Le zombie venu d'ailleurs

A quick peek at the IMDb trivia section teaches us that "Prey" was shot in only ten days and that most of the script actually had to be improvised during shooting. These usually aren't very good signs, especially not when the director already holds the reputation of delivering movies with a low level of quality. Norman J. Warren's other films (like "Inseminoid" and "Satan's Slave") are fun but extremely unoriginal, mainly revolving on graphic bloodshed and copious amounts gratuitous sleaze. "Prey" is exactly like that, but now he totally didn't even bother to come up with a script. The result is a bizarre and often laughable film that makes no sense whatsoever, but the whole ineptness is irresistibly charming nevertheless. The story goes like this: An alien, who goes by the name of Keator, arrives in rural England with a mission to research possible new food sources to save his whole species, but the poor sucker never makes it further than the isolated mansion of two crazed lesbians. He ends up living with them; they dress him up in women's clothing like he's their third lesbian toy-girl and together they hunt down a fox. When the poor animal is eventually dead, they celebrate it with a giant party, which is just a little over-the-top if you ask me. In the meantime, Keator – whose human name is Anders Anderson (!) – develops a more or less intimate relationship with the youngest lesbian and she slowly falls for him. For you see, she's not a real lesbian but just an insecure girl and the other is a scary dominatrix that literally forces the young girl to be her lover. It's a mad world, indeed. The whole middle-section of "Prey" is rather tedious and uneventful, and only hilariously cheesy & inept dialogs keep it tolerable to sit through. Then the climax is extremely gross and bloody with a sudden massacre. Surely the sick puppies and avid admirers of 70's exploitation will appreciate the graphic bloodshed of the finale, but it comes ridiculously abrupt, like Warren suddenly got tired of his film and wanted to end it, and it totally misfits the rest of the film's tone. "Prey" is a pretty bad but curiously intriguing 70's trash-film, inclusively intended for fans of this type of cinema.

I like this film. I like it a lot. I like it because it makes me incredibly nostalgic for a period in British cinema that has long since passed. The 1970's. A time when irreverent and irrelevant schlock like this could get made. I like it because it is monumentally silly yet eerily compulsive, possesses a truly odd atmosphere, and at one point it actually frightened me.

It was made in 10 days with whatever change the crew had in their back pockets. It's very entertaining.

How I wish up-and-comers would make stuff like this rather than the Tarantino and 'Trainspotting' tributes that they STILL are.

Norman 'J.' Warren, I salute you.

A shape-shifting space alien takes the form of a handsome young man on Earth and, after violently doing what he was sent for (which we learn at the end), he finds two pretty lesbians holed-up in a rural country estate... just so he can study their daily/nightly routine... Which means that men are all the same no matter what planet they derive...

For a robotic-like Barry Stokes it's a complicated (and often risky) lesson of love and jealousy in what's an offbeat triangle within a low-budget science-fiction horror, with plenty of intended downtime...

Giving the feel that cult director Norman J. Warren's PREY is actually more of a deliberately slow-paced arthouse thriller, and, filmed in England with British actors, the acting's quite good when it really shouldn't be...

Featuring the more feminine and once straight Glory Annen (with an unseen backstory involving an ex-husband), who's given either loving/controlling kisses or dirty/frustrated looks by her shorter-haired yet equally attractive Sally Faulkner, the most fun is how the bickering couple tries figuring out this strange male visitor, who winds up like a benign, manipulated little brother of sorts...

Meanwhile the taboo exploitation gets sporadically intruded upon by what hardcore horror fans want much more of, like gruesome body count deaths by the alien, particularly while sporting full fangs, an interstellar wolfman, who, despite having plenty to watch (as a voyeur along with the intended male audience) has very little to do.

Wow.

