THE PREY (1983)

THE PREY (1983)

Tagline: It's not human, and it's got an axe!

(Horror, Slasher, Cave Gypsys) [R]

Hey, tell me the truth on something, are those sandwiches any good?

In this one, we are taken to a remote forest area in Colorado where most campers don’t go. In the year 1948, part of the forest is burned down. A group of gypsies that lived in a cave in the area is killed allegedly leaving one survivor; a badly burned gypsy boy. Years later in 1980 an older couple and three younger couples visit the area for camping, only to find the burned boy is now a monster out for THE PREY. 

One thing to know about this film is that it has 3 versions out now. The first is the 80-minute theatrical release that I am reviewing. The second is a 91-minute version that adds a lengthy flashback to the gypsy situation which is only verbally explained by one of the forest rangers in the 80-minute version. Then there is also a fan version that is basically a mash-up of the two. I will say that the quality of this thing is super high. It looks better than some of the movies made by low-budget studios in 2022. 

What works in this thing is the score in the opening sequence. After that, it’s almost as if whoever scored the rest of the movie got food poisoning and they got the rest of the score from a bunch of high-school kids that had never touched instruments before and just told them to do whatever they wanted. The practical effects are strong throughout and the gore is quite a bit more pronounced in the first few death scenes than it is in most of the FRIDAY THE 13TH series. However overall this one is pretty tame, we aren’t seeing body parts all over the place or anything like that. Some reviews incorrectly say this takes place in California, but in the opening sequence, we actually see a couple Colorado state flags. One is on the bulletin board when the forest ranger meets the 3 couples for the first time and the other is on the flag pole. It does appear to have been filmed in CA. 

The acting in some scenes is very typical ’80s slasher stuff and it works for the most part. In other sections seem like the actors were just told to wing it. Lori Lethin plays Bobbie and just isn’t utilized to her full potential. She isn’t someone horror fans wouldn’t recognize she was basically a scream queen in the 80s with roles in RETURN TO HORROR HIGH, BLOODY BIRTHDAY, and this thing. Steve Bond who plays Joel is also pretty bad in this, but he’s not a bad actor. The dude’s career went all the way into 2017. There are a few other cast members that stuck around awhile, but the general idea is that no one really had a chance to even add any depth to this flick which would have helped at least a little. 

Probably the film’s most annoying factor is the editing. It seems like someone raided the National Geographic film archives and cut them into this movie. After a while, the movie starts to get hard to watch just because it’s so ridiculously choppy. The other issue I had with this is that the ending is probably one of the worst horror movies of the 80s. That isn’t a joke. This had a chance to be THE BURNING good, but the execution is horrendous and even the characters we “kind” of care about are discarded like yesterday’s trash. To be honest, it’s cool that they came up with a slasher where the slasher is like 8 feet tall, but outside of this is a forgettable mess with 98% terrible dialog. 

I can’t stand this one. For me, this is a 2 out of 7. It’s only slightly better than DON’T GO IN THE WOODS but that is about the best I can do rating this one. That’s it. 

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