Edwin Brown’s recently
unearthed 1980 outdoors-set horror film The
Prey represents a one-off for the writer-director’s career. Working with his wife Summer primarily in the
porno film industry, The Prey is an
attempt at trying to make a real film, one that had many unforeseen obstacles
ahead of its production and release.
Though completed in 1979, the film sat on the shelf for four years
before being picked up by New World Pictures with some fifteen minutes excised
out including an opening forest fire prologue foreshadowing the events to
come.
Moreover, the film’s skin
flick production company, Essex Productions, saw fit to go ahead and eliminate
six more minutes before another cast and crew shot a flashback sequence
containing not one but three sex scenes in a row after an executive producer
felt the film “needed more nudity”.
Edwin and Summer Brown, for the 2019 Arrow Video blu-ray being reviewed
here, stated they had zero involvement with the writing or shooting of the
footage and that they felt it was “badly shot and badly edited”. Whatever the case, the good folks at Arrow
have included the director’s preferred cut as well as the infamous re-edit and
a new fan-composite cut combining the two films into one long version.
As for the film itself, its
your typical summer camp slasher flick with three young college-aged couples
hiking up into the mountains for climbing, smoking weed and getting laid. By now we’ve seen this kind of film to death,
though the use of Idyllwild, California’s Suicide Rock within the woods and the
constant Malick-esque interspersing of nature photography with the narrative
helps to set The Prey apart from the
usual fare. While not particularly
scary, it does have some coincidental connections horror fans will enjoy like
the casting of Fester Addams actor Jackie Coogan as the sheriff and eventual
Lurch actor Carel Struycken from The
Addams Family movie and Twin Peaks as
the monster.
Aside from the mixture of
stock footage of a forest fire and animals in nature, the microbudget
do-it-yourself production also boasted an original score by The Hills Have Eyes composer Don Peake
which frankly sounds like a cross between Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Béla Bartók’s Music for Strings prominently used in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. The film also included striking prosthetic
gore effects from the late future Friday
the 13th Part VII: The New Blood director John Carl Buechler,
including a throat ripping scene which rivals the one seen in 2008’s Rambo.
Overall The Prey isn’t
going to be a grand unseen masterpiece unveiled after so many years of
obscurity but it is however an effective little horror film made by a filmmaker
ordinarily tasked with directing erotic films.
It’s a shame neither his film nor his career really took off as The Prey does have moments of
inspiration peppered throughout, a cool looking monster and beautiful scenery
to take in. As it stands, the forest-set
slow burning slasher is a fun detour for horror aficionados looking for a
different kind of forgotten thriller.
--Andrew Kotwicki