This one came out of nowhere. I'm just watching my way through some Z-grade movies, enjoying cheesy science fiction, laughing at half-baked plots, and struggling to get through some real duds. Then I get to PREY. This one stands out from the rest. Not because it's sexploitation (already got a bit of that in HUNDRA) but because it lures you in with one plot but then sucker punches you with another once you get settled. PREY is two-fold, with a pair of plot threads running parallel over the course of the movie. The first, most obvious, and primarily advertised is that of the alien. The movie opens with the landing of an alien ship in the English countryside. The alien quickly murders a man and assumes his identity, wandering into the forest until he comes to an isolated cabin and our second plot line. Living in this cabin are a pair of lesbian lovers, Josephine (Sally Faulkner) and Jessica (Glory Annen). Right from the start, something seems off about these two. Josephine in particular seems angered by the presence of this mystery man and seethes with a hatred for men in general. Jessica is the more naïve of the couple, kind-hearted and caring. Her first reaction to this stranger on their property is to give him shelter and see to whatever wound is causing his limp. Tensions mount as Josephine struggles to turn Jessica against the man, who has assumed the name Anders Anderson (Barry Stokes), while Anderson tends to his own shady business.

You see, the movie starts out as a sort of body-snatchers thriller. We get the alien landing and then it stumbles across an attempted date rape in the middle of the woods; it rips the man's throat out and transforms to assume his identity before proceeding to crush his date to death with its bare hands. All right, cool. We're off to a fun start and there's even some gore effects when he kills the dude. Then we move on to the cabin and…hold on…now the movie is about a young woman trapped in an abusive relationship with an older woman. Keep in mind, when we first meet the alien it rips a man's throat out and yet, still, Josephine comes across as the most evil character in the movie. She's spiteful and passive aggressive; she's mentally and emotionally abusive to Jessica, keeping her trapped on this little farmstead. Josephine fills Jessica's head with venomous lies, telling her that they have to stay in their hidden little cabin because the evil villagers don't approve of their lesbian lifestyle. Whether that's true or not is never seen, as we rarely wander far from the cabin. And Josephine is hateful of any sort of outside interference. We constantly hear of a man name Stanley, a friend who apparently used to come along once in a while before the movie but has since ceased contact with them. Jessica misses him but Josephine insists she's wasting her time prattling on about him.

So we've got an alien presence and an abusive relationship, but that's not all PREY has to offer. This movie is insane and the more you think about it, the crazier it gets. Keep in mind, the women have no idea Anderson is an alien. They assume from his bizarre behavior that he's just mentally disabled in some fashion. They invite this odd stranger into their home and, at one point, have a little party where they inexplicably dress him up in women's clothing, make up and all. OK, he's an alien and has no idea what's going on, but to these women he's just a mentally confused stranger they can slather in lipstick. It gets crazier. At one point, Anderson ends up thrashing in a lake because he can't swim. In the wide shot, he is very obviously in water that can't be more than six inches deep. And he's just splashing around in a panic. Then Josephine and Jessica jump in to save him and all three wind up thrashing in this shallow water in slow motion while the soundtrack pounds away. Mind you, this water was black and seriously nasty, and there are plenty of shots where poor Glory Annen takes in a mouthful of this muck. Ugh, poor girl. And her character is just so stupid. When Jessica goes in search of clean clothes for Anderson, she happens across a trunk in Josephine's room containing bloody clothes and an enormous switchblade. Just a big ol' box of evidence that Josephine has killed. Yet another reason this relationship needs to be aborted, but Jessica forgets immediately and goes back about her daily routine.

PREY is nuts and for that I give it a recommend. It's a science fiction movie about a cat monster from space (Anderson's normal form is that of a cat person) mixed with a suspense thriller about a young woman trapped in a dangerous relationship with a psychopath; two separate plots tossed in a blender and served as a cheesy, sci-fi sexploitation stew.

Instantly watchable and delightfully cheap British sci-fi finds a male alien missionary on Earth being taken in as a house-guest by an unsuspecting separatist lesbian couple. The true fanged creature is concealed beneath a stolen body, but occasionally emerges during conflicts and feeding frenzies(and looks a bit like the titular terrors of THE BAT PEOPLE). The decidedly non-vegetarian visitor becomes caught in the middle of the womyns' peculiar psychodramas and recurring hostilities, and at one point is cross-dressed by them and finds new pleasures in the consumption of champagne....allthewhile drooling over a pet bird they have kept in a hanging cage.

This film, for all its misgivings, remains one of the more "out there" entries in the sci-fi/horror genre...a bad film, to be sure, but one recommendable for its sheer uncommonness. At least they were clearly trying for something altogether different...and they sure did succeed in that task.

5.5 out of 10 -- for decent performances and overall...erm...queerness.