip Jose Farmer had a filigree hand in the scintillatingly inspired scripting! It's so frequently fearless, so deliberately demented, 'The Prey' got deadly dramatic locomotion like a peyote-crazed prairie centipede. Windswept, and wickedly wonky, 80s slashers are rarely so exhilaratingly eccentric as this mayhemic mountaintop massacre! So, outside the wildly subjective rantings of a forlorn mentalist such as I, is the galdarn fright-flick any good? Any Good? Can honey-voiced Bobbie Gentry sing a sad, sad song? Did Philip K Dick dream of electric screams? Did long-forgotten riff-mongers Muzza Chunka make the very best decision by calling their groovy album 'Fishy Pants'? Hellz Indeedy Yes!!!!! Stalwart Horror avatars Arrow Video certainly did our ceaselessly thirsty 80s slasher glands a most righteous, Dudley Do-Right with this, their gore-iously glistering, full-spec Blu-ray release of 'The Prey' (1979) And that's about all the insane speaking you'll ever need on this all too rarely celebrated, cinematically chronic Slasher disasterpiece!

'The Burning', 'Friday the 13th' and 'Howard The Duck' all came many years after Edwin Scott Brown's trail-mixing, backwoods sick-making classic, 'The Hills Have eyes' and 'Von Ryan's Express' came long before 'The Prey', and, that, amigos, is something I will have to deal with in my own sweet time. There are myriad salient epiphanies in a young chap's life, the melancholy moment he puts down his Airfix Focke-Wulf Fw 191, turns to regard the temptingly sticky Evo Stick, and takes his very first life-altering huff of that mind-cloaking chemical puff, and, in a no less evangelical manner, 'The Prey' may well enrapture your sedentary life for the 97 mins you expose your think-matrix to the calamitous circuitous celluloid confection that is 'The Prey', shot in 1979, released theatrically in 1984 and remastered in 2019, I genuinely feel that this extended maturation process can be appreciated in much the same way as a sublime 18-year-old single malt whiskey, or a three-day-old Garibaldi biscuit!

In "The Prey" six young and irresponsible campers Nancy,Joel,Skip,Gail and Greg hike into the thick woods at North Point,oblivious to the fact that a nice married couple was recently axe-murdered there while camping by monstrous butcher.Before long the young adults are the prey of an unseen stalker,a deformed gypsy."The Prey" is actually better than its reputation suggests.Our mountain man is a pretty creepy killer and the death scenes are quite gory.The stock nature footage includes long views of centipedes,frogs,spiders,snakes,bugs and more.There is even awesome banjo solo played by a lonely forest ranger.The killings include axe decapitation,ripping out the throat,a sleeping bag suffocation and so on.The final ten minutes are excellent revealing the inevitable killer and displaying his intelligence.The ending is pessimistic and quite disturbing.6 out of 10.

Even by the lowered standards of '80s slasher movies, this one stinks. The usual gaggle of oversexed teens heads for a "forbidden" part of forest, which burned in the 1940s and apparently left a sole angry survivor. Fast forward (actually, you'll want to fast-forward through much of this mess) to the present day, where a couple of campers are butchered; the teens follow in their wake, while a semi-concerned park ranger (a sleepwalking Jackie Coogan) and his healthier cohort (who spins a lot of time tuning his banjo) succeed partially in steering our attention from yards of run-of-the-mill nature-footage padding. Finally, more killings--but nothing you haven't seen a zillion times before. If you want to see the kids butchered, opt for SLEEPAWAY CAMP or the first FRIDAY THE 13TH over this